Kuznetsov I.I. Political pragmatism of the empire: review of Herfried Münkler’s book “Empires: The Logic of World Supremacy – from Ancient Rome to the USA”

Abstract: Professor of Moscow State University, Doctor of Political Sciences I.I. Kuznetsov reviews the book of Herfried Münkler “Imperii: Logika gospodstva nad mirom – ot Drevnego Rima i do SShA”/Per. s nem L.V. Lannika pod red. T.A. Grablevskoi; komment. i vstup. st. L.V. Lannika – M.: Kuchkovo pole, 2015. – 400 s (“Empires: The Logic of World Supremacy – from Ancient Rome to the USA”). The methodology of the research comprises the systems approach, the structural-functional and comparative-political approaches, the methods of analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction and observation. The monograph of Prof. Münkler is a very interesting study of the complicated political issue of the fate of empires in the modern world. The author reasonably claims that the imperial form of government had maintained peaceful mutually-beneficial coexistence of various peoples and ethnic groups of different cultures, values and political traditions within a single state for a very long period of human history. Imperial government was based on the principle of “unity in diversity” which didn’t suppress the identity of small nations, but helped them preserve it. Nowadays, in the complicated conditions of the global instability intensification, the imperial form of organization of multinational states again becomes actual and competitive even in comparison with another, more widespread, form – federalism. 

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