{"title":"Connectivity and Order: an Analytical Framework.","authors":"Bart Gaens, Ville Sinkkonen, Henri Vogt","doi":"10.1007/s12140-023-09401-z","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>IR literature has become inundated with different descriptions for the future of international order. The coming age is purportedly marked by China's ascendancy, American decline, a leaderless \"no-one's world\", or multiple competing modernities. Yet the global fight against climate change or shared COVID-19 strategies convey a different image of the world's predicament. The situation appears paradoxical: increasingly tense great-power relations are mixed with ever-strengthening interdependencies. This article contributes to these debates by exploring how global orders as well as regionalism today are increasingly defined by various types of connective functional links between intentional actors at various levels of social organisation. To enable a nuanced analysis, the article introduces an analytical framework composed of six <i>connectivity</i> logics, namely cooperation, copying, cushioning, contestation, containment, and coercion. These play out differently within material, economic, institutional, knowledge, people-to-people, and security spheres. The utility of this article's approach is demonstrated through empirical examples related to the policies of key actors in the Indo-Pacific region.</p>","PeriodicalId":53913,"journal":{"name":"East Asia","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-02-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9942628/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"East Asia","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s12140-023-09401-z","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"AREA STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
IR literature has become inundated with different descriptions for the future of international order. The coming age is purportedly marked by China's ascendancy, American decline, a leaderless "no-one's world", or multiple competing modernities. Yet the global fight against climate change or shared COVID-19 strategies convey a different image of the world's predicament. The situation appears paradoxical: increasingly tense great-power relations are mixed with ever-strengthening interdependencies. This article contributes to these debates by exploring how global orders as well as regionalism today are increasingly defined by various types of connective functional links between intentional actors at various levels of social organisation. To enable a nuanced analysis, the article introduces an analytical framework composed of six connectivity logics, namely cooperation, copying, cushioning, contestation, containment, and coercion. These play out differently within material, economic, institutional, knowledge, people-to-people, and security spheres. The utility of this article's approach is demonstrated through empirical examples related to the policies of key actors in the Indo-Pacific region.
期刊介绍:
East Asia, formerly the Journal of Northeast Asian Studies, is the first journal to examine the interplay between politics and culture underlying major developments in China, Japan, Korea, and the Pacific Rim. It is distinguished by a unique, transnational approach to political, economic, and cultural issues. Focusing on the continuing influence these nations exert upon each other, this international quarterly examines the competition, assimilation, and tensions that now shape events in the region, and will for years to come.