Regime as local order

Conventional approaches to regime analysis typically rely on categorical distinctions and are framed by statist and normative assumptions. Consequently, they remain ill-equipped to capture the bottom-up social and spatial complexities through which political order is actually constituted. This chapter advances an assemblage-inspired reconceptualisation of the regime as a form of local order, produced through the co-functioning of heterogeneous social, biological, technological, and other elements within provisional wholes. Such a perspective addresses the persistent limitations of conventional regime analysis by foregrounding the dispersed character of regime dynamics and the emergent socio-spatial relationalities that take shape in the shadow of fragmented globalism. We develop this argument through the Chinese context, where diverse modes of local order emerge and co-function within the spatial strategies of state power, generating a new modality of infrastructural power that underpins the dynamic stability of the overarching Party-state system.