What have the recent scandal surrounding Edward Snowden’s revelations on the NSA, Russia`s prevalent discourse on “sovereign democracy”, and the newborn independence of South Sudan have in common? What links the G-20, China's rise over the last decade, and even helping the elderly across the street in any country? Underlying these seemingly disconnected issues are different understandings of world order. Indeed, from the debates over primary actors to the scope of themes of world order, these examples reveal the oscillating debate on the continuum from a realist, state and power centered order, to a (post-) modern multi-level, multi-actor governance.
In this paper, I argue that this debates ignore a more pressing issue, namely that existent conceptualizations of world order fail to take different stages of regional development, as well as local historical and cultural context into account. More specifically, while parts of the world have and are disaggregating the state in order to open up chancels of vertical and horizontal cooperation, others are forcefully undergoing the efforts of aggregating the state, particularly Russia in this case. Still others, are neither aggregating the state nor disaggregating vertically or giving sovereignty to a higher entity, but actually unwillingly losing it downward, to their security agencies; as is the case of the US. In order to make my case, I undertake a critical examination of prevailing models of world order, covering from classical realist accounts to the more recent governmentality literature.
The findings of this paper cast doubt on the dominant literature of world order, particularly that which is focusing on a uniform model of world order. A concept of world order is possible, yet, the desire for parsimony and homogeneity wrongly conceals the plurality of developments worldwide.
