What is a multiplex world order?
Amitav Acharya, Antoni Estevadeordal and Louis W. Goodman introduce ‘multiplexity’ to understand changing global dynamics.
Few would deny that the global order is undergoing transformations. From shifting patterns of international cooperation to renewed power hierarchies, a changing world order is clearly emerging. In this context, it is only fitting that the conceptual tools we use also be revamped to help us make sense of the evolving landscape.
In this blogpost, Amitav Acharya, Antoni Estevadeordal and Louis W. Goodman introduce the new concept of ‘multiplexity’ from their latest article. By explaining how the world order is becoming more multiplex, they outline important insights for how policy-makers should engage in a changing world.
1. What is a ‘multiplex’ world order?
Given the changing pattern of global cooperation since the Second World War, we propose defining the world order in terms of ‘multiplexity’ rather than hegemony or multipolarity. A multiplex world order has four core features. First, it marks the absence of global hegemony by any single or small set of nations. Rather, it includes the proliferation of consequential actors such as small and large nations, international and regional bodies, corporations, social movements and non-state actors, including those that challenge sovereignty and stability.
Second, in a multiplex world order, interdependence goes well beyond economic matters to include linkages in environment, sustainable development, governance, security and connectivity. Third, such a global order entails a dynamic and multilevel global governance architecture made up of global, regional and subnational layers, each with formal and informal institutions, networks and hybrid structures. Finally, in such an order, cultural, ideological and political diversity provides renewed pathways to stability, peace and prosperity.
2. Why is ‘multiplexity’ a more useful way of looking at the global order than ‘multipolarity’?
Looking at multiplexity allows one to include a broader array of state and non-state actors in the understanding of the world order than is the case with multipolarity. These include small states such as Ecuador, Rwanda, Singapore and Yemen, non-state actors like Médecins Sans Frontières, Greenpeace and chambers of commerce, business magnates such as Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Carlos Slim and corporations like Coca-Cola, Renault and Huawei. Multiplexity goes further to acknowledge organized crime groups like the Sinaloa Cartel, the Yakuza and the Italian Mafia, religious groups like the Quakers, the Taliban and the Catholic Church as well as transnational diaspora communities.
While multipolarity focuses on states’ economic or military power, multiplexity is based on their ‘interaction capacity’, a concept developed by Barry Buzan as ‘the physical and organizational capability of a system to move ideas, goods, people, money and armed forces across the [global] system’. Focusing on states’ interaction capacity encourages analysts to go beyond static situations and acknowledge the dynamic nature of international relations as well as the many actors involved.
Moreover, multiplexity views global leadership as multidimensional and issue-specific. This is a more useful approach in contrast to multipolarity as any analysis of the global system will be more accurate and thorough if it can take into account a greater number of factors.
3. How does cooperation occur in a multiplex world?
In a multiplex world, cooperation occurs through a nation’s interaction capacity. Dimensions of interaction capacity include the degree of transportation, communication and organization capability in the system. For example, to cooperate in trade and investment matters, members of ‘Cluster #1’, which includes the United States, Mexico, Japan, China, the UK, India and 71 other countries, as identified in our article, work more closely with each other than with ‘Cluster #2’, which includes Germany, South Africa, Netherlands, France, Italy, Nigeria and 50 other countries.
However, Cluster #1 still has some interaction with Cluster #2 which can involve state-to-state diplomacy, private sector partnerships, joint social movements, cultural exchange and interpersonal contact. Interaction capacity is also enhanced by technological improvements in communication and transportation as well as by formal and informal organizational arrangements.
4. What are the policy implications of your research?
Our research indicates that global cooperation has gradually become more multiplex and less hegemonic or US-centered. In this world, an increasing number of nations cooperate to produce public, common and private goods and an increasing number of these states are not great powers. Further, while the United States remains dominant in the global system in an aggregate sense, other nations are creating their own capacities, sometimes together with the United States and sometimes not.
Keeping these changes in mind, interaction capacity, especially diplomacy, will be an increasingly critical mechanism for deciding state and non-state roles in the world order of the future. Thus, policy-makers should invest to increase their nations’ interaction capacity. There is also a strong case for making global governance institutions more collaborative and responsive to the aspirations of the newly emerging actors.
Moreover, policy-makers should take a long-term view of the global order rather than give in to short-term developments that cause much pessimism. In the long term, increasingly extensive network of treaty relationships would provide a durable foundation upon which repairs can be made to the fabric of global cooperation. This will be the case once the most severe socio-economic effects of the pandemic attenuate, the war between Russia and Ukraine ends or a ceasefire is achieved, positive progress is made on the Israel — Palestine conflict and the tension thaws in US–China relations.
Finally, policy-makers should not accept a priori the positions of any ‘great power’. They should act to pursue their own national interests, using their interaction capacity to engage with a diverse set of state and non-state actors.
Read more about this topic in the full article ‘Multipolar or multiplex? Interaction capacity, global cooperation and world order’. It was published in the November 2023 issue of International Affairs and is free to access.
Amitav Acharya is the UNESCO Chair in Transnational Challenges and Governance and Distinguished Professor at American University’s School of International Service and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Ewha Womans University in Seoul.
Antoni Estevadeordal is Nonresident Senior Research Fellow and affiliated faculty at the Barcelona Institute of International Studies (IBEI) and a Resident Fellow at the Georgetown Americas Institute at Georgetown University.
Louis W. Goodman is Professor of International Relations and Emeritus Dean at American University’s School of International Service.
