The Problem of International Order Revisited (original) (raw)
Related papers
Balancing Goliath? Multilateral Constraints, Restraint and Consent On the Use of US Power (2008)
While international relations scholars disagree as to whether the global system remains in an era of extended unipolarity or reemerging multipolarity, few would argue that the international system is not in a period of unprecedented transition. But the issue is not an eventual return to multipolarity, but how it might unfold, and how long it would take. Central to these questions is: first, how other powers perceive the considerable economic and military power of the United States during this transition; second, whether these actors are employing strategies of resistance or engagement to address American power, and finally if such constraints help or harm the promotion of a liberal, more democratic international order. This paper argues (1) that a range of multilateral strategies are being employed to both engage and resist, and (2) that because resistance strategies characterized as “soft balancing” do not fit a traditional balancing definition, serious challenges to American power are being underestimated, to the possible detriment of advancing a stable, liberal democratic international order. This leads to the conclusion that, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, soft balancing is not the end, or even the beginning of the end of the ‘unipolar moment’ of American hegemony. But it certainly looks like the end of the beginning.
The global distribution of power is changing. The consequences of this change are instabilities and uncertainties in world politics. The current constellation concerning the situation in the Ukraine serves as testimony that great power conflicts are – despite wishful thinking to the contrary – not yet only a thing of the distant past. How can the international society, how can the great powers, their differences and disagreements notwithstanding, prevent the escalation of conflicts and the outbreak of war? More generally, how can they work towards peaceful and constructive solutions for international security governance? A 21st Century Concert of Powers, a new great power based multilateral security institution, could be the timely answer. Based on the norms and practices of the 19th Century "European Concert" but avoiding its shortcomings, a 21st Century Concert, as imagined here, would work largely informally and constitute an effective forum for confidence building, consultation and common preparation of decisions. Given the already tightly institutionalized international order, it would not supersede but complement existing institutions, such as the United Nations. This Policy Paper is the product of a multi-year research project "The Post-Transatlantic Age: A Twenty-First Century Concert of Powers". The project has been conducted by more than 20 researchers from seven different countries. It is funded by the “Europe and Global Challenges” programme, launched by the European foundations Compagnia di San Paolo in Turin, Italy, Riksbankens Jubileumsfond in Stockholm, Sweden, and VolkswagenStiftung in Hanover, Germany.
Oxford University Press, 2020
When and why do powerful countries seek to enact major changes to international order, the broad set of rules that condition behavior in world politics? This question is particularly important today, as Donald Trump's apparent disregard for the liberal international order and uncertainty over what China might seek to replace it with mean that queries about great power motives vis-à-vis order will remain at the forefront of debates over the future of world politics. In seeking to explain this phenomenon, prior studies have focused on the consensus-driven and inclusive origins of international orders. By contrast, I argue in this book that the propelling motivation for great power order building at important historical junctures has most often been exclusionary, centered around combatting other actors rather than cooperatively engaging with them. My core contention is that dominant actors pursue fundamental changes to order only when they perceive a major new threat on the horizon, a threat to their security or to their enduring primacy. When these actors-the great powers of world politics-seek to enact fundamentally new order principles, they do so for the purpose of targeting this perceived threat, be it another powerful state, a contrary alliance or a foreboding ideological movement. The goal of order building, then, is weakening, opposing and above all excluding that threatening entity from amassing further influence in world politics. Far from falling outside the bounds of traditional statecraft, order building is, to paraphrase Clausewitz, the continuation of power politics by other means.
Telling Tales of Conformity and Mutual Interests: The Limits of a (Neo)liberal International Order.
2011
"International relations both as discipline and practice has come far over the years. Many theories have evolved, most of which attempt to solve specific problems that confront the world today. In recent times, and due perhaps to the perceived limited role of the state, a good deal of ink has been spilled over theories that promote ‘global governance’ as an alternative to ‘government’ which is only realizable at the domestic level. These (neo)liberal theories, as I call them, present the world as one in which states no longer posses as much power; a case where certain norms of conformity and mutual interest underlie relations among states and non-state actors. However, this paper contends that regardless of the rising role of transnational networks and global interdependencies, states (especially powerful ones) still have enough power to manipulate and even direct what happens in world affairs mostly at the disadvantage of less powerful states. The term ‘(neo)liberal’ is used in this paper in ways that many disciples of traditional IR theories will find problematic, or perhaps, a mischaracterization of the authors’ theoretical positions. Meanwhile, for analytical purposes the term will be adhered to in order to broadly elucidate the fundamental flaws in such theorizing. In so doing, I seek to show what I call the ‘practicality deficit’ in neoliberal theories, against the backdrop that the normative underpinnings or expectations of these theories are often not reflected in the day-to-day practices and processes in global and regional institutions. The European Union and the UN Global Compact will be used to shed light on the paper’s overarching argument. Keywords: Power, order, interdependence, cooperation, regime, norms"
History, theory, and international order: some lessons from the nineteenth century
Review of International Studies, 1997
International Relations scholars have drawn on history ever since the field first formed in the early twentieth century. They have trawled the beds of the past, far and near, to probe, substantiate, and analogize in the pursuit of theories about what have been taken to be the main pillars of contemporary international life: states and the institutions and systems that form around their interaction. Even if states as we now know them did not exist in a given period, one could still mine insights from the interaction of any relatively autonomous political units, from city-states to tribal bands. 1 It is therefore to be expected that when students of international relations want to describe a given historical epoch, it is usually in terms of the international system formed or the order produced by the interaction of states. For all the inroads into the field of the world-systems and critical theory approaches, the second half of the twentieth century is typically depicted as the Cold War period, not the period of the postwar consolidation of capitalism or of the emergence of a new form of (post)modernity. In International Relations, epochs are made by states, either wittingly in purposefully designed orderings of relations or unwittingly through the systemic structures (from unipolar to multipolar) that emerge out of patterns of state interaction moulded by disparities in resources and capabilities. 2 The challenges to this vision of history have stood out, if anything, as exceptions. 3 This way of thinking about history has been consistent with many of the field's leading schools and approaches, whether or not their practitioners have explicitly tackled the issue of what determines the broad character of a historical epoch. Structural realists can compare and contrast historical system types; regime analysts can identify the norms and institutions that shape a period's international relations; hegemonic stability theorists can find instances of the rise and fall of great powers;
The end of the Cold War altered the structure of the international world order. The bipolar structure that shaped the international agenda for more then fifty years was changed by the fact that only one superpower survived ushering in a unipolar age in modern international relations history. The power and primacy of the US was beyond doubt and Fukuyama was more than confident to announce 'the end of history as such.' According to Fukuyama, the end of the Cold War announced the beginning of the universalisation of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government, which was led by the US. 1 Furthermore, French foreign minister, Hubert Vedrine, describes the US as a hyperpower; a predominant country in all categories of power. 2 However, the end of 20 th and beginning of the 21 st century brought new challenges to international politics. New actors and new issues were shaping the international agenda and the unipolar world had been challenged by the global "nonpolar" reality.