The end of the cold war facilitated a (necessary and broad) change of perspectives on world politics, shifting the attention of IR theorists away from the structure-induced and war-prone anarchy. Today, however, the subsequent focus on global governance has come under immense strain. Both rising China and the US superpower, increasingly discontent with the constraints imposed by new governance mechanisms and China, have exposed the limits to the preferred post-cold war modes of governance. The paper argues that only by shifting the focus of analytical frameworks away from institutionalist theories (ironically, as suggested by Keohane [2012]) and towards theories that capture the concept of order and its underlying (contested) notions of systemic legitimacy (including material power structures) theorists may usefully engage with current developments in world politics.
More precisely, Ian Clark’s and Robert Gilpin’s complementary accounts, both combining material and ideational aspects, serve as two theoretical starting points. The former explains the elements that shape the politics of legitimacy, referring to the dynamic interplay between the notions of legality, morality, constitutionality and balance of power, while the latter provides the key patterns that need to be renegotiated during order transition (e.g. rules concerning the economic and security-related aspects of an order, its underlying worldview, the special rights great powers are endowed with, agreement on key spheres of influence and on the overall balance of power). While this helps immensely to adopt an overall more accurate perspective on the topic, Clark’s valuable theory in particular contains three weaknesses. Addressing these variables, i.e. ‘common culture’ and lack thereof, the post-Westphalian setting in an era of resurgent great-power politics, and effectiveness, then helps to provide a revised model that can account for the current challenges to systemic legitimacy more fully.
Methodologically, the paper is based on a pragmatist approach (Hellmann 2009, Katzenstein/Sil 2008).
