Challenges to the Global Order and Democracy: Crisis or Transformation?

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Session Description

The world is currently confronting multiple challenges at the same time, at both national and global scales. At the international level, it faces wars in Ukraine and Gaza, new geopolitical rivalries between the U.S. and China, the rise of middle powers in Asia, Latin America and Africa, climate change, the emergence of artificial intelligence, and the new dynamics of weaponized interdependence. Scholars of international relations have identified these developments as a central challenge to the future of the global order, arguing that the multilateral institutions that emerged during and after the Cold War have struggled to adjust to a world in which territorial conflict and superpower competition have returned, and in which environmental crises and emerging technologies create urgent problems that cannot be solved by individual countries alone. Scholars of comparative politics focus on the domestic foundations of the liberal order, identifying country-specific processes, such as democratic backsliding, autocratization, and renewed demands for nationalism and protectionism, that threaten democratic regimes and their implications for a world that had seen multiple waves of democratization since WWII.

What comparativists and international relations scholars share is the view that contemporary politics is in a moment of crisis. These crises are multiple, interconnected, span national boundaries and scales, and challenge the liberal world order and democratic politics: This “polycrisis” is said to be the defining feature of our time.

This roundtable discusses the usefulness of analyzing the current crises of the global liberal order through the lens of a crisis and proposes to instead conceptualize the current moment as one of a transformation of the global order. The discussion will begin with a reflection on the benefits and risks of conceptualizing the current state of the world as “polycrisis”. On the one hand, the concept of a “crisis” evokes a sense of urgency in the face of a threat and thus invites decisive action. It implies that the global liberal order is “out of equilibrium” and needs to be returned to a non-crisis state at some future point in time, At the same time, this conceptualization not only fails to appreciate that “crisis mode” may in fact be a new equilibrium state. It also invites the politics of exception, in which ordinary rules are suspended or bypassed to cope with the urgent problem at hand. Repeatedly declaring everything to be a crisis, however, threatens the rule of law that is the bedrock of democratic regimes and the current global order. As such short-term crisis solutions can create long-term problems: the constant invocation of crisis in and of itself may represent a threat for the future of democracy and the rules-based international order.

The roundtable will then discuss the suggestion to conceptualize the current state of the world as one of transformation. This conceptualization makes three important interventions into the current discourse in comparative and international relations. First, it implies that a return to a “normal” state of affairs is unlikely: the pressures facing the global order are likely to be permanent, not transitory. Second, it clarifies that a response to these challenges is not to “reverse” or “defeat” them, but rather to accommodate and adjust to them as the global order evolves in new directions. Third, conceptualizing current developments as transformations, rather than crises to be solved, raises awareness to the opportunities inherent in these developments, rather than just the challenges they bring.

Participants in this roundtable represent a wide range of perspectives on international relations and comparative politics, with expertise in multiple world regions and on issues ranging from security, multilateralism, and democracy, to the environment, trade, protectionism, and finance. As part of the roundtable, participants will demonstrate how adopting a perspective on “transformation” offers a novel perspective on the current challenges to the global political order and democratic politics. Roundtable participants will look not just at emerging risks, but also to the opportunities they bring, and will offer their thoughts on constructive ways forward.

Roundtable participants:

Sarah Bauerle Danzman, Indiana University, Bloomington
Mark Copelovitch, University of Wisconsin at Madison
Daniel Drezner, Tufts University
Daniel McDowell, Syracuse University
Thomas Pepinsky, Cornell University
Jeremy Wallace, Cornell University
Sarah Wallace Goodman, UC Irvine
Stefanie Walter, University of Zurich

Sub Unit

• Division 15: European Politics and Society

Cosponsor

• Theme Panel

Chair

• Thomas Pepinsky Cornell University

Presenters

• Stefanie Walter University of Zurich

• Sara Wallace Goodman University of California, Irvine

• Sarah Bauerle Danzman Indiana University

• Daniel W. Drezner Tufts University

• Mark Copelovitch University of Wisconsin, Madison

• Daniel McDowell Syracuse University

• Jeremy L. Wallace Johns Hopkins University