The Co-Constitution of Order

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Marcos Tourinho
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
World Order ◽  
International Order ◽  
International Norms ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Future ◽  
Anglo American

Abstract The idea of liberal international order as a world order is understood to be constituted as a result of disproportionate Anglo-American influences. This is in line with much of international relations (IR) theory, which typically characterizes the emergence of order as resulting from the diffusion or imposition of norms and institutions from the world's centers of power. This article argues otherwise, its premise being that the international order founded on sovereign equal nation-states was co-constituted as well by the influence of relatively weak actors through decentralized processes of contestation over core international norms. Drawing on international relations, history, and law, this article outlines a framework to interpret the actions and mechanisms by which supposedly weak actors shaped international order. It concisely traces the constitution of order as based on its fundamental norms and assesses the implications of the argument for the current crisis of liberal order, as well as IR theory more broadly, laying out a research agenda for the future.

scholarly journals Let's talk about the interregnum: Gramsci and the crisis of the liberal world order

2020 ◽  
Vol 96 (3) ◽  
pp. 767-786 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milan Babic
Keyword(s):  
Research Agenda ◽  
World Order ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
International Order ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
Entry Points ◽  
Two Phases ◽  
Analytical Tools ◽  
Distinct Period ◽  
Changing World

Abstract The liberal international order (LIO) is in crisis. Numerous publications, debates and events have time and again made it clear that we are in the midst of a grand transformation of world order. While most contributions focus on either what is slowly dying (the LIO) or what might come next (China, multipolarity, chaos?), there is less analytical engagement with what lies in between those two phases of world order. Under the assumption that this period could last years or even decades, a set of analytical tools to understand this interregnum is urgently needed. This article proposes an analytical framework that builds on Gramscian concepts of crisis that will help us understand the current crisis of the LIO in a more systematic way. It addresses a gap in the literature on changing world order by elaborating three Gramsci-inspired crisis characteristics—processuality, organicity and morbidity—that sketch the current crisis landscape in a systematic way. Building on this framework, the article suggests different empirical entry points to the study of the crisis of the LIO and calls for a research agenda that takes this crisis seriously as a distinct period of changing world orders.

scholarly journals Investigating Multiple Citizenship in International Relations: Rethinking Globalisation, Nation-States and Social Contract

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
Hyunji Kang
Keyword(s):  
Literature Review ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
International System ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Global Population

Multiple citizenship was once thought to signify disloyalty to the nation-state and threaten the sovereign international system, hence considered an aberration that should be limited. However, International Relations is in the process of reconceptualising its approaches and moving away from state-centrism so that it may better address the challenges of a transnationalising world. Examining the concept of multiple citizenship provides an opportunity to expand IR research agendas and transnationalise IR theory. Employing a multidisciplinary literature review, this article identifies the possible ways through which investigating multiple citizenship can contribute in advancing the discipline’s theorisations. Firstly, it contends that an analytical focus on multiple citizenship enriches IR theory by re-examining concepts which have not been adequately questioned in traditional IR and enabling deterritorialisation of the sovereign nation-state, de-conflation of the nation from the state, and reconsideration of the relationship between citizens and nation-states. Secondly, multiple citizenship can serve a base for considerations about globalisation and the future of the nation-state; it can also be used to obtain glimpses into issues, which may affect larger portions of the global population in the future. This article concludes by arguing for more serious probe to the concept of multiple citizenship in IR.

The 1945 World Order – Process with «Open» Continuation

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 52-79
Author(s):  
V. T. Yungblud
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
World Order ◽  
International Order ◽  
International Terrorism ◽  
Bipolar Structure ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
The World ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Cold War

The Yalta-Potsdam system of international relations, established by culmination of World War II, was created to maintain the security and cooperation of states in the post-war world. Leaders of the Big Three, who ensured the Victory over the fascist-militarist bloc in 1945, made decisive contribution to its creation. This system cemented the world order during the Cold War years until the collapse of the USSR in 1991 and the destruction of the bipolar structure of the organization of international relations. Post-Cold War changes stimulated the search for new structures of the international order. Article purpose is to characterize circumstances of foundations formation of postwar world and to show how the historical decisions made by the leaders of the anti-Hitler coalition powers in 1945 are projected onto modern political processes. Study focuses on interrelated questions: what was the post-war world order and how integral it was? How did the political decisions of 1945 affect the origins of the Cold War? Does the American-centrist international order, that prevailed at the end of the 20th century, genetically linked to the Atlantic Charter and the goals of the anti- Hitler coalition in the war, have a future?Many elements of the Yalta-Potsdam system of international relations in the 1990s survived and proved their viability. The end of the Cold War and globalization created conditions for widespread democracy in the world. The liberal system of international relations, which expanded in the late XX - early XXI century, is currently experiencing a crisis. It will be necessary to strengthen existing international institutions that ensure stability and security, primarily to create barriers to the spread of national egoism, radicalism and international terrorism, for have a chance to continue the liberal principles based world order (not necessarily within a unipolar system). Prerequisite for promoting idea of a liberal system of international relations is the adjustment of liberalism as such, refusal to unilaterally impose its principles on peoples with a different set of values. This will also require that all main participants in modern in-ternational life be able to develop a unilateral agenda for common problems and interstate relations, interact in a dialogue mode, delving into the arguments of opponents and taking into account their vital interests.

scholarly journals Platonic metaphysics and the ontology of international relations: a sketch

2021 ◽  
pp. 004711782110214
Author(s):  
King-Ho Leung
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
World Order ◽  
Social World ◽  
Levels Of Analysis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
The Social ◽  
Human Individual

This article offers a reading of Plato in light of the recent debates concerning the unique ‘ontology’ of International Relations (IR) as an academic discipline. In particular, this article suggests that Plato’s metaphysical account of the integral connection between human individual, the domestic state and world order can offer IR an alternative outlook to the ‘political scientific’ schema of ‘levels of analysis’. This article argues that Plato’s metaphysical conception of world order can not only provide IR theory with a way to re-imagine the relation between the human, the state and world order. Moreover, Plato’s outlook can highlight or even call into question the post-metaphysical presuppositions of contemporary IR theory in its ‘borrowed ontology’ from modern social science, which can in turn facilitate IR’s re-interpretation of its own ‘ontology’ as well as its distinct contributions to the understanding of the various aspects of the social world and human life.

The Janus Face of the Liberal International Information Order: When Global Institutions Are Self-Undermining

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Henry Farrell ◽  
Abraham L. Newman
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Global Information ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Feedback Effects ◽  
Global Institutions ◽  
Information Order ◽  
Information Governance ◽  
Political Conditions

Abstract Scholars and policymakers long believed that norms of global information openness and private-sector governance helped to sustain and promote liberalism. These norms are being increasingly contested within liberal democracies. In this article, we argue that a key source of debate over the Liberal International Information Order (LIIO), a sub-order of the Liberal International Order (LIO), is generated internally by “self-undermining feedback effects,” that is, mechanisms through which institutional arrangements undermine their own political conditions of survival over time. Empirically, we demonstrate how global governance of the Internet, transnational disinformation campaigns, and domestic information governance interact to sow the seeds of this contention. In particular, illiberal states converted norms of openness into a vector of attack, unsettling political bargains in liberal states concerning the LIIO. More generally, we set out a broader research agenda to show how the international relations discipline might better understand institutional change as well as the informational aspects of the current crisis in the LIO.

The New World Order

2019 ◽  
pp. 137-148
Author(s):  
Martin S. Flaherty
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
New World ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
New World Order ◽  
The Bahamas ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Nation States

This chapter looks to the real “New World Order.” Conventionally, international relations as well as international law concentrated on the interactions of nation-states. On this model, the United States, China, Russia, the United Kingdom, Kenya, Mexico, and the Bahamas, for example, are principally the irreducible units. Recent thinking emphasizes that instead, international relations more and more consists of executive, legislative, and judicial officials directly reaching out to their foreign counterparts to share information, forge ongoing networks, coordinate cooperation, and construct new frameworks. The traditional nation-state has today become “disaggregated,” dealing with its peers less as monolithic sovereign states than through these more specialized “global networks.” Notably, the counterparts that officials of one state seek out in others tracks the divisions of separation of powers: executives to executives, judges to judges, legislators to legislators. How such transnational, interdepartmental networking affects each branch of government within a given state is another matter.

The Justification and Critique of Coercion as World Order Politics

2021 ◽  
pp. 489-500
Author(s):  
Christopher Daase ◽  
Nicole Deitelhoff
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
World Order ◽  
International Order ◽  
Physical Force ◽  
Coercive Measures ◽  
Economic Coercion ◽  
Normative Expectations

The present chapter turns from the justification of war (the use of force) to the justification of coercion. It proceeds on the assumption that to stabilize the current international order requires less ‘legitimate force’ and more ‘legitimate coercion’ since in most institutions the enforcement of norms—as the very basis of order—does not only or even primarily rely on physical force but on various forms of political and economic coercion. The chapter distinguishes various forms of coercion and reconstructs debates in International Law and International Relations with regard to their legality, legitimacy, and effectiveness. Doing so, Christopher Daase and Nicole Deitelhoff intend to broaden the debate on world order by redirecting the focus from the use of force to the use of less violent coercive measures. Specifically, the chapter introduces a concept of sanction as a means of communicating normative expectations to the normative community rather than executing punishments.

The Future of Order

2020 ◽  
pp. 228-244
Author(s):  
Kyle M. Lascurettes
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Order ◽  
First Century ◽  
Relative Power ◽  
The Future ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Near Term

Chapter 9 (“The Future of Order”) reviews the empirical findings of the book and discusses their implications for the study of international relations. It then leverages these findings to address the two most important questions for international order in the twenty-first century: In the near term, what changes to the existing liberal order will the United States advocate as it continues to decline in relative power? And in the long term, what is its projected hegemonic successor, China, likely to do with the existing order when it finds itself in a position to fundamentally recast its underlying principles?

scholarly journals Found in translation: the global constitution of the modern international order

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Jaakko Heiskanen
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
World Order ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
International Order ◽  
Global Political Economy ◽  
The Future ◽  
Historical Origins

Abstract This paper brings the notion of translation into dialogue with the growing literature on international hierarchies and the historical origins of the modern international order. Leveraging on the writings of Karl Marx, I draw parallels between the exchange of commodities and the translation of linguistic signs in order to unmask the inequalities and asymmetries that pervade the practice of translation. I then deploy these theoretical insights to illuminate the global constitution of the modern international order. In this Marx-inspired reading, the modern international order is cast as the ‘universal equivalent’ that has crystallized out of the asymmetries and contradictions that pervaded the global political economy of conceptual exchange in the long 19th century. As universal equivalent, the modern international order effectively functions as the socially recognized ‘metalanguage’ that undergirds the miracle of global translatability and makes international/interlingual relations possible on a global scale. The paper concludes by considering the implications of the analysis for the future of international/interlingual hierarchies and world order.

The Cultural Construction of International Relations: The Invention of the State of Nature. By Beate Jahn. New York: Palgrave, 2000. 182p. $65.00. The State and Identity Construction in International Relations. Edited by Sarah Owen Vandersluis. New York: St. Martin's, 2000. 207p. $69.95.

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (1) ◽  
pp. 266-267
Author(s):  
Cynthia Weber
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Cultural Construction ◽  
The State ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Social ◽  
Conceptual Debate

Conceptualizing the sovereign nation-state remains a core concern in the discipline of international relations (IR). Yet, as the volumes by Sarah Owen Vandersluis and Beate Jahn demonstrate, the theoretical location of this conceptual debate is shifting. Questions of identity, like those regarding sovereign nation-states, were answered in the 1990s with reference to terms like social construction. In the new millennium, “the social” is increasingly joined by “the cultural” as an intellectual marker of how serious IR scholars must pose questions of identity. Why this shift? And what difference does it make to our understandings of sovereign nation-states, not to mention IR theory more generally?

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