Abstract
A methodological framework is analyzed for conceptualizing regions and regional orders, such as the Liberal Order, as complex adaptive systems (CAS), envisioning the global order as a “grand whole” with a collage of complex adaptive sub-wholes. Drawing on complexity and chaos theory, this conceptualization of regional systems assists researchers to devise models for managing complexity, turbulence, and uncertainty in world affairs and creating conditions that foster greater interdependence and interconnectedness between different regional systems, which ultimately encourages multi-level cooperation and multilateralism and creates resilient governance structures. The quest for “order out of chaos” must involve methods for addressing “complexity” as an agent of change: complexity is a blessing and a curse, it is one of the greatest parameters in any effort to manage uncertainty at any level of the global system. Complexity expands the conceptual and methodological frameworks of IR Theory to diffuse policies intra-, inter-, and trans-regionally to deal with tipping points and systemic shocks and to address problems of a transnational nature. The chapter concludes that the reinvention of the Liberal Order must involve an agenda of “wholism” in order to create adaptation mechanisms and complexity management schemes to deal with the problems of uncertainty and prediction.
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Notes
- 1.
Saroyan, W. (1953). The bicycle Ryder in Beverly hills (1st ed.). London: Faber & Faber.
- 2.
Even though Immanuel Wallerstein provides a spatial theory of core-periphery, his initial theory disregards the workings of cultural and ideational structuration in his “core-semi periphery-periphery” model as well as the impact of external events in internal and external relations and agent interactions that exist in his macro-mapping of the global capitalist system that serves as his main level of analysis, using the nation-state as its primary actor.
- 3.
It is a forthcoming publication.
- 4.
In Distant proximities: Dynamics beyond globalization (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003), “fragmegration” suggests “the pervasive interaction between fragmenting and integrating dynamics unfolding at every level of community…It captures in a single word the large degree to which these rhythms consist of localizing, decentralizing or fragmenting dynamics that are interactively and causally linked to globalizing, centralizing and integrating dynamics” (Rosenau 2003, p. 11).
- 5.
The Westphalian model, for example, is a status quo model that seeks to perpetuate the paradigm of “business-as-usual” in the global order.
- 6.
Hobbes rejects Aristotle’s view of men as naturally human beings and uses “the natural condition of mankind” or “warre as is of every man against every man” as the main parameter of an international system comprised of self-interested egoists that use violence in order to survive; in the same way Niccolo Machiavelli conceptualizes diplomacy and power in his oeuvres as the foundations of an “anarchical” international society without a higher authority than the nation-state with the power to regulate state behavior regarding matters of security, peace and war. See Book I of Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (New York: Penguin, 1981).
- 7.
This is a term coined by James N. Rosenau as a defining moment in time-space continuum to which Turbulence Theory can be applied.
- 8.
For more information, please read Pierre Simon De Laplace, A philosophical essay on probabilities (1902), trans. Frederick Wilson Truscott and Frederick Lincoln Emory (Whitefish, MT: Kissinger Publishing, 2010).
- 9.
I refer you to Karl Popper’s oeuvres: The open society and its enemies: Vol. I The age of Plato (1945) and The poverty of historicism (1957) and James N. Rosenau’s final book People count! Networked individuals in global politics (2008).
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Dr. Fulvio Attina for his collaboration, his help, and his friendship so as to make my participation in this book possible. Without his support, my participation in this book would not have been possible, so I am extremely grateful to him and the opportunity he offered to me so generously. I would also like to thank Niko Chtouris (Springer Nature) for his collaboration. I am very grateful to the Institute of International Relations Athens, its distinguished scholars and wonderful administrative staff and, in particular, to Dr. Harry Papasotiriou, for their continuous support and collaboration. Finally, I thank my parents and my friends for their love and support during difficult times.
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Charalampaki, E. (2021). A Fresh Outlook on Order-Disorder Transition: The Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) Perspective. In: Attinà, F. (eds) World Order Transition and the Atlantic Area. Global Power Shift. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63038-6_4
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