Theorizing Global Order: A Brief Introduction
Gunther Hellmann
Theorizing international relations presupposes a conception of what the subject matter and its bounds are. We have to have some idea of the entity at the center of our theorizing-the 'international' and/or the 'global'; 'relations', 'systems' 'structure(s)' and/or 'order', just to name a few. Of course, political orders have been at the center of political theory since antiquity. However, compared to efforts at theorizing 'international relations' or 'international systems', the notion of international and/ or global 'order' has remained surprisingly undertheorized, exceptions not-withstanding.
This volume offers different contemporary perspectives on theorizing global order. It is the result of a lecture series organized by the Frankfurt 'Center of Excellence' 'Formation of Normative Orders'. The aim of the lecture series (and the chapters in this volume) was not to offer 'a new theory' (or, for that matter, 'alternative theories') of international or global order. Rather, by shedding novel light at different dimensions of ordering international (and global) politics-both in terms of alternative ordering perspectives and alternative ordering arrangements-the volume as a whole aims at taking the double meaning of order(ing) as "fact" and "value" seriously.
From a conceptual history point of view the notion of order has always carried the dual meaning of order as (more or less arbitrary) arrangement (Greek táxis) and order as natural and nurtured whole (kósmos). In modern forms of IR theorizing this dual semantic has lived on in Realist (presumably purely analytical) notions of order 'in' (or 'under') 'anarchy' and more or less explicitly normative forms of theorizing reaching from constitutional or societal notions of international order to all-encompassing notions of a juridically stabilized imperial capitalist order or discursively shaped orders of truth and power in the form of practices and techniques of government extending well beyond the nation state.
One of the underlying assumptions of this volume is that the theorization of 'order' entails an ordering semantic where the dual meanings of order(ing) as 'fact' and 'value' (or: of táxis and kósmos) are inseparably embedded even if analytical or normative dimensions may play a bigger (or lesser) role depending on epistemological preferences. This semantic of order(ing) guides our ways of theorizing order in different forms. First, 'factually' it shapes our ways of describing (or: making sense of) ordering arrangements (ie. how things belonging to the realm of the international are to be named and how they hang together). To order thought about the international in terms of 'system' versus 'state' versus 'the individual' may come naturally to the IR theorist trained (in Wittgenstein's sense ) to internalize a certain language game about the fundamental arrangements of 'world order'. Yet this type of "'levels' thinking" may be quite problematic from other perspectives. 'Normatively" the semantic of order(ing) also shapes our ways of prescribing how the structures, practices and arrangements in the international realm should be distinguished and how they should hang together when we conceive of orders in terms of their 'building'.
Second, the semantic of order(ing) also entails a temporal dimension in that it may either emphasize static or ahistorical 'structural' aspects in contrast to dynamic, eventsbased or historical 'processual' aspects of becoming. Theorizing order as structure tends to emphasize stability and inevitability, theorizing order(ing) as practice focuses on patterns of intentional steering as well as (intentional and unintentional) interactional outcomes. Being aware of these dimensions of theorizing international or global order(ing) is crucial, especially in times when prevailing conceptions of order (or "systemic totality" ) are turned upside down. The contributions to this volume