The World Order Lifecycle and World Power Competition

Abstract

The world has passed through the initial phase of implementation of the primary policies of the American world order and the following phase of delegitimation of such policies, the trade, finance and security policy. Though many states have been socialized to the policies of the American hegemony, the delegitimation of the American order has been growing because especially the trade and finance world policies have not been apt to face the demands of individual states and to respond to the problems of the whole system. The world is now in the transition process that will run across the coalition reconfiguration and macro-decision phase. In the current transition, three world powers, the United States, China and Russia, have potentials to lead the process by proposing the revision of the existing order and by assembling countries into the coalition able to build the new order. Transition is an open process to go through and to observe carefully. The revisionism of the three world powers is confirmed by the analysis while they are still unable to assemble the demands of large groups of states and build the coalition of the next world order. Keywords Hegemonic order • Order life cycle • Leadership • Revisionism • Coalition powerThe political order of the present world was created by the coalition of the Western countries after the two world wars over the ruins of the Great Britain-led order. Its effectiveness and legitimacy have been declining during the last thirty years of the past century. Today, the world order is going through a period of transition that is characterized by conflict and a growing number of clashes between the world powers. Predictably, such order transition will go through two phases. In the first one, each world power will push ahead her preferred world order project and organize the coalition of the countries determined to bring such project into being. Transition will be completed after the second phase, the macro-decision phase in which two

The Changing Policies of International Institutions: Human Mobility in the Mediterranean

“…Within the implementation phase, trade, finance, and security policy, were the three crucial policies which kicked off the liberal international order led by the US as the key actor in the current cycle. However other issues, as forced migration object of this chapter, and in particular the resettlement of refugees and the protection of labour migrants, turned to be discussed questions within the world public debate and entered into the political agenda of the world institutions, however not reaching since the beginning 'the stage of the multilateral policymaking' (Attinà 2021a).…”

“…The political order shaped by the US and the coalition of the Western countries soon after WWII, is experiencing life cycle changes, similar to the transformations that the world political system underwent in the past. By political order, it is meant, the whole set of outcomes of the rules and policies made by the world institutions to respond to collective problems (Attinà 2020(Attinà , 2021a.…”

“…And even within the field of International Relations, researchers have used several approaches to build knowledge on this contentious issue. 1 However, more contributions are needed to frame human mobility policies within the wider perspective of the world political system (Attinà 2021a). In this paper, I use the hegemonic school's description of this concept as: 'the system in which politics and policies are grounded on the legitimate world order that has been created by the coalition of countries that won the confrontation over the pre-existing delegitimated order' (Attinà 2021b: 4).…”