In the shadow of the end of the “noughties” and the transition to decade number 2 of the new millenium (is it still new enough to warrant such a title?) prognostications abound regarding what lies ahead in the realm of international relations and world politics. Are we heading for a world of decreasing order and increasing anarchy – a descent into what Randall Schweller refers to as entropy? In this reading, the number and complexity of issues facing the system of states is increasing, leading to “[a] world subsumed by the inexorable forces of randomness, tipped off its axis, swirling in a cloud of information overload.” Schweller’s neoclassical realist take is is coloured by more than a tinge of realist angst at the unwillingness of a messy world to conform to the dictates of structural imperatives – why can’t those damn states just recognize the importance of their position and relative power and act accordingly! But does he hit the nail on the head in asserting that chaos is increasingly replacing order, uncertainty replacing order?
Dan Drezner at Foreign Policy thinks not, preferring to place the increasing interdependence in the international system under the rubric of increased complexity rather than a descent into anarchy – a complexity that can still be managed and that states have the capacity to respond to via the creation of new (or modification of existing) institutions.
Tim Garton Ash at the Guardian is more optimistic still, asserting the need for a meshing of optimism and pragmatism, or what he refers to as realistic idealism, in order to address the challenges of a increasingly complex and complicated international system. Power and authority have diffused (are diffusing), both horizontally (from North and West to South and East) and vertically (upwards from states to international organizations and suprastate entities such as the EU, downwards from states to regions, provinces/states, and cities) leading to sets of overlapping and shifting networks where once simple state alliances used to exist.
What this means for the governance of global issues such as climate change, world trade, poverty reduction, global health pandemics, international terrorism, worker migration, and sex trafficking (among a host of others) is unclear. This is especially so considering the rigidity of existing institutions and the difficulty in sorting out the place and role of emerging networks and actors (where do cities fit into the global governance framework? they are working hard to try to carve out a space but there is a lack of clarity as to how and where they will be included, or whether they will operate in parallel or in partnership with the formal state institutions that currently exist).
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