Charting Global Futures: a Configurative Perspective on International Order

Abstract

What is the relationship between the decline of global governance (GG), the rise of a systemic conflict, the fading away of the liberal international order (LIO) and the increased pressure on international organizations (IO) under pressure? How do we relate these developments to hegemonic decline and the declining attractiveness of the liberal script? I aim to analyze the relationship of these often-conflated concepts with the NALFI framework. Applying the framework leads me to three substantial arguments. First, at the end of the 20th century, an LIO emerged, which was characterized by a GG system. This system carried the seeds of contestation and decline within it. Second, as a consequence, a systemic conflict similar to the one between the socialist and the liberal capitalist world in the second half of the 20th century seemed to emerge. In this constellation, the hegemon and its liberal-democratic allies aim to maintain the LIO against autocratic contestations and attacks. Third, the success of authoritarian forces within liberal democracies, including their rise to power—Modi, Orban, and Trump are only the best-known names standing for this development—has changed the situation again. We seem to be moving to a world in which a purely bilateral hegemonic conflict between the USA and China is embedded in a tripartite ideological structure with populist authoritarians, bureaucratic authoritarians, and liberal democracies as the major players. This most recent development may lead back to the 19th century when an ongoing power struggle led to a Concert with little underlying normativity.