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Global Power Shifts, Diversity, and Hierarchy in International Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 June 2019

Inderjeet Parmar
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Abstract

Liberal internationalism is under the microscope as never before as it faces a world experiencing turbulence and anxiety. The specter of right-wing authoritarianism and even fascism haunt Western societies as struggles for recognition dominate domestic politics, while demands of (re)emerging states for international representation grow more compelling. Simultaneously, there is broader recognition of a growing legitimacy crisis of the American hegemon principally due to the mindsets and failures of its liberal hegemonic elites. Both developments are major advances in the understandings of how the West dominates “diversity regimes” and co-opts discourses universal in origin and character and of how the U.S. foreign policy establishment has brought the world to the current conjuncture. Yet, there are limitations still. Although central, the concepts of diversity, hierarchy, and elites need to be broadened out significantly, and rooted in corporate-class power, to fully comprehend the core crises of the international order today.

Keywords

diversity regimehierarchyelitesorganic intellectualsultra-imperialismclassclass inequalityWestern hegemonyliberal orderKoch Foundation
Type
Review Essay
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , Summer 2019 , pp. 231 - 244
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2019 

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References

NOTES

1 Ikenberry, G. John, Parmar, Inderjeet, and Stokes, Doug, “Introduction: Ordering the World? Liberal Internationalism in Theory and Practice,” International Affairs 94, no. 1 (January 2018), pp. 1–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Those themes are discussed and critiqued as being essentially embedded in liberal internationalism in Parmar, Inderjeet, “Racial and Imperial Thinking in International Theory and Politics: Truman, Attlee, and the Korean War,” British Journal of Politics and International Relations 18, no. 2 (April 2016), pp. 351–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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6 Gramsci's analysis of the role of intellectuals is very important since we are discussing scholars advancing major ideas critiquing existing orders or ways of thinking about and doing things. It situates them in a relationship with major institutions, states, elites, and classes, which therefore play an important role in the limited character of their analyses and suggested changes. This is not to suggest any kind of malign or deliberate sinister outside influence but to argue that ideas develop in certain milieus, intellectual and political communities and networks, and research funding regimes with specific priorities. See Parmar, Inderjeet, Foundations of the American Century: The Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller Foundations in the Rise of American Power (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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13 See “MIT and Harvard Kennedy School Launch Collaborative International Studies Program,” Charles Koch Foundation, www.charleskochfoundation.org/news/mit-harvard-launch-collaborative-international-studies-program/; and Thomas B. Edsall, “Trump and the Koch Brothers Are Working in Concert,” New York Times, September 6, 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/09/06/opinion/trump-koch-brothers-alliance.html. Mearsheimer indicates Koch Foundation support for his book in the book's preface. See Mearsheimer, Great Delusion, p. x.

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