State, power and global order

Abstract

This article examines the evolution of international thought through the notion of ‘political space’. It focuses on two important domains of international politics, the nation-state and the global, to reflect on spatial categories in the discipline of International Relations (IR). Since its inception, the concept of the nation-state has dominated mainstream IR theory. Yet an investigation of how international order has been theorized over IR’s first century shows that this era has also been defined by globalist visions of political order. Nowadays, globalization is sometimes seen as the apex of the historical interplay of particularity and universality. The progression towards global political and economic order, however, is today undermined by the resurgence of state-centric political nationalism which seeks to challenge the legitimacy of the global political space. By examining how past international thinkers including Alfred Zimmern, Barbara Ward, Hans Morgenthau, E. H. Carr and John Herz, imagined and interpreted the relations of space and politics in the national and global spheres, this article suggests that spatial thinking offers an insightful approach for theorizing international relations. The article argues that the global and national spaces attain their political meanings through divisions as well as interactions and connections. The focus on divisions, exemplified in the writings of Barbara Ward, helps to make sense of the modus operandi of power in the national and global political spaces by investigating differences, tensions and instability.

The World Order Lifecycle and World Power Competition

“…In reality, the state has been increasingly facing problems that are rooted into a space wide than the state. Recently, Rosenboim (2019) remarked that about a century ago scientists and policy-makers signalled the insufficiency of state policies to overcome problems of a scale larger than the state scale. Since the second industrial revolution, for example, economic crises were issues overcoming the response capability of the single state.…”

The global order, regional integration and multiculturally diverse stakeholders

“…Today's world is politically, economically and technologically more complex than when the institutional pillars of the current order were founded in the 1940s and 1950s (Eilstrup-Sangiovanni and Hofmann, 2019). The global political space embodies an alternative account of modernity that challenges the idea that the territorial nation-state represents the final stage of human progress (Rosenboim, 2019). It was found on fundamental principles such as national sovereignty, economic liberalism and inclusive, rule-based multilateralism (Eilstrup-Sangiovanni and Hofmann, 2019).…”

“…It was found on fundamental principles such as national sovereignty, economic liberalism and inclusive, rule-based multilateralism (Eilstrup-Sangiovanni and Hofmann, 2019). The new global order was characterized by the extension of the American model of liberal democracy to the entire world (Rosenboim, 2019). It incorporates the concept of global governance, inter-states, international institutions, transnational networks and agencies, which function with variable effect and effectiveness to promote, regulate and manage the common affairs of humanity (Kacowicz, 2012).…”

International Relations: The Story So Far

“…The phrase 'the global imaginary' is at the heart of Or Rosenboim's article titled 'State, Power, and Global Order'; its theme is the growth of 'a political vision that encapsulated the world as a whole'. The article explores the issue, history and reality of 'how to see the world', tracing the development of thinking about 'political space' and reflecting on the discipline's 'spatial categories' 104 Rosenboim's account is of an expanding 'global imaginary'. Crucially, she argues that the nation-state model, once regarded as 'the new modernity', has been progressively challenged through the past century, and her historical analysis 'gives rise to doubts' about the teleological approach 'that conceptualises modernity in terms of statehood'.…”