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Andrew Walter's important book explains how neither Britain, nor the U.S.--purported hegemons during different times of history--could ever dictate their policy choices. Instead, they relied on cooperation, manipulation, and exchange of favors to accomplish as much as they could realistically desire. Walter argues that by some measures of economic and political power, Britain could not truly be called a hegemon, even at the height of its power in the 19th century.
The hegemonic stability theory, which is brilliantly undermined in this book, is the International Relation's version of game theoretic ideas, first developed by mathematicians and elaborated on by economists. This is essentially the prisoner's dilemma, mutated into public goods and then applied to International Relations. In a situation where valuable benefits have to be available to all, it makes no sense to contribute to them, because you cannot be excluded anyway. Just like in the prisoner's dilemma, the rational choice is to defect. Based on this reasoning, some IR scholars argued that an enforcer is necessary to make countries cooperate for the common good, just as within countries we have a government that forces us to pay taxes and to obey many rules designed to attain and maintain the common good. Then, the reasoning goes, since it makes sense to defect, but the countries often cooperate, this must be due to the presence of a hegemon (enforcer) that makes them to. A search for a hegemon begins, and the usual suspects surface. Well, based on historical facts, Walter argues that Britain and the U.S. could never impose their priorities, and cooperation was more due to the trading of favors than hegemonic enforcement.
I was a student of the author's in the mid 1990s, when I was in grad school, and he was a visiting professor at USC. This book got him tenure at Oxford, and I think he has since moved on to become an Associate Professor at the London School of Economics. I remember his as a first-rate teacher. He wrote many article for prestigious scholarly journals, but I did not hear of any more books. Give us another book, Andrew.

Walter's text is already becoming a classic in the International Political Economy cannon. The book traces and comments upon the evolution of the international monetary system from its roots in the 17th and 18th century, through the gold standard, Bretton Woods regime, to the current semi-floating exchange system. Walter specifically addresses Hegemonic Stability Theory, which argues that stability in the internaitonal monetary system requires an overwhelmingly strong nation to support it.

For anyone interested in how international politics and the monetary system are related, the book provides a fascinating narrative as well as a clear explanation of the basics of nature of money.