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Research Project

Undermining Hegemony. The US, China, Russia, and International Public Goods

Developments in the last fifteen years have driven renewed interest in hegemonic-stability and power-transition theory. The persistence of US-centered primacy during the 1990s produced new arguments for the stability of unipolar orders recent attention to the rise of China has made the dynamics of power transitions a central concern for work on grand strategy and interstate security.

Themes

  • Diplomacy
  • Foreign policy
  • Russia and Eurasia
  • Asia
  • North America
  • South and Central America
  • Governance
  • International organizations

A key question here, is whether states are status quo or revisionist powers. However, theorists of hegemonic orders pay surprising little attention to the power politics of international order itself, and the mechanisms behind a hollowing out of such orders. Our take on these widely discussed issues will therefore be a framework understanding the US, China, and Russia as engaged in a competition to provide public goods in exchange for support.

What is missing from traditional approaches and their views on public goods, is that rising powers have a much broader array of strategies at their disposal than either to challenge or assimilate the hegemon. There can be struggles to challenge the order in itself, without necessarily subduing to or directly challenging the hegemon as an actor. Rather than a direct challenge to the US as a hegemon, we contend that the US hegemonic order itself risks being hollowed out.

Although states may not always intend to hollow out liberal order, public-goods substitution often undermines its rules and norms. It does so with or without directly challenging the power-position of the hegemon. These questions do matter, because such developments are at the centre of contemporary theoretical and practical debates, from discussions over multipolarity, US power, and the rise of the BRICS countries, to Russias annexation of Crimea, and Russian and Chinese bids for the Arctic. The project will deliver empirical findings based on fieldwork and interviews in China, Russia, the United States, Iceland, Greenland, Kazakhstan, Brazil, and Colombia.

Project Manager

Iver B. Neumann
Former employee

Participants

Halvard Leira
Research Director, Research Professor
Benjamin de Carvalho
Research Professor
Morten Skumsrud Andersen
Senior Research Fellow, Head of the Research Group on Global Order and Diplomacy

Articles

News
News

Today’s Status Seekers

Hanging out with the cool guys is just as important as ever.

  • Diplomacy
  • Foreign policy
  • Governance
  • Historical IR
Bildet viser President Donald Trump og statsminister Erna Solberg

New publications

Publications
Publications
Scientific article

Moral authority and status in International Relations: Good states and the social dimension of status seeking

We develop scholarship on status in international politics by focusing on the social dimension of small and middle power status politics. This vantage opens a new window on the widely-discussed strategies social actors may use to maintain and enhance their status, showing how social creativity, mobility, and competition can all be system-supporting under some conditions. We extract lessons for other thorny issues in status research, notably questions concerning when, if ever, status is a good in itself; whether it must be a positional good; and how states measure it.

  • Diplomacy
  • Foreign policy
  • Historical IR
  • Diplomacy
  • Foreign policy
  • Historical IR
Publications
Publications
Scientific article

Political change and historical analogies

This article deals with how scholars, policy analysts and activists, striving to make sense of current political change, have turned to history for analogies and ideas for action. While it is encouraging to see the Trump presidency and other instances of upheaval leading to a strengthened interest in history, in academe and public life more generally, there nevertheless is a need to caution against facile appropriations of the historical record and the use of superficial similarity to legitimize political action. I discuss ways of historicizing the present, through some examples of historical analogies applied to the first months of the Trump presidency and other relatively current instances of change. I start with a discussion of historical analogies and concepts, stressing how they can be understood as both first order and second order constructs. Then I discuss the current usage of historical analogies and concepts as both first order and second order constructs, before I conclude.

  • Foreign policy
  • North America
  • Governance
  • Historical IR
  • Foreign policy
  • North America
  • Governance
  • Historical IR
Publications
Publications
Scientific article

Russiske nasjonalister vs vestvendte siden Den kalde krigens slutt

  • Europe
  • Russia and Eurasia
  • Governance
  • Europe
  • Russia and Eurasia
  • Governance
Publications
Publications
Scientific article

Hegemonic-Order Theory: A Field-Theoretic Account

This article outlines a field-theoretic variation of hegemonic-order theory — one inspired primarily by the work of Pierre Bourdieu. We argue that hegemony derives from the possession of a plurality of meta-capital in world politics; hegemons exercise “a power over other species of power, and particularly over their rate of exchange.” Recasting conventional hegemonic-order theories along these lines carries with it at least three advantages: it helps bridge the differences between realist and neo-Gramscian approaches to hegemony; it provides scaffolding for exploring the workings of hegemony and hegemonic ordering across different scales; and it better addresses the fact that hegemonic powers are enabled and constrained by international order itself. After reviewing some of the major variants of hegemonic-order theory, we explore Bourdieu’s understanding of hegemony and cognate concepts. We then elaborate on our field-theoretic approach, with examples drawn from US foreign relations and the Roman Empire. Finally, we provide a longer illustrative sketch in the form of a discussion of Roman ordering and its longue durée influence on social, political, and cultural fields in world politics.

Publications
Publications
Report

Undermining Hegemony? Building a Framework for Goods Substitution

The logics that we have outlined may, indeed, be applicable to a wide array of international actors and organizations that are aspiring to play public goods substitution roles. Likewise, they are applicable to a number of actors seeking alternative access to public goods. For example, supply and demand factors may help explain both the growing pains and potential power of the BRICS and recast debates about the role of alternative lenders in the developing world. Ultimately, our project is an appeal to think more precisely about the components of hegemonic order and the more hidden mechanisms that may contribute to its transformation or, in certain cases, enduring resilience.

  • Security policy
  • Diplomacy
  • International organizations
  • Security policy
  • Diplomacy
  • International organizations

Themes

  • Diplomacy
  • Foreign policy
  • Russia and Eurasia
  • Asia
  • North America
  • South and Central America
  • Governance
  • International organizations

Project Manager

Iver B. Neumann
Former employee

Participants

Halvard Leira
Research Director, Research Professor
Benjamin de Carvalho
Research Professor
Morten Skumsrud Andersen
Senior Research Fellow, Head of the Research Group on Global Order and Diplomacy