This volume explores the Western-led liberal order that is claimed to be in crisis. Currently, the West appears less as a modernizing or civilizing entity leading the way and more as being engulfed in a deep crisis. Simultaneously, the West still appears to be needed in order to imagine the global order by promoters of liberal peace as well as its opponents. This book asks how and why “crisis” is needed for constituting “the West,” liberal, and global order and how these three are conjoined and reinvented. The book encompasses narratives endorsing and rejecting the West and the liberal international order, as well as alternative visions for a post-Western world conceived within the rising and challenging powers. The study is of interest to scholars and students of international relations, critical security studies, peace and conflict research, and social sciences in general.

The notion that we are experiencing a change in times, whereby an old global order is giving way to a new one, has been gaining legitimacy in international debates. As US power is waning, the argument goes, so is the set of liberal norms, rules and institutions around which the Unites States organised its global supremacy. Ideational contests, power shifts, regional fragmentation, and socio-economic turmoil paint a broad picture of complex and often inter-related challenges that fuel contestation of the liberal order, both as a normative project and as an emanation of US power. Major players – China and India, Europe and Russia, and the United States itself – are all engaged in a process of global repositioning, most notably in areas where the liberal project has only fragile roots and order is contested: Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, the Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. This volume aims to provide critical frames of reference for understanding whether geopolitical and ideational contestations will eventually bring the US-centred liberal order down or lead to a process of adjustment and transformation. The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue in The International Spectator.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. 21st-century liberalism is being contested on multiple fronts and by a wide range of actors. To understand these challengers, it is important to have a better grasp of their common target. This book introduces the "liberal script" as an analytical concept that allows us to analyze and problematize liberal thinking, as well as its different components and linkages and the tensions that they produce. What happens when the pursuit of market efficiency is incompatible with social justice? It is these tensions between the different components of the liberal script that are at the heart of the challenges against it. Different societies have resolved these tensions in different ways, leading to a variety of liberal subscripts and their contestations. The volume integrates theoretical and methodological perspectives from different disciplines, including political science, sociology, law, history, philosophy, post-colonial studies, and educational science. In demonstrating the theoretical and empirical added value of using the concept of "liberal script", the volume presents a multifaceted and nuanced picture of what is at stake in the challenges to liberalism in the early 21st century. This volume has emerged from research carried out as part of the Cluster of Excellence "Contestations of the Liberal Script - SCRIPTS", which analyzes the contemporary controversies about liberal ideas, institutions, and practices on the national and international level from a historical, global, and comparative perspective. It connects academic expertise in the social sciences and area studies and collaborates with research institutions in all world regions. Operating since 2019 and funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), SCRIPTS unites eight major Berlin-based research institutions: Freie Universität Berlin, the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB), the Hertie School, the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), the Berlin branch of the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA), the Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS), and the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO).

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. This book explores the deep contestations of the liberal script in the contemporary United States from a variety of perspectives. US democracy today is in crisis because of a profound ideological and affective polarization. The chapters in this volume show that Donald Trump's grip on the Republican Party is a symptom and a catalyst, but not the cause, of the contemporary contestations of the liberal script in the US. To discern their major drivers from a longue durée perspective, each chapter takes a step back and asks three main questions: (1) How can we best describe the current contestations of the liberal script in the US, exploring the extent to which the US is unique in comparison to other liberal democracies facing similar contestations? (2) What are the main drivers and root causes that explain the current contestations and the crisis of American democracy they may precipitate? (3) What are the likely consequences for the future of American democracy? The conclusions do not lead us to expect a return to "the norm" of internal contestations of the liberal script that are common in liberal democracies and have characterized the US throughout its history. Political, economic, and cultural polarization is by now deeply entrenched in American society and is eroding "mutual toleration" as the basis of American democracy. In other words, the resilience of US liberal democracy is at stake. It is unlikely that we will see the US liberal script bounce back in the near future. This volume has emerged from research carried out as part of the Cluster of Excellence "Contestations of the Liberal Script - SCRIPTS", which analyzes the contemporary controversies about liberal ideas, institutions, and practices on the national and international level from a historical, global, and comparative perspective. It connects academic expertise in the social sciences and area studies and collaborates with research institutions in all world regions. Operating since 2019 and funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), SCRIPTS unites eight major Berlin-based research institutions: Freie Universität Berlin, the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB), the Hertie School, the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), the Berlin branch of the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA), the Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS), and the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO).

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. It is free to read, download and share on Elgaronline.com. Building a thorough and comprehensive understanding of the limits of the international rules-based liberal order across a variety of issue areas, this topical book highlights how the discourse and values inherent in these long-established political arrangements are now facing a backlash, and how Europe is responding towards it.

Introduces an interpretation-contestation framework for comprehending the emergence, transformation, and legitimacy of international norms.

Examines the involvement of local actors in conflicts over global norms at the intersection between international relations and international law.

The study of international relations, has traditionally been dominated by Western ideas and practices, and marginalized the voice and experiences of the non-Western states and societies. As the world moves to a "post-Western" era, it is imperative that the field of IR acquires a more global meaning and relevance. Drawing together the work of renowned scholar Amitav Acharya and framed by a new introduction and conclusion written for the volume, this book exposes the narrow meaning currently attached to some of the key concepts and ideas in IR, and calls for alternative and broader understandings of them. The need for recasting the discipline has motivated and undergirded Acharya's own scholarship since his entry into the field over three decades ago. This book reflects his own engagement, quarrels and compromise and concludes with suggestions for new pathways to a Global IR- a forward-looking and inclusive enterprise that is reflective of the multiple and global heritage of IR in an changing and interconnected world. It is essential reading for anyone who is concerned about the history, development and future of international relations and international relations theory.

The age of Western hegemony is over. Whether or not America itself declines or thrives under President Trump's leadership, the post-war liberal international order underpinned by US military, economic and ideological primacy and supported by global institutions serving its power and purpose, is coming to an end. But what will take its place? A Chinese world order? A re-constituted form of American hegemony? A regionalized system of global cooperation, including major and emerging powers? In this updated and extended edition of his widely acclaimed book, Amitav Acharya offers an incisive answer to this fundamental question. While the US will remain a major force in world affairs, he argues that it has lost the ability to shape world order after its own interests and image. As a result, the US will be one of a number of anchors including emerging powers, regional forces, and a concert of the old and new powers shaping a new world order. Rejecting labels such as multipolar, apolar, or G-Zero, Acharya likens the emerging system to a multiplex theatre, offering a choice of plots (ideas), directors (power), and action (leadership) under one roof. Finally, he reflects on the policies that the US, emerging powers and regional actors must pursue to promote stability in this decentred but interdependent, multiplex world. Written by a leading scholar of the international relations of the non-Western world, and rising above partisan punditry, this book represents a major contribution to debates over the post-American era.

This book argues for the need to rethink governance through the lens of 'resilience as self-governance'. Building on complexity-thinking, it contends that in the context of change and complex life, challenges are most efficiently dealt with, at the source, 'locally', to make 'the global' more responsive and sustainable. Resilience as self-governance is advanced as an overriding framework to explore its constitutive elements - identity, ‘good life’, local coping strategies and support infrastructures - which, when mobilized, can turn communities into ‘peoplehood’ in the face of adversity. It is argued that these communities of relations, self-organised and self-aware of their worth, is what makes them so resilient to crises, and what helps them to transform with change; and how they should be governed today. Central Eurasia, spanning from Belarus in the west, to Azerbaijan in the south and Kyrgyzstan in the east, provides fertile grounds for exploring how resilience works in practice in times of complex change. By immersing into centuries-long traditions and philosophy, local experiences of survival, and visions for change, this book shows that governability at any level requires a substantive 'local' input to make 'the global' more enduring and resilient in a complex adaptive world. This book will be of great value to students and scholars in the fields of Politics including Eurasian politics and the various aspects of Governance. Most of the chapters in this book were published as a special issue of Cambridge Review of International Affairs.