Order Transition in a Hybrid Environment

Abstract

The previous chapter argued that international institutions and regimes are, largely, deadlocked due to great-power disagreements. This, in turn, revealed the lack of a political grand bargain among the key players. The key question this chapter poses is how the negotiation of order transition can be understood when viewed against the background of what has come to be known as the post-Westphalian environment (Linklater 1998; Rosenau 1990). Contrary to Clark’s (2005) exclusively state-based understanding of global order, the current environment also comprises global and transnational governance activities, embodied in the institutionalization of world politics surrounded by the suasion-based politics of TNAs. The chapter aims to contribute to an important broader debate into which the criticisms, raised here against Clark, have been embedded. Put briefly, the latter debate is about the degree to which patterns of global governance have reached “autonomy with respect to … states” (Börzel and Risse 2010; Cohen 2012:5). In order to illustrate this, TNAs, which have become an integral part of the policy processes shaped in regime complexes, have been selected to assess their impact on questions of order transition. The chapter will do so by framing the aforementioned question in the terms set by the governance-beyond- the-state literature and will thereby assess the strengths and weaknesses of their theoretical assumptions.