Policy, Authority, Identity, and Change is the fruit of more than 20 years of productive cooperation by Yale H. Ferguson and Richard W. Mansbach. Several years before publishing Policies, in their previous book The Elusive Quest: Theory and International Politics, Ferguson and Mansbach had set out the need to demonstrate an alternative approach to the perception and interpretation of relations between different political communities, which served as the basis for this book. (Ferguson and Mansbach, 1988). This fourth collaborative book came to light as a reaction to the growing perceived disparity between academic knowledge of international relations (theory) and practice of international relations (reality), which international relations theory aims to explain. These well-known scholars question the structure of the Westphalian model of territorially bounded sovereign nation-states and share the view that the lack of a strong adversary has led to the continued supremacy of realism as a “grand theory.” This situation promoted the model of the world based on the traditional European tradition of power politics with particular attention to structural determinants and states as actors, which had many weaknesses. According to both authors, these flaws have had an erosive effect on academic knowledge of international relations. Therefore, both authors share a skeptical view on how essential contemporary issues in international relations could be presented in the light of realism. Their concern was focused on professionals and their worldview shaped by dominant theory: “It is no exaggeration to suggest that ordinary citizens who follow the daily news may have a better picture of the way the world actually works than the vast majority of IR theorists with blinders"... half of the paper ......homizing effectively widely divergent political systems with different political experiences. (McNeill, 1997). Works Cited Ferguson, Y. H. and Mansbach, R. W. (1996). Polities: Authority, identity and change. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.Ferguson, Y. H. and Mansbach, R. W. (1988) The Elusive Quest: International Theory and Politics Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. McNeill, W. H. (1997). buried too early. Mershon International Studies Review, vol. 41, no. 269-274 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The International Studies Association org/stable/222670 -Revilla, C. (2001). Politics: authority, identity and change. (Revision). American Political Science Review. URL: http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-73021487.html Access: 21/10/2013