Description
Why have modern international orders recurrently descended into disorder, despite ambitious and repeated attempts to bring order to international politics in the modern world? This article advances the argument that the problem of international order can be more fully explained and understood by appreciating the complex political sources of disorder beyond its traditional understanding as the presence or absence of constraints on the use of force. The article reviews the literature of the problem of international order, considering its insights, main assumptions and limitations, before offering an alternative more complex picture of the problem, refined into a theoretical framework. This alternative picture and theoretical framework in illustrated by revisiting the classic case of the decline of the interwar order. This argument for an alternative perspective on the problem of international order does not bring any new “solutions” to it, nor does it necessarily overturn some of the more pervasive ideas and assumptions in this literature, but it does qualify them, by contributing an arguably fuller understanding and theoretical framework for appreciating the political-structural sources of recurrent but dynamic international disorder.
