The Enduring Relevance of James N. Rosenau in Navigating Complexity in Policy and Politics

In the 21st century, there is a pressing need for “fragmegrative” policy frameworks designed to tackle technical issues and cross-boundary challenges in a multilevel manner that incorporates deliberately the parameter of complexity in their designs as the underlying agent of change. The parameter of complexity holds everything together but also generates those pressure points the control of which fosters emergence, hence, adaptability to change. Policy, thus, needs to take into consideration the continuous emergence of “multiplicity” processes that require the cooperation and coordination of multi-nature agents; the “multiplexity” of their connections and interactions; and the dynamism that those processes induce via complex networks across levels into the global order. All this is not “novel” however. Complexity science bridges the gap between positivism and post-positivism in International Relations (IR) and allows for the “transformationalist” approach to devise policy that harnesses the merits of the Westphalian system and, at the same time, advances change in the global system and challenges the traditional status quo beyond the nation-state construct. In this state of sovereignty ambivalence, pervasive digitization, and the rise of postanthropocentric IR, policy “along the domestic-foreign frontier” and “the study of political adaptation” “on the cutting edge of globalization” prescribes for “transnational competence,” meaning “empowering curriculums for horizon-rising challenges,” in order to understand and manage “turbulence in world politics” with “a theory of change and continuity” that, in the era of “postinternationalism,” acknowledges “distant proximities: dynamics beyond globalization” and remarks: “people count!” The enduring relevance of James N. Rosenau in applying complexity science to policy process frameworks, especially in the field of foreign policy analysis (FPA), is indisputable. Any serious interdisciplinary study and application of complexity science in the field of IR ought to rediscover the pioneering research on “complexity as an agent” and “complexity as process” in the work of James N. Rosenau. In his work, he lays the foundations for forward-looking, multilevel conceptualization of the dynamics of continuity, change and uncertainty in a turbulent and highly interconnected world system with the novelty and optimism that complexity science, if applied correctly, hides. This paper, thus, rediscovers how James N. Rosenau used complexity science in his Turbulence Theory and “fragmegration” propositions and provides a methodological mapping that the author of this paper has already used numerous times in her work with complexity science. James N. Rosenau’s work assists theorists and policymakers to (re)design more sustainable, adaptive and cooperative governance structures that operate at the intersection of the domestic-foreign frontier and employ a bottom-up approach, challenging traditional hegemonic narratives and hierarchical structures, that celebrates, according to many theorists, the most important unit of analysis in IR: the “individuals” with their social interactions, organization and institutions. Let’s rediscover the work of one of the pioneers in IR Theory and FPA who employed successfully complexity science in combination with sociology in order to advance theory and research in the fields of IR and globalization studies.