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As we face new challenges from climate change and the rise of populism in Western politics and beyond, there is little doubt that we are entering a new configuration of world politics. Driven by nostalgia for past certainties or fear of what is coming next, references to normalcy have been creeping into political discourse lately, with people either vying for a return to a past normalcy or coping with the new normal. The normal and quest of normalcy thus are emerging as central features of how GeÌ⁸zim Visoka and Nicolas Lemay-He̹bert make sense of the world , but there has been little explicit effort to conceptualize and unpack their meanings in practice. This book traces main discourses and practices associated with normalcy in world politics. Visoka and Lemay-He̹bert mostly focus on how dominant states and international organizations try to manage global affairs through imposing normalcy over fragile states, restoring normalcy over disaster-affected states, and accepting normalcy over suppressive states. They show how discourses and practices come together in constituting normalization interventions and how in turn they play in shaping the dynamics of continuity and change in world politics

Heterarchy in World Politics challenges the fundamental framing of international relations and world politics. IR theory has always been dominated by the presumption that world politics is, at its core, a system of states. However, this has always been problematic, challengeable, time-bound, and increasingly anachronistic. In the 21st century, world politics is becoming increasingly multi-nodal and characterized by "heterarchy" - the coexistence and conflict between differently structured micro- and meso quasi-hierarchies that compete and overlap not only across borders but also across economic-financial sectors and social groupings. Thinking about international order in terms of heterarchy is a paradigm shift away from the mainstream "competing paradigms" of realism, liberalism, and constructivism. This book explores how, since the mid-20th century, the dialectic of globalization and fragmentation has caught states and the interstate system in the complex evolutionary process toward heterarchy. These heterarchical institutions and processes are characterized by increasing autonomy and special interest capture. The process of heterarchy empowers strategically situated agents - especially agents with substantial autonomous resources, and in particular economic resources - in multi-nodal competing institutions with overlapping jurisdictions. The result is the decreasing capacity of macro-states to control both domestic and transnational political/economic processes. In this book, the authors demonstrate that this is not a simple breakdown of states and the states system; it is in fact the early stages of a structural evolution of world politics.

Introduction : theorising hierarchies / Ayse Zarakol -- Laws and norms in the making of international hierarchies / David Lake - Making empires : hierarchy, conquest and customization / Andrew Phillips -- Hierarchy and paternalism / Michael Barnett -- Revealing international hierarchy through gender lenses / Laura Sjoberg -- Against authority : the heavy weight of international hierarchy / Vincent Pouliot -- Hierarchy in an age of equality : micro-states and dependencies / J.C. Sharman -- 'Command and control?' : hierarchy in the politics of foreign military bases / Alex Cooley -- Leading authority as hierarchy among INGOs / Sarah Stroup and Wendy Wong -- 'Lazy Greeks' and 'Nazi Germans' : negotiating international hierarchies in the Euro crisis / Rebecca Adler-Nissen -- 'Subcultural groupings' in international system hierarchy : China in Africa / Shogo Suzuki -- Beyond hierarchy / Jack Donnelly -- Why hierarchy? / Ayse Zarakol

"Rising powers such as Brazil, China, India, Russia and Turkey are increasingly claiming heightened profiles in international politics. Although differing in other respects, rising states have a strong desire for recognition and respect. This pioneering volume on status features contributions which develop propositions on status concerns and illustrate them with case studies and aggregate data analysis. Four cases are examined in depth: the United States (how it accommodates rising powers through hierarchy); Russia (the influence of status concerns on its foreign policy); China (how Beijing signals its status aspirations); and India (which has long sought major power status). The authors analyse status from a variety of theoretical perspectives and tackle questions such as: how do states signal their status claims? How are such signals perceived by the leading states? Will these status concerns lead to conflict or is peaceful adjustment possible?"--