The Great Disruption

Sociological Review

"The main strength of The Great Disruption is that it shows how the outsourcing of authority to the expert and to international bodies leads to today’s peculiarly risk-averse and regulation-obsessed policymaking."

Frank Furedi, sp!ked review of books

"A wide-ranging erudite exploration of contemporary social change that presents a compelling case for refashioning governance of an emergent more global world. Zaki Laïdi asks key questions and offers innovative answers: about rethinking sovereignty, reconfiguring the state, providing public goods and interrogating alterglobalism."

Jan Aart Scholte, University of Warwick

"This original and challenging text is based on solid research and scholarship. The author offers challenging redefinitions of key concepts and every section contains a wealth of insights, new arguments and interesting linkages. A key part of the overall argument is Laïdi's contrast between the approaches of the European Union and the United States to globalization and its governance and the problems and contradictions of each approach. The analysis is always nuanced, sensitive to institutional differences, aware of hierarchies of power and different positions in global divisions of labour, and committed to the search for alternatives to the current structures of globalization and their consequences."

Bob Jessop, Lancaster University