Description
In a moment of profound global instability – marked by geopolitical upheaval, ecological crisis, and shifting moral and institutional orders – the question of how international society changes over time has renewed urgency. This panel explores moments when norms, practices, institutions, and balances of power shift, and equally how turning points interact with longer processes of continuity and transformation in international society. Each paper engages with a key theme in International Relations that gains renewed significance when considered through the panel’s focus on how temporal dynamics shape order, legitimacy, and change. Contributors consider whether today’s turbulence represents – or may come to represent – a decisive turning point in the evolution of international society, examining how revolutionary movements, the war in Ukraine, the resurgence of great power politics, and China’s “Community with a Shared Future for Mankind” civilisational vision are shaping the current historical predicament and its implications for the future of world order. Extending debates on temporality within the international society tradition, the panel advances relational and processual approaches that link historical conjunctures to longer trajectories of integration, disintegration, and legitimacy. Bringing together a diverse group of scholars of various backgrounds, genders, and career stages, it aims to foster an inclusive dialogue on how the meanings of global order emerge and evolve through time.
