Badie - New Perspectives on the International Order: No Longer Alone in This World

Editorial Advisor

Miriam Perier

Center for International Studies (CERI)

Sciences Po

Paris, France

The Science Po Series in International Relations and Political Economy consists of works emanating from the foremost French researchers from Sciences Po, Paris. Sciences Po was founded in 1872 and is today one of the most prestigious universities for teaching and research in social sciences in France, recognized worldwide. This series focuses on the transformations of the international arena, in a world where the state, though its sovereignty is questioned, reinvents itself. The series explores the effects on international relations and the world economy of regionalization, globalization, and transnational flows at large. This evolution in world affairs sustains a variety of networks from the ideological to the criminal or terrorist. Besides the geopolitical transformations of the globalized planet, the new political economy of the world has a decided impact on its destiny as well, and this series hopes to uncover what that is.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14411

Cover illustration: Andrew Taylor/Flickr

This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer International Publishing AG part of Springer Nature

The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

The political science of international relations grew for the most part out of the euphoria following the victory over Nazism and its horrors in 1945. Its body of writing therefore developed around an apology of power and the quiet conviction that hegemony could be full of virtues. The dialogue that was established between realists and liberals was on its way to making history. The former deserved credit for grasping a world in which one had to be strong and cunning in order to survive. To the latter fell the role of recalling the importance of values that gave power a purpose. They were thus perfectly equipped with all the necessary concepts for entering the maze of budding bipolarity and the ensuing cold war.

Yet there was a double danger there. First, without the slightest criticism, these concepts had assumed enduring virtues that gradually made them unresponsive to history, without being aware of their Westphalian origins. It was as if they were endowed with a presumed immortality and an insensitivity to the changing context. Furthermore, they were imbued with a strange exhilarating property, forever reassuring those who had sufficient resources of power. The instruments effective capacity mattered little, as long as they were acquired in large numbers. The statistical illusion acted like a methodological drug. GNP was quantified, missiles were counted, questions were raised about divisions, military spending was measured and the resulting ranking was held to be as obvious as it was intangible, a kind of Bible of new science. The quantitativists had triumphed!

Consequently, few in the field of science or of action saw the change that was coming. No one had foreseen the fall of the Berlin Wall, at least not in the way it happened. But, even more, no one had thought that more change was in the offing, a more substantial, more decisive, more remarkable change because, this time, it was having an affect beyond the worlds configuration to its very dimensions, scope and identity. The Westphalian concept of the internationalwhich had thus far reigned supremewas a Western invention, the famous order that in fact was only comprised of a homogeneous group of states linked by the unity of time, the proximity of cultures, the similarity of economies, and the affiliation of social structures. Globalizationwhich still has not been defined with any precisionabruptly turned everything upside down, challenging everything, endorsing new actors, new cultures, new issues, new conflicts and, in so doing, made many of our categories outdated.

I am therefore suggesting that our old political science cannot survive without adapting to this conceptual tsunami. Whereas political actors would often rather not see a change whose implications could be too costly, it is crucial for political science to grasp that we are no longer alone in the world and to build the new alterity that is affecting our perception of the international, the nature of our difficulties and the actors involved, and perhaps also our reading of history. Wars can no longer be won in a new Battle of the Marne, conflicts are no longer settled through deliberation by the European Concert, and choices are no longer made only on the basis of Western visions. For that reason, the French edition of this book is entitled Nous ne sommes plus seuls au monde (We are no longer alone in the world) . The realization verges on the nightmarish for many analysts and for those in power, but these considerations are full of common sense and are aimed at re-examining our old political science. It is my great pleasure to present this rather atypical book to English-speaking readers. The task is so complex that it could clearly not be accomplished without thinking outside the box.