The multilateral economic order is facing several major challenges, including the persistent impact of COVID-19 on global output and growth, the shift towards decoupling and fragmentation in economic relations with China, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the disruption of global value chains, and the rise of conservative populism. Together these challenge the principles of liberal internationalism and provide a clear illustration of the relationship between trade, finance, international institutions, and the difficulties governments face in coping with the problems generated by complex interdependence. This chapter explores past and emerging challenges in the Global Political Economy (GPE) through a range of theoretical lenses. It also pays attention to the significance of race, colonialism, gender, and the intersections of GPE with everyday life.
Chapter
1. The Study of Global Political Economy
John Ravenhill and Erin Hannah
Chapter
12. The Big Question: World Order or World Chaos?
This final chapter addresses a really big question: are international relations heading towards order or chaos? To answer this question, it interrogates the different IR theories presented in previous chapters. An initial section provides a conceptual map, based on a review of different understandings of the concept of world order. The chapter proceeds by discussing the effect of the rise of authoritarian power such as China, new challenges in established democracies, fragile states in the Global South, and the governance provided by international institutions. The chapter ends by arguing that the glass is at the same time half-full and half-empty: the world faces new and formidable challenges and we are very far from meeting current aspirations for world order; at the same time, global relations are much more ordered than they used to be just a few generations ago—and things are far better than many pessimists claim.
