World Order: The Return of the Rest

What are the key features of the emerging world order? Labels such as multipolar or liberal international order fail to convey the profound changes that are occurring today and their impact on relations among nations. Shifts in military and economic power balance, globalization, global governance, North-South relations and global responses to the recent conflicts in Europe, Middle East and East Asia, call for discarding these older notions. The concept of a Multiplex World Order – a decentered world with changing patterns of economic and ecological connectedness, best captures the global transformation and the future of world order most accurately.

Amitav Acharya is the UNESCO Chair in Transnational Challenges and Governance and Distinguished Professor at the School of International Service, American University, Washington, DC. Previously he was a Professor at York University, Toronto and the University of Bristol, U.K. He is currently Honorary Professor at Rhodes University, South Africa, and Guest Professor at Nankai University, China. He was the inaugural Boeing Company Chair in International Relations at the Schwarzman Scholars Program at Tsinghua University, Fellow of Harvard’s Asia Center and John F. Kennedy School of Government, and Christensen Fellow at Oxford. His books include Re-imagining International Relations (Cambridge 2022, with Barry Buzan), The Making of Global International Relations (Cambridge 2019: with Barry Buzan); Constructing Global Order (Cambridge 2018); The End of American World Order (Polity 2014, 2018); Why Govern? Rethinking Demand and Progress in Global Governance (editor, Cambridge 2016); The Making of Southeast Asia (Cornell 2013); and Whose Ideas Matter (Cornell 2009). His essays have appeared in International Organization, International Security, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Asian Studies, Foreign Affairs, Journal of Peace Research, International Affairs, Perspectives on Politics, and World Politics. He has written op-eds for Financial Times, International Herald Tribune (now International New York Times) Washington Post, Times of India, Australian Financial Review, and other newspapers around the world, and appeared on news media such as CNN International, BBC TV and BBC World Service Radio. He is the first non-Western scholar to be elected (for 2014-15) the President of the International Studies Association (ISA), the largest and most influential global network in international studies. He has received three ISA Distinguished Scholar Awards: in 2015 for his "contribution to non-Western IR theory and inclusion” in international studies, in 2018 for his “influence, intellectual works and mentorship” in the field of international organization; and in 2023 for his “extraordinary impact” in globalizing the study of International Relations and “mentorship of emerging scholars”. He is also a recipient of American University’s highest honor: Scholar-Teacher of the Year Award (2020).

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