Toward a Radical IR: Transformation, Praxis, and Critique in a (Neo)Liberal World Order

This article serves as the introduction to this Special Forum on Contested Statehood in a Contested International Order. The articles in this Special Forum (SF) are premised on the argument that the persistent ontological and epistemological contestations over the nature of such state-like polities are strongly intertwined with recent ontological and epistemological contestations of the broader international order. To introduce such an intellectual project, this paper sets out the themes that inform this SF’s analyses of the relationships between international order and contested states. I first pay heed to the manner in which existing scholarship has already studied the embeddedness of state contestation in their broader international environment. Subsequently, this paper acknowledges that the study of international order itself is becoming a rather saturated field of research, and it therefore refrains from adding too many thoughts about the nature, virtues, and vices of (the transformation of) international order per se. Instead, this paper’s final section will outline three broad “themes of contestation” that intersect between scholarship of contested statehood and international order and that broadly underpin the research contributions to this SF. These three themes revolve around violent and/or peaceful modes of international ordering, inclusive and/or exclusive modes of international ordering, and particularistic and/or universalistic modes of international ordering.

Contested Statehood in a Contested International Order: Furthering a Research Agenda

Knotter

2024

A World of Many Walks? Zapatista World Ordering between Center and Margins

Unrau

2024

At the current moment of multiple global crises, including of the International Liberal Order, a search for new practices of world ordering seems to coexist with a deep skepticism regarding the possibilities of global solidarity and common struggles between centers and margins. Against this background, this paper focuses on the world ordering practices of the Mexican Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, a group that occupies a position between center(s) and margin(s). While they clearly self-identify as being on the political and economic margins—geographically remote, economically weak and under constant threat of military repression—their ideas occupied center stage in the search for alternative visions of world order at least for a certain moment. The paper will explore the potential pathologies that a recourse to Zapatism may entail, namely romanticization, hollowing-out and epistemic extractivism/opportunism. It then asks if and how these pathologies can be overcome in a search for common ground for both social movements and International Political Theory when trying to think differently about world ordering from the margins. In this exploration, special emphasis will be given to the pathways toward a desirable order that the Zapatistas conceptualize and practice, namely creating, narrating and walking.

World Ordering from the Margins: An Introduction

Rinck,

Tripathi,

Unrau

et al. 2024

This Special Forum is an invitation to reconsider the analytical toolbox with which world order has been analyzed in the past. In this introductory article, we propose to focus on processes of world ordering from the margins as a contribution to research on world-order conceptions beyond the Liberal International Order. We examine world-ordering practices by a variety of actors, across the Global North and the Global South, including activists, political parties and actors beyond the state, whose activities are not typically perceived as world-ordering endeavors. Shifting the analytical focus to those at the margins of the world polity offers a better understanding of the plurality and contestations of contemporary world order and helps to (un-)cover critiques and possible alternatives to existing world orders that emerge from these groups, practices and discourses. In this introduction, we propose three perspectives to study and research world ordering from the margins: positionality, methodology, and strategy. We argue that examining world order from these perspectives leads to a nuanced picture of a multitude of positions of marginality, emanating from different experiences, perceptions and discourses, all of which matter for the respective world-ordering endeavors. Retrieving such alternative perspectives is paramount in view of multiple crises that current forms of world order seem unable to address.