Abstract
The book Plural International Relations in a Divided World by Stephen Chan is an attempt to analyse the historical and philosophical causes of disagreements, differences and dissonance between states under the Westphalian order of the modern nation-state system. The author argues that despite dissent, the plural international system has never been more under threat as it is today. In fact, new paradigms and theories in international relations have initiated a debate whether these relations are a domain of the Western ‘conceptualization and intellectual formation or alternative world views from the different parts of the world,’ (p. 72). Chan argues that different realities based on historical, political, security and cultural specifications offer thought-provoking schools of thought like Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan’s work on Non-Western International Relations Theory: Perspectives on and Beyond Asia.