Who is the author of the book 'The Decline of American Power'?

Question

Accepted Answer

The correct option is 2:

**Detailed explanation of why it is correct — include conceptual, or contextual depth:**

The correct author is **Immanuel Wallerstein**. The book, properly titled *The Decline of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World*, was published in 2003. Wallerstein, a highly influential American sociologist and world-systems theorist, used his established conceptual framework—the world-system theory—to analyze the geopolitical shifts occurring in the post-Cold War era. He argues in the book that the United States, as the sole global hegemon following the collapse of the Soviet Union, was already experiencing a systemic decline in its economic, political, and cultural power. This decline, according to Wallerstein's cyclical perspective on world history, is an inevitable fate for all hegemonic powers within the capitalist world-economy. He asserted that the U.S. decline was driven by internal factors (such as deficits and internal political gridlock) and external factors (such as the rise of other centers of power and global popular resistance), leading toward a chaotic, multipolar transition period.

The incorrect option is 1:

**Detailed explanation of why it is incorrect — include conceptual, or contextual depth:**

**Roland Robertson** is a prominent British sociologist widely known for his significant contributions to the study of globalization. He is best known for pioneering the concept of "glocalization," which describes the simultaneous occurrence of both universalizing and particularizing tendencies in contemporary social, political, and economic life. His major works include *Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture* and *Globalization: Critical Concepts in Sociology*. While Robertson’s work deals heavily with the transformation of the global order, his focus remains primarily on the interplay of the global and the local, rather than a specific political theory dedicated to the decline of U.S. geopolitical power, making him unrelated to the authorship of the specified book.

The incorrect option is 3:

**Detailed explanation of why it is incorrect — include conceptual, or contextual depth:**

**Joseph Schumpeter** was an influential Austrian-born political economist who lived primarily in the 20th century. Schumpeter is most famous for his concept of "creative destruction," which describes the process by which new goods, production methods, and markets constantly revolutionize the economic structure from within, destroying old ones and creating new ones. His classic work, *Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy* (1942), critically examined the future of capitalism, arguing that its ultimate demise would be due to its own success, not its failures. Although Schumpeter's work involves grand theories of economic and political change, his intellectual contributions predate the book in question and focus on the dynamics of capitalism and democracy, not the political analysis of American decline in the early 21st century.

The incorrect option is 4:

**Detailed explanation of why it is incorrect — include conceptual, or contextual depth:**

**Milton Friedman** (1912–2006) was a Nobel Prize-winning American economist and a key figure in the Chicago school of economics. Friedman was a fierce advocate of free markets and minimal government intervention, and he is primarily associated with monetarism. His widely known works, such as *Capitalism and Freedom* and *Free to Choose*, shaped conservative thought and influenced global economic policies, especially in the 1980s. While Friedman’s theories are central to understanding the economic rise and maintenance of U.S. global influence during the Cold War era, his work is focused on economic policy and liberty rather than the sociological and geopolitical decline narrative presented in the book *The Decline of American Power*.