New Lines Institute: Emerging World Order After the Russia-Ukraine War, 2023
This essay looks specifically at how the Russia-Ukraine war affects
world order. Briefly put, my ... more This essay looks specifically at how the Russia-Ukraine war affects world order. Briefly put, my argument is that far from leading a revival of Western power and prestige, the war has hastened the end of the LIO and accelerated the transition to what I have called “a multiplex world.”2
The Making of Southeast Asia, Cornell University Press, 2013, 2013
Developing a framework to study "what makes a region," Amitav Acharya investigates the origins an... more Developing a framework to study "what makes a region," Amitav Acharya investigates the origins and evolution of Southeast Asian regionalism and international relations. He views the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) "from the bottom up" as not only a U.S.-inspired ally in the Cold War struggle against communism but also an organization that reflects indigenous traditions. Although Acharya deploys the notion of "imagined community" to examine the changes, especially since the Cold War, in the significance of ASEAN dealings for a regional identity, he insists that "imagination" is itself not a neutral but rather a culturally variable concept. The regional imagination in Southeast Asia imagines a community of nations different from NAFTA or NATO, the OAU, or the European Union.
Why Govern: Rethinking Demand and Progress in Global Governance Cambridge University Press, 2016, 2016
This volume has focused on the demand for global governance-especially what causes it and how and... more This volume has focused on the demand for global governance-especially what causes it and how and why demand-understood as having both utilitarian and social purposes-vary across time and issue areas. Using demand as the central analytic framework, we looked at the architecture, actors and progress of global governance, the latter in terms of the legitimacy, effi cacy and durability of its institutions and forms. Part I of the volume dealt with some of the broad questions of structure and agency in global governance from a historical and conceptual standpoint. Deudney's sweeping historical overview (Chapter 2) traces how the structure of global governance has shifted from vertical or hierarchical to more horizontal and local forms. In essence, he outlines the long-term devolution ("descent") of global governance from empires to individuals, and from globalism to localisms. Kahler (Chapter 3) examines the evolution and modifi cation of liberal norms as the basis of the postwar global governance architecture, and questions the tendency to view them exclusively in terms of the power and purpose of the United States. He then examines the challenge posed by the rising powers to the liberal international order and how that order might be sustained through a process of redefi nition and broadening to accommodate the rising powers. Hall (Chapter 4) questions the rationalist, functionalist and economistic determinants of the demand for global governance in favor of normative and social factors. Together, these chapters expand the conceptual framework for analyzing the evolution, current architecture and future direction of global governance.
Why Govern: Rethinking Demand and Progress in Global Governance , 2016
The system of international cooperation built after World War II around the UN is facing unpreced... more The system of international cooperation built after World War II around the UN is facing unprecedented challenges. Globalization has magnified the impact of security threats, human rights abuses, mass atrocities, climate change, refugee, trade and financial flows, pandemics and cyberspace traffic. No single nation, however powerful, can solve them on its own. International cooperation is necessary, yet difficult to build and sustain. Rising powers such as China, India, and Brazil seek greater leadership in international institutions, whose authority and legitimacy are also challenged by a growing number of civil society networks, private entities, and other non-state actors. Against this backdrop, what is the future of global governance? In this book, a group of the leading scholars in the field provide a detailed analysis of the challenges and opportunities facing global cooperation. The book offers a comprehensive and authoritative guide for scholars and practitioners interested in multilateralism and global order.
Amitav Acharya, “Ethnocentrism and Emancipatory IR Theory”, in Samantha Arnold and J. Marshall Bier, eds. Displacing Security, (Toronto: Centre for International and Security Studies, York University, 2000): 1-18., 2000
This is Amitav Acharya's earliest writing on non-Western IR (now Global IR), showing how and why ... more This is Amitav Acharya's earliest writing on non-Western IR (now Global IR), showing how and why IR theory and discipline suffers from Western dominance and needs to include more ideas and contributions from the Global South. Written in 1999 and published in 2000, it was well before this subject of became more fashionable in the 2000s.
The discipline called International Relations has seen endless contestations and compromises involving one school deconstructing, exposing, and seeking to overcome the imperfections, dominations, and exclusions of another. The early debates were known as 'inter-paradigmatic,' and pitted the Idealists against the Realists, the behaviouralists against classical approachists, and pluralists against structuralists. More recent debates have been less grandiose, but equally vicious: between neo-liberals and neorealists over relative gains; between rationalists and constructivists over identity and interests; between positivists and post-positivists on epistemology and ontology. Whatever the outcomes of these debates and their implications for IR theory-building, one thing is missing from the picture: a concern with the persisting ethnocentrism of the field and the willingness of theorists to deal with it beyond a most superficial sort of acknowledgement. The aim of this chapter, written from the perspective of someone who has become more interested in IR theory after overcoming a great deal of initial reluctance, is not to start a new debate, and certainly not another inter-paradigm debate. Rather, the chapter's intent is to underscore this critical flaw in the discipline, and urge on the view that the theoretical debates in IR should not just be about a 'search for thinking space,' but also about overcoming alienation.
This is Amitav Acharya's earliest writing on non-Western IR (now Global IR), showing how and why ... more This is Amitav Acharya's earliest writing on non-Western IR (now Global IR), showing how and why IR theory and discipline suffers from Western dominance and needs to include more ideas and contributions from the Global South. Written in 1999 and published in 2000, it was well before this subject of became more fashionable in the 2000s.
The discipline called International Relations has seen endless contestations and compromises involving one school deconstructing, exposing, and seeking to overcome the imperfections, dominations, and exclusions of another. The early debates were known as 'inter-paradigmatic,' and pitted the Idealists against the Realists, the behaviouralists against classical approachists, and pluralists against structuralists. More recent debates have been less grandiose, but equally vicious: between neo-liberals and neorealists over relative gains; between rationalists and constructivists over identity and interests; between positivists and post-positivists on epistemology and ontology. Whatever the outcomes of these debates and their implications for IR theory-building, one thing is missing from the picture: a concern with the persisting ethnocentrism of the field and the willingness of theorists to deal with it beyond a most superficial sort of acknowledgement. The aim of this chapter, written from the perspective of someone who has become more interested in IR theory after overcoming a great deal of initial reluctance, is not to start a new debate, and certainly not another inter-paradigm debate. Rather, the chapter's intent is to underscore this critical flaw in the discipline, and urge on the view that the theoretical debates in IR should not just be about a 'search for thinking space,' but also about overcoming alienation.
Discusses the state of strategic or security studies in Asia, with special focus on the relations... more Discusses the state of strategic or security studies in Asia, with special focus on the relationship between academic institutions, policy think-tanks and governments.
Before the Nation-State, Civilizations, World Orders, and the Origins of Global International Relations, 2023
The dominant perspectives on International Relations (IR) focus on the rise of the Western civili... more The dominant perspectives on International Relations (IR) focus on the rise of the Western civilization and the global expansion of the European Westphalian system as their starting point. This leads to a narrow Eurocentric understanding of IR that obscures the role and contribution of other civilizations to the evolution of world order. However, during the last 5000 years, many civilizations have risen, fallen, and survived. This essay focuses on five world orders that made their mark before the "rise of the West" or the advent of European colonialism around roughly the 16th century AD: Near Eastern, Indian, Chinese, Islamic, and Indian Oceanic. A study of classical civilizations and world orders can help IR scholars to more fully engage history and reshape the study of IR theories and concepts in several ways. It helps us to understand, and if necessary, challenge, the dominance of certain key ideas that claim to be universal and have been taken for granted as such. Moreover, studying IR from a historicalcivilizational perspective opens the door to understanding both material and ideational relationships among states and societies. It also encourages a shift in IR thinking from the conventional state-centric category of the "international system" to the broader framing of world order.
This article Introduces the concept of 'POWER WITHIN’.
The basic argument is that the future of... more This article Introduces the concept of 'POWER WITHIN’.
The basic argument is that the future of world order will depend not just on the distribution of power among nations, but more so on the distribution of power within them. Social hierarchies, including those based on race, gender, class and religious identity, hold the clue to the relative power and influence between nations in the 21st century. To capture this, this article in Foreign Affairs, part of a special issue on “What is Power?” proposes a new concept of power: “Power Within”.
The article elaborates the implications of domestic social hierarchies and social divisions for national prosperity, social stability and international power. Topics discussed are role of domestic power relations in shaping the world order, effect of income inequality, racial disparities, gender discrimination and religious restrictions on economic activity and efficiency, and importance of the internal distribution of power to building international relations. As such, “power within” adds a novel idea to the expanding notions of power, such as “hard power”, “soft power” and “smart power”, etc. It goes beyond the relations view of power that is commonplace in the academic and policy literature, focusing on relationships within, rather than between states.
... Politics and Economics of China's Economic Presence in Asia: A Preliminary Empirical Ass... more ... Politics and Economics of China's Economic Presence in Asia: A Preliminary Empirical Assessment 53 Ruobing Liang 4 India and China: Confidence Building through Crises 69 Swaran Singh 5 Indonesia-China Relations: The Politics of Reengagement 89 Rizal Sukma 6 Japan ...
Conceiving of the three psychosocial domains in these categories allows for an analytic approach ... more Conceiving of the three psychosocial domains in these categories allows for an analytic approach that can underpin efforts to measure human security in modes of early warning and evaluation. *Jennifer Leaning is Professor of International Health in the Department of Population and International Health, and Director of the Program on Humanitarian Crises and Human Rights, FrançoisXavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard University. What is ‘Human Security’? 355
New Lines Institute: Emerging World Order After the Russia-Ukraine War, 2023
This essay looks specifically at how the Russia-Ukraine war affects
world order. Briefly put, my ... more This essay looks specifically at how the Russia-Ukraine war affects world order. Briefly put, my argument is that far from leading a revival of Western power and prestige, the war has hastened the end of the LIO and accelerated the transition to what I have called “a multiplex world.”2
The Making of Southeast Asia, Cornell University Press, 2013, 2013
Developing a framework to study "what makes a region," Amitav Acharya investigates the origins an... more Developing a framework to study "what makes a region," Amitav Acharya investigates the origins and evolution of Southeast Asian regionalism and international relations. He views the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) "from the bottom up" as not only a U.S.-inspired ally in the Cold War struggle against communism but also an organization that reflects indigenous traditions. Although Acharya deploys the notion of "imagined community" to examine the changes, especially since the Cold War, in the significance of ASEAN dealings for a regional identity, he insists that "imagination" is itself not a neutral but rather a culturally variable concept. The regional imagination in Southeast Asia imagines a community of nations different from NAFTA or NATO, the OAU, or the European Union.
Why Govern: Rethinking Demand and Progress in Global Governance Cambridge University Press, 2016, 2016
This volume has focused on the demand for global governance-especially what causes it and how and... more This volume has focused on the demand for global governance-especially what causes it and how and why demand-understood as having both utilitarian and social purposes-vary across time and issue areas. Using demand as the central analytic framework, we looked at the architecture, actors and progress of global governance, the latter in terms of the legitimacy, effi cacy and durability of its institutions and forms. Part I of the volume dealt with some of the broad questions of structure and agency in global governance from a historical and conceptual standpoint. Deudney's sweeping historical overview (Chapter 2) traces how the structure of global governance has shifted from vertical or hierarchical to more horizontal and local forms. In essence, he outlines the long-term devolution ("descent") of global governance from empires to individuals, and from globalism to localisms. Kahler (Chapter 3) examines the evolution and modifi cation of liberal norms as the basis of the postwar global governance architecture, and questions the tendency to view them exclusively in terms of the power and purpose of the United States. He then examines the challenge posed by the rising powers to the liberal international order and how that order might be sustained through a process of redefi nition and broadening to accommodate the rising powers. Hall (Chapter 4) questions the rationalist, functionalist and economistic determinants of the demand for global governance in favor of normative and social factors. Together, these chapters expand the conceptual framework for analyzing the evolution, current architecture and future direction of global governance.
Why Govern: Rethinking Demand and Progress in Global Governance , 2016
The system of international cooperation built after World War II around the UN is facing unpreced... more The system of international cooperation built after World War II around the UN is facing unprecedented challenges. Globalization has magnified the impact of security threats, human rights abuses, mass atrocities, climate change, refugee, trade and financial flows, pandemics and cyberspace traffic. No single nation, however powerful, can solve them on its own. International cooperation is necessary, yet difficult to build and sustain. Rising powers such as China, India, and Brazil seek greater leadership in international institutions, whose authority and legitimacy are also challenged by a growing number of civil society networks, private entities, and other non-state actors. Against this backdrop, what is the future of global governance? In this book, a group of the leading scholars in the field provide a detailed analysis of the challenges and opportunities facing global cooperation. The book offers a comprehensive and authoritative guide for scholars and practitioners interested in multilateralism and global order.
Amitav Acharya, “Ethnocentrism and Emancipatory IR Theory”, in Samantha Arnold and J. Marshall Bier, eds. Displacing Security, (Toronto: Centre for International and Security Studies, York University, 2000): 1-18., 2000
This is Amitav Acharya's earliest writing on non-Western IR (now Global IR), showing how and why ... more This is Amitav Acharya's earliest writing on non-Western IR (now Global IR), showing how and why IR theory and discipline suffers from Western dominance and needs to include more ideas and contributions from the Global South. Written in 1999 and published in 2000, it was well before this subject of became more fashionable in the 2000s.
The discipline called International Relations has seen endless contestations and compromises involving one school deconstructing, exposing, and seeking to overcome the imperfections, dominations, and exclusions of another. The early debates were known as 'inter-paradigmatic,' and pitted the Idealists against the Realists, the behaviouralists against classical approachists, and pluralists against structuralists. More recent debates have been less grandiose, but equally vicious: between neo-liberals and neorealists over relative gains; between rationalists and constructivists over identity and interests; between positivists and post-positivists on epistemology and ontology. Whatever the outcomes of these debates and their implications for IR theory-building, one thing is missing from the picture: a concern with the persisting ethnocentrism of the field and the willingness of theorists to deal with it beyond a most superficial sort of acknowledgement. The aim of this chapter, written from the perspective of someone who has become more interested in IR theory after overcoming a great deal of initial reluctance, is not to start a new debate, and certainly not another inter-paradigm debate. Rather, the chapter's intent is to underscore this critical flaw in the discipline, and urge on the view that the theoretical debates in IR should not just be about a 'search for thinking space,' but also about overcoming alienation.
This is Amitav Acharya's earliest writing on non-Western IR (now Global IR), showing how and why ... more This is Amitav Acharya's earliest writing on non-Western IR (now Global IR), showing how and why IR theory and discipline suffers from Western dominance and needs to include more ideas and contributions from the Global South. Written in 1999 and published in 2000, it was well before this subject of became more fashionable in the 2000s.
The discipline called International Relations has seen endless contestations and compromises involving one school deconstructing, exposing, and seeking to overcome the imperfections, dominations, and exclusions of another. The early debates were known as 'inter-paradigmatic,' and pitted the Idealists against the Realists, the behaviouralists against classical approachists, and pluralists against structuralists. More recent debates have been less grandiose, but equally vicious: between neo-liberals and neorealists over relative gains; between rationalists and constructivists over identity and interests; between positivists and post-positivists on epistemology and ontology. Whatever the outcomes of these debates and their implications for IR theory-building, one thing is missing from the picture: a concern with the persisting ethnocentrism of the field and the willingness of theorists to deal with it beyond a most superficial sort of acknowledgement. The aim of this chapter, written from the perspective of someone who has become more interested in IR theory after overcoming a great deal of initial reluctance, is not to start a new debate, and certainly not another inter-paradigm debate. Rather, the chapter's intent is to underscore this critical flaw in the discipline, and urge on the view that the theoretical debates in IR should not just be about a 'search for thinking space,' but also about overcoming alienation.
Discusses the state of strategic or security studies in Asia, with special focus on the relations... more Discusses the state of strategic or security studies in Asia, with special focus on the relationship between academic institutions, policy think-tanks and governments.
Before the Nation-State, Civilizations, World Orders, and the Origins of Global International Relations, 2023
The dominant perspectives on International Relations (IR) focus on the rise of the Western civili... more The dominant perspectives on International Relations (IR) focus on the rise of the Western civilization and the global expansion of the European Westphalian system as their starting point. This leads to a narrow Eurocentric understanding of IR that obscures the role and contribution of other civilizations to the evolution of world order. However, during the last 5000 years, many civilizations have risen, fallen, and survived. This essay focuses on five world orders that made their mark before the "rise of the West" or the advent of European colonialism around roughly the 16th century AD: Near Eastern, Indian, Chinese, Islamic, and Indian Oceanic. A study of classical civilizations and world orders can help IR scholars to more fully engage history and reshape the study of IR theories and concepts in several ways. It helps us to understand, and if necessary, challenge, the dominance of certain key ideas that claim to be universal and have been taken for granted as such. Moreover, studying IR from a historicalcivilizational perspective opens the door to understanding both material and ideational relationships among states and societies. It also encourages a shift in IR thinking from the conventional state-centric category of the "international system" to the broader framing of world order.
This article Introduces the concept of 'POWER WITHIN’.
The basic argument is that the future of... more This article Introduces the concept of 'POWER WITHIN’.
The basic argument is that the future of world order will depend not just on the distribution of power among nations, but more so on the distribution of power within them. Social hierarchies, including those based on race, gender, class and religious identity, hold the clue to the relative power and influence between nations in the 21st century. To capture this, this article in Foreign Affairs, part of a special issue on “What is Power?” proposes a new concept of power: “Power Within”.
The article elaborates the implications of domestic social hierarchies and social divisions for national prosperity, social stability and international power. Topics discussed are role of domestic power relations in shaping the world order, effect of income inequality, racial disparities, gender discrimination and religious restrictions on economic activity and efficiency, and importance of the internal distribution of power to building international relations. As such, “power within” adds a novel idea to the expanding notions of power, such as “hard power”, “soft power” and “smart power”, etc. It goes beyond the relations view of power that is commonplace in the academic and policy literature, focusing on relationships within, rather than between states.
... Politics and Economics of China's Economic Presence in Asia: A Preliminary Empirical Ass... more ... Politics and Economics of China's Economic Presence in Asia: A Preliminary Empirical Assessment 53 Ruobing Liang 4 India and China: Confidence Building through Crises 69 Swaran Singh 5 Indonesia-China Relations: The Politics of Reengagement 89 Rizal Sukma 6 Japan ...
Conceiving of the three psychosocial domains in these categories allows for an analytic approach ... more Conceiving of the three psychosocial domains in these categories allows for an analytic approach that can underpin efforts to measure human security in modes of early warning and evaluation. *Jennifer Leaning is Professor of International Health in the Department of Population and International Health, and Director of the Program on Humanitarian Crises and Human Rights, FrançoisXavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard University. What is ‘Human Security’? 355
Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations, 2014
It is increasingly recognized that the literature on norms, like that of international relations ... more It is increasingly recognized that the literature on norms, like that of international relations more generally, neglects or obscures the voices and role of non-Western actors. Part of the reason has to do with its relatively narrow conceptualization of agency: who are the norm makers and how do they create and diffuse norms? This article, drawing on the author's previous work on the subject, calls for a broader understanding of what norm making means and who should be considered as norm entrepreneurs. It then examines the debates and outcomes of the Asian-African Conference in Bandung in 1955 to illustrate some if not all of the key points about the normative agency of the developing countries in the construction of the postwar security order.
CONTENTS Contributors vii Preface ix Introduction: The Normative Relevance of the Bandung Confere... more CONTENTS Contributors vii Preface ix Introduction: The Normative Relevance of the Bandung Conference for Contemporary Asian and International Order 1 Amitav Acharya and See Seng Tan Parti 1. The Bandung Conference and Southeast Asian Regionalism 19 Anthony ...
This essay adopts an international relations perspective in understanding Southeast Asia as a reg... more This essay adopts an international relations perspective in understanding Southeast Asia as a region and stresses regionalism as the chief agent in regional construction. It argues that the modern, post-Second World War concept of Southeast Asia resulted from a deliberate effort by a group of governments in the region to develop a regional identity based on political and strategic considerations. Regionalism and regional identity were seen by these governments as an important way of furthering nationalism and national interests. This, in effect represented a shift from the colonial, orientalist and geopolitical views of Southeast Asia's regionness to a more indigenous and essential political idea of Southeast Asia emerging out of the evolution of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). "Nations come and go - why shouldn't regions?" Don Emmerson (Emmerson, 1984:20)
International Relations and Asia’s Southern Tier, 2017
Critics write off the idea of “ASEAN centrality” in Asia’s regional architecture, and also the ve... more Critics write off the idea of “ASEAN centrality” in Asia’s regional architecture, and also the very survival of ASEAN as a regional community. ASEAN’s role is better described as the hub and the agenda-setter, a convening power with a normative leadership, not the leader of regional institutions. To revitalize itself, ASEAN should downsize in terms of issue areas. This does not mean removing itself from the SCS issue, but it should focus more on issues within Southeast Asia and its immediate environment. ASEAN’s marginalization—even death—from changing great power behavior has been predicted a few times before, and each time proven to be exaggerated. If ASEAN fails to adjust course now, it might not be so lucky this time. It needs a new agenda and organizational structure.
The writer and politician Mahmud al-MisÔÇÖadi is a figure of prime importance in the development ... more The writer and politician Mahmud al-MisÔÇÖadi is a figure of prime importance in the development of North African literature and cultural politics since the last war. This fascinating book covers both his essays and fiction, written between the 1930s and 1990s, which challenge the ...
This article examines the importance of regions in shaping world order. Reviewing two recent book... more This article examines the importance of regions in shaping world order. Reviewing two recent books that claim that the contemporary world order is an increasingly regionalized one, the author argues that regions matter to the extent they can be relatively autonomous entities. While both books accept that regions are social constructs, their answer to the question of who makes regions reflects a bias in favor of powerful actors. A regional understanding of world politics should pay more attention to and demonstrate how regions resist and socialize power—at both global and regional levels—rather than simply focusing on how powers construct regions. Power matters, but local responses to power, including strategies of exclusion, resistance, socialization, and binding, matter more in understanding how regions are socially constructed. The article elaborates on various types of responses to power from both state and societal actors in order to offer an inside-out, rather than outside-in, ...
Page 1. A Regional Security Community in Southeast Asia? AMITAV ACHARYA A great deal of uncertain... more Page 1. A Regional Security Community in Southeast Asia? AMITAV ACHARYA A great deal of uncertainty marks the security outlook for Southeast Asia. Optimists may point to at least four positive developments, such as the ...
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Books by Amitav Acharya
world order. Briefly put, my argument is that far from
leading a revival of Western power and prestige, the
war has hastened the end of the LIO and accelerated
the transition to what I have called “a multiplex world.”2
The discipline called International Relations has seen endless contestations and compromises involving one school deconstructing, exposing, and seeking to overcome the imperfections, dominations, and exclusions of another. The early debates were known as 'inter-paradigmatic,' and pitted the Idealists against the Realists, the behaviouralists against classical approachists, and pluralists against structuralists. More recent debates have been less grandiose, but equally vicious: between neo-liberals and neorealists over relative gains; between rationalists and constructivists over identity and interests; between positivists and post-positivists on epistemology and ontology. Whatever the outcomes of these debates and their implications for IR theory-building, one thing is missing from the picture: a concern with the persisting ethnocentrism of the field and the willingness of theorists to deal with it beyond a most superficial sort of acknowledgement. The aim of this chapter, written from the perspective of someone who has become more interested in IR theory after overcoming a great deal of initial reluctance, is not to start a new debate, and certainly not another inter-paradigm debate. Rather, the chapter's intent is to underscore this critical flaw in the discipline, and urge on the view that the theoretical debates in IR should not just be about a 'search for thinking space,' but also about overcoming alienation.
The discipline called International Relations has seen endless contestations and compromises involving one school deconstructing, exposing, and seeking to overcome the imperfections, dominations, and exclusions of another. The early debates were known as 'inter-paradigmatic,' and pitted the Idealists against the Realists, the behaviouralists against classical approachists, and pluralists against structuralists. More recent debates have been less grandiose, but equally vicious: between neo-liberals and neorealists over relative gains; between rationalists and constructivists over identity and interests; between positivists and post-positivists on epistemology and ontology. Whatever the outcomes of these debates and their implications for IR theory-building, one thing is missing from the picture: a concern with the persisting ethnocentrism of the field and the willingness of theorists to deal with it beyond a most superficial sort of acknowledgement. The aim of this chapter, written from the perspective of someone who has become more interested in IR theory after overcoming a great deal of initial reluctance, is not to start a new debate, and certainly not another inter-paradigm debate. Rather, the chapter's intent is to underscore this critical flaw in the discipline, and urge on the view that the theoretical debates in IR should not just be about a 'search for thinking space,' but also about overcoming alienation.
Papers by Amitav Acharya
The basic argument is that the future of world order will depend not just on the distribution of power among nations, but more so on the distribution of power within them. Social hierarchies, including those based on race, gender, class and religious identity, hold the clue to the relative power and influence between nations in the 21st century. To capture this, this article in Foreign Affairs, part of a special issue on “What is Power?” proposes a new concept of power: “Power Within”.
“Power within”, as Foreign Affairs editor Daniel Kurtz-Phelan notes, is “the underappreciated strength and influence that a country gains abroad from tackling exclusion and hierarchy at home.” https://www.foreignaffairs.com/issue-packages/2022-06-21/what-power
The article elaborates the implications of domestic social hierarchies and social divisions for national prosperity, social stability and international power. Topics discussed are role of domestic power relations in shaping the world order, effect of income inequality, racial disparities, gender discrimination and religious restrictions on economic activity and efficiency, and importance of the internal distribution of power to building international relations.
As such, “power within” adds a novel idea to the expanding notions of power, such as “hard power”, “soft power” and “smart power”, etc. It goes beyond the relations view of power that is commonplace in the academic and policy literature, focusing on relationships within, rather than between states.
world order. Briefly put, my argument is that far from
leading a revival of Western power and prestige, the
war has hastened the end of the LIO and accelerated
the transition to what I have called “a multiplex world.”2
The discipline called International Relations has seen endless contestations and compromises involving one school deconstructing, exposing, and seeking to overcome the imperfections, dominations, and exclusions of another. The early debates were known as 'inter-paradigmatic,' and pitted the Idealists against the Realists, the behaviouralists against classical approachists, and pluralists against structuralists. More recent debates have been less grandiose, but equally vicious: between neo-liberals and neorealists over relative gains; between rationalists and constructivists over identity and interests; between positivists and post-positivists on epistemology and ontology. Whatever the outcomes of these debates and their implications for IR theory-building, one thing is missing from the picture: a concern with the persisting ethnocentrism of the field and the willingness of theorists to deal with it beyond a most superficial sort of acknowledgement. The aim of this chapter, written from the perspective of someone who has become more interested in IR theory after overcoming a great deal of initial reluctance, is not to start a new debate, and certainly not another inter-paradigm debate. Rather, the chapter's intent is to underscore this critical flaw in the discipline, and urge on the view that the theoretical debates in IR should not just be about a 'search for thinking space,' but also about overcoming alienation.
The discipline called International Relations has seen endless contestations and compromises involving one school deconstructing, exposing, and seeking to overcome the imperfections, dominations, and exclusions of another. The early debates were known as 'inter-paradigmatic,' and pitted the Idealists against the Realists, the behaviouralists against classical approachists, and pluralists against structuralists. More recent debates have been less grandiose, but equally vicious: between neo-liberals and neorealists over relative gains; between rationalists and constructivists over identity and interests; between positivists and post-positivists on epistemology and ontology. Whatever the outcomes of these debates and their implications for IR theory-building, one thing is missing from the picture: a concern with the persisting ethnocentrism of the field and the willingness of theorists to deal with it beyond a most superficial sort of acknowledgement. The aim of this chapter, written from the perspective of someone who has become more interested in IR theory after overcoming a great deal of initial reluctance, is not to start a new debate, and certainly not another inter-paradigm debate. Rather, the chapter's intent is to underscore this critical flaw in the discipline, and urge on the view that the theoretical debates in IR should not just be about a 'search for thinking space,' but also about overcoming alienation.
The basic argument is that the future of world order will depend not just on the distribution of power among nations, but more so on the distribution of power within them. Social hierarchies, including those based on race, gender, class and religious identity, hold the clue to the relative power and influence between nations in the 21st century. To capture this, this article in Foreign Affairs, part of a special issue on “What is Power?” proposes a new concept of power: “Power Within”.
“Power within”, as Foreign Affairs editor Daniel Kurtz-Phelan notes, is “the underappreciated strength and influence that a country gains abroad from tackling exclusion and hierarchy at home.” https://www.foreignaffairs.com/issue-packages/2022-06-21/what-power
The article elaborates the implications of domestic social hierarchies and social divisions for national prosperity, social stability and international power. Topics discussed are role of domestic power relations in shaping the world order, effect of income inequality, racial disparities, gender discrimination and religious restrictions on economic activity and efficiency, and importance of the internal distribution of power to building international relations.
As such, “power within” adds a novel idea to the expanding notions of power, such as “hard power”, “soft power” and “smart power”, etc. It goes beyond the relations view of power that is commonplace in the academic and policy literature, focusing on relationships within, rather than between states.