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PSIR · PALGRAVE STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Power Transition in
the Anarchical Society
Rising Powers, Institutional Change
and the New World Order
Edited by
Tonny Brems Knudsen
Cornelia Navari
Palgrave Studies in International Relations
Series Editors
Mai’a K. Davis Cross, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA
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Shahar Hameiri, University of Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD, Australia
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Ole Jacob Sending, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, Oslo,
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Palgrave Studies in International Relations provides scholars with the best
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Tonny Brems Knudsen · Cornelia Navari
Editors
Power Transition
in the Anarchical
Society
Rising Powers, Institutional Change and the New
World Order
Editors
Tonny Brems Knudsen Cornelia Navari
Department of Political Science Buckingham, UK
Aarhus University
Aarhus, Denmark
Palgrave Studies in International Relations

ISBN 978-3-030-97710-8 ISBN 978-3-030-97711-5 (eBook)
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Preface
This book examines the ongoing power transition and its ramifications
for world order from the international society perspective of the English
School. In that perspective, the outcome of the big changes in the
distribution of power is a matter of socialization rather than structural
determination or the resilience of the so-called Liberal world order. The
theoretical assumptions of the contributions are that power transition
stimulates fundamental institutional change, and not necessarily great
power conflict or a breakdown of international order, and that interna-
tional organizations are key arenas for the realization and negotiation
of such changes, and not necessarily the victims of hegemonic retreat.
The book has grown out of the ISA English School Working Group on
“Power Transition and Fundamental Institutional Change”, which was
established in 2018 as the successor of the working group on the institu-
tions of international society. It is a natural continuation of our recent
volume on International Organization in the Anarchical Society: The
Institutional Structure of World Order (Palgrave, 2019), which theorized
the relationship between power, fundamental institutions and interna-
tional organizations and related them to pluralist, solidarist and regional
processes of change. Along the way, draft chapters for the book have been
presented at the 12th EISA Pan-European Conference on IR, Prague 11–
15 September 2018; the 60th ISA Annual Convention, Toronto, 27–30
March 2019; the conference on “The Past, Present and Future of Interna-
tional Order”, University of Copenhagen, 6 May 2019; the IR Research
v
vi PREFACE
Section Meeting, Aarhus University, 7 May 2019; the BISA 44th Annual
Conference, London, 12–14 June 2019; the 13th Pan-European Confer-
ence on International Relations, Sofia, 11–14 September 2019; and the
62nd ISA Annual Convention 2021, April 6–9th, Las Vegas (online). We
are most grateful to the involved participants and discussants for valuable
comments on the project and the draft chapters.
Aarhus, Denmark Tonny Brems Knudsen

Buckingham, UK Cornelia Navari
December 2021
Contents
1 Power Transition and Institutional Change:

Theorizing the New World Order 1
Cornelia Navari and Tonny Brems Knudsen
Part I Theoretical Investigations

2 Power Transition and World Order: Three Rival
Theories and the Dynamics of Change 31
Tonny Brems Knudsen
3 International Society and Power as a Social Role 57
Cornelia Navari
Part II Powers
4 The End of Anglo-America? 83
Barry Buzan and Michael Cox
5 Russia: Power Transition, Revisionism and Great
Power Management 103
Mette Skak
6 China, Power Transition, and the Resilience
of Pluralist International Society: Beyond Realism
and Liberalism 125
Yongjin Zhang
vii
viii CONTENTS
7 Power Transition as a Challenge to Normative Power

Europe 153
Thomas Diez
Part III Fundamental Institutions

8 Global Power Shifts and International Law 179
Dennis R. Schmidt
9 Culture, Diplomacy and Power Transition 203
Jamie Gaskarth
10 Liberalism, Democracy and Power Shift 231
Cornelia Navari
11 Humanitarian Intervention and Great Power
Management in a Post-hegemonic World Order 257
Peter Viggo Jakobsen and Tonny Brems Knudsen
Part IV Organizations and Regimes

12 Power Transition and the Economic Order: How
Much Change? 281
Eero Palmujoki
13 China and a New Order in the Arctic 309
Sanna Kopra
14 Power Transition, Rising China, and the Regime
for Outer Space in a US-Hegemonic Space Order 329
Dimitrios Stroikos
Index 353
Notes on Contributors
Barry Buzan is Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the LSE

(formerly Montague Burton Professor); Honorary Professor at Copen-
hagen, Jilin, and China Foreign Affairs Universities; a Senior Fellow
at LSE Ideas; and a Fellow of the British Academy. He has written,
co-authored or edited over thirty books, written or co-authored nearly
one hundred and fifty articles and chapters, and lectured, broadcast or
presented papers in over twenty countries.
Michael Cox was appointed to a Chair at the LSE in 2002 where he
helped establish the Cold War Studies Centre in 2004 and LSE IDEAS in
2008. He is the author, editor and co-editor of over 25 books including
more recently a new edition of E. H. Carr’s The Twenty Years’ Crisis
(2016), a 3rd edition of his best-selling US Foreign Policy (2018), The
Post-Cold War World (2019) a centennial edition of J. M. Keynes’s The
Economic Consequnces of the Peace (2019) and a new edition of E. H.
Carr’s 1945 classic Nationalism and After (2021). His next book Agonies
of Empire: American Power from Clinton to Biden will be published in
2022.
Thomas Diez is Professor of Political Science and International Relations
at the University of Tuebingen. In 2009 he received the Anna Lindh
Award for his contribution to the field of European foreign and secu-
rity policy studies. Among his publications are The Routledge Handbook
on Critical European Studies (co-editor, Routledge, 2021), The EU and
ix
x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Global Climate Justice (co-author, Routledge, 2021), The EU, Promoting

Regional Integration, and Conflict Resolution (co-editor, Palgrave, 2017)
and The Securitisation of Climate Change (co-author, Palgrave, 2016).
Jamie Gaskarth is Professor of Foreign Policy and International Rela-
tions at The Open University, UK. He is the author/editor of six books
and numerous articles on international relations, foreign policy and intel-
ligence and served on the Academic Consultative Panel for the 2015
National Security Strategy/SDSR and 2016 Annual Review. He is Co-
Editor in Chief of the ISA Journal of Global Security Studies and was
appointed Visiting Professor at Sciences Po, Lyon in 2018. His latest
book is Secrets and Spies: Intelligence Accountability After Iraq and
Snowden (Chatham House/Brookings Institution Press, 2020).
Peter Viggo Jakobsen is Associate Professor at the Institute for Strategy
and War Studies at the Royal Danish Defence College, and a Professor
(part-time) at the Center for War Studies, University of Southern
Denmark. He has acted as an advisor and consultant for several govern-
ments and international organizations, is frequently used by the Danish
and international media as a commentator on defense and security issues,
has won awards for his teaching and public dissemination skills and has
written extensively on many defense and security related issues.
Tonny Brems Knudsen (editor) is Associate Professor of International
Relations at Aarhus University, Denmark. His publications include Inter-
national Relations in Europe: Traditions, Perspectives and Destinations
(Routledge, 2006, edited with Knud Erik Jørgensen), Kosovo between
War and Peace: Nationalism, Peacebuilding and International Trusteeship
(Routledge, 2006, edited with Carsten Bagge Laustsen), International
Organization in the Anarchical Society: The Institutional Structure of
World Order (Palgrave, 2019, edited with Cornelia Navari) and articles
on English School theory, international institutions, the “Responsibility
to Protect”, humanitarian intervention, great power management, and
world order.
Sanna Kopra is Senior Researcher in the Northern Institute for Environ-
mental and Minority Law of the Arctic Centre at University of Lapland,
Finland. She is also a Senior Fellow at The Arctic Institute—Center for
Circumpolar Security Studies in Washington DC. She is the author of
China and Great Power Responsibility for Climate Change (Routledge,
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xi
2019) and a co-editor of Chinese Policy and Presence in the Arctic (Brill
Publishing, 2020, with Timo Koivurova).
Cornelia Navari (editor), formerly Associate Professor at the Univer-
sity of Birmingham, is Visiting Professor of International Affairs at the
University of Buckingham. She is the author, editor and co-editor of
16 books, among them Public Intellectuals and International Affairs
(2012), Hans J. Morgenthau and the American Experience (2018) and
The International Society Tradition (2021). She edited Theorising Inter-
national Society: English School Methods (Palgrave, 2009), International
Society: The English School for the EISA Pivot series (Palgrave, 2020), and
with Tonny Brems Knudsen International Organization in the Anarchical
Society: The Institutional Structure of World Order (Palgrave, 2019).
Eero Palmujoki is University Lecturer and adjunct professor of Inter-
national Relations at Tampere University, Finland. His current research
focuses on trade, development and environmental governance in interna-
tional society. His research interest includes Southeast Asian regionalism
on which he has published two books, Vietnam and the World (MacMillan
Press, 1997) and Regionalism and Globalism in Southeast Asia (Palgrave,
2001). He contributed “Competing Norms and Norm Change: Property
Rights and Public Health in the World Trade Organization” to Inter-
national Organization in the Anarchical Society (Palgrave, 2019, Eds.
Knudsen and Navari).
Dennis R. Schmidt is Lecturer in International Relations at Swansea
University, UK. He has held fellowships and visiting posts at George
Washington University, the LSE, and the University of Tübingen. His
research focuses on international order and global governance in theory
and practice. He has published on international norms and institutions,
pluralism and global order, and the normative dynamics of international
law in International Theory, Review of International Studies, and the
Cambridge Review of International Affairs. His most recent publication
is “Mediations on the Role and Rule of Law” Journal of International
Law and International Relations.
Mette Skak is Associate Professor of Political Science at Aarhus Univer-
sity, Denmark. A Russian specialist, she wrote Sovjetunionen og Østeuropa
(1990), From Empire to Anarchy. Postcommunist Foreign Policy and
International Relations (1996), edited and co-authored Fremtidens stor-
magter. BRIK’erne i det globale spil. Brasilien, Rusland, Indien og Kina
xii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
(2010). Recent contributions include “Russian strategic culture: the role

of today’s chekisty” (2016), “The Russian energy and climate nexus and
the Sino-Russian relationship” (2022) and “Russian Strategic Culture: A
Critical Survey of the Literature” (forthcoming in Routledge Handbook of
Strategic Culture).
Dimitrios Stroikos is LSE Fellow in the Department of International
Relations at the LSE and Head of the Space Policy Programme at LSE
IDEAS. He is also the editor-in-chief of Space Policy: An International
Journal. His research interests broadly cover the international relations of
the Indo-Pacific, with particular reference to China and India; technology
and global governance; and space security and space policy. His latest
publication is “China, India, and the social construction of technology in
international society: The English School meets Science and Technology
Studies”, in the Review of International Studies.
Yongjin Zhang is Professor of International Politics at the University
of Bristol. His research publications have appeared in Review of Interna-
tional Studies, European Journal of International Relations, International
Affairs, Millennium, China Quarterly, Chinese Journal of International
Politics and The Third World Quarterly, among others. His published
books include Contesting International Society in East Asia (Co-editor,
Cambridge University Press, 2016) and International Orders in the Early
Modern World (Co-editor, Routledge, 2016).
List of Figures
Fig. 1.1 The composite model: The institutional structure

of world order 8
Fig. 12.1 Organski-Kugler PT theory: Situation before power
transition 284
Fig. 12.2 Alliance transition theory and Asia–Pacific trade
arrangements. TPP: Prevailing hegemony 286
Fig. 12.3 Alliance transition theory and Asia–Pacific trade
arrangements. RCEP: Power transition 286
Fig. 12.4 States and international institutions in trade (WTO) 290
Fig. 12.5 Hegemony and emphasis of international institutions
in the original TPP 299
Fig. 12.6 International institutions and the RCEP 300
xiii
CHAPTER 1
Power Transition and Institutional Change:

Theorizing the New World Order
Cornelia Navari and Tonny Brems Knudsen
This book argues a position contrary to much of the conventional wisdom

regarding the current complexion of power relationships. It is that,
despite power shifts, the emergence of multi-polarity and America’s deter-
mination to balance China, anarchy will not prevail, disorder will not be
unleashed and world order will survive. But it also argues, as against the
more recent liberal mantras, that it will not be the same world order that
we have been enjoying for the last thirty years. It is about power transition
and how to understand both the processes involved in power transitioning
and how to calibrate the results.
C. Navari
University of Buckingham, Buckingham, UK
e-mail: cornelia.navari@buckingham.ac.uk
T. B. Knudsen (B)
University of Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark
e-mail: tbrems@ps.au.dk
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
T. B. Knudsen and C. Navari (eds.), Power Transition in the Anarchical
Society, Palgrave Studies in International Relations,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97711-5_1
2 C. NAVARI AND T. B. KNUDSEN
The Context of the Argument

Politically, the argument relates to the unexpectedly rapid rise of China,
the power-political recovery of post-Soviet Russia and the weakening of
the ‘liberal consensus’ of the post-Cold War period after high hopes. The
relative loss of American power and its evident reluctance to continue to
underpin aspects of the liberal world order, either in political or economic
terms—along with the hesitation of any other liberal power, including
the European Union (Wæver, 2018) to step up to the role—has created
opportunities for the rising autocracies which they have not been slow to
exploit. The creation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the
New Development Bank (both with China in the driver’s seat), China’s
ambitious ‘One Belt One Road Initiative’, the Chinese claim to a special
position in the South China Sea (Liao, 2016; Tang, 2018) and Russia’s
military interventions in Georgia 2008, Ukraine 2014 and Syria 2015
(Clunan, 2018; Stent, 2016), are key examples of this development. As
a part of his response to these challenges, US president Joe Biden has
vowed to unite the democratic states in a defense of liberal values and
principles, regionally or globally. However, this does not imply that US
hegemony and the associated liberal world order, as we have known it,
is sustainable, or that the value pluralism of the unfolding multipolar and
regionalized world order can be ignored.
The processes of power transition have been accompanied by a decen-
tralization of power which has brought new players to the table that
are determined to set their own agendas, encouraging a dynamic new
regionalism (Armijo & Roberts, 2014; Hurrell, 2018). To specify, the
African Union (AU) and the Economic Community of West African
States (ECOWAS) have introduced distinctive African principles for the
maintenance of regional order, peace and security and acted upon them.
These include the principle of humanitarian intervention under Article
4(h) in the Constitutive Act of the African Union (2000), the anti-coup
principles of the Constitutive Act of the African Union and the African
Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance (2007), and the norm
of ‘African solutions to African problems’ (Aning & Edu-Afful, 2016;
De Coning, 2019). As another example, Brazil stepped forward under
presidents Lula and Dilma with diplomatic mediation, remarkable contri-
butions to UN peacekeeping (for instance in Haiti) and the launching
of its own ‘Responsibility While Protecting’ principle, which challenged
both the non-intervention doctrine and the Western understanding of the
1 POWER TRANSITION AND INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE … 3
‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P) and humanitarian intervention (Spektor,

2012; Thakur, 2013; Torinho et al., 2016). At the same time, the retreat
of US hegemony has made room for regional power politics such as the
ongoing Russian attempts to create a sphere of influence in the ‘near
abroad’, proxy wars in the Middle East, and Turkey’s establishment of an
‘area defense’ from Libya to Somalia, independently of NATO (Abyet,
2012). The current processes of regionalization involve both new norm
systems and new security dynamics.
Theoretically, the argument relates to what underpins world order,
whether it relies on a liberal hegemon, is a resultant of power balancing,
or whether more fundamental social forces are at play. The argument
presented here is that the ongoing power transition occurs in a complex
institutional order that ascribes power and does not merely reflect it.
Power is social as well as material. Consequently, the power shift has to
be seen in the context of pre-existing repertoires of appropriate conduct
and a pre-existing social structure of world order in which institutions
affect the shape and direction of the power shift. Moreover, it is in terms
of institutions that its significance for world order should be gauged.
The argument is about change and how the fundamental institutions of
international society both affect change and are affected by it.
Contesting Theories
The classical debate on power transition concerns the propensity of the
rising power or the declining power respectively to go to war to accel-
erate or stop the shift in power and all the consequences that are likely
to come with it (Chan, 2008; Organski, 1968; Rauch & Wurm, 2013).
These typically include the risk of temporary disorder and anarchy on
the one hand, and, on the other hand, the opportunity of the new
hegemon to create its own political and economic order framed by insti-
tutional design and backed by superior power resources (Gilpin, 1981).
In the present context, classical power transition and hegemonic stability
theory have given rise to numerous realist contributions on the transi-
tion of power from the US to China, the waning of US hegemony and
the potential weakening or malfunctioning of international organizations
(Allison, 2017; Haass, 2017; Layne, 2012; Mead, 2014; Mearsheimer,
2006, 2010, 2019; Schweller, 2011). In these analyses, the power shift
is leading inexorably to a period of confrontation, disorder and orga-

nizational decay until new ordering arrangements grow out of the new
concentration or balance of power—identified primarily with China.
Some scholars in the liberal American IR academy have challenged the
more dystopic analyses of the changing world order. One of them is John
Ikenberry at Princeton who has explicitly tried to avoid the fallacy of
much realist and liberal power transition and hegemonic stability theory—
namely the assumption that the end of US or Western hegemony will
necessarily mean the end of an associated world order built on alliances
and institutions run by the hegemon (Ikenberry, 2009, 2018). Instead,
he argues that ‘although America’s hegemonic position may be declining,
the liberal international characteristics of order – openness, rules, multi-
lateral cooperation – are deeply rooted and likely to persist’ (2018, 18).
Likewise, Joseph Nye (2018) has argued that ‘in a world of growing
complexity, the most connected states are the most powerful’, because
they will have the capacity to build networks, produce global public
goods, maintain rules and institutions and sustain alliances, indicating that
these are the true bases of international order. Meanwhile, both Ikenberry
(2020) and Nye (2020) have moderated their optimism with the argu-
ment that the US now has to work with both an inner core of liberal allies
to protect democracy and human rights, and a broader circle of states to
maintain rules and institutions for the management of global challenges.
The international society approach of the English School challenges
both the realist and the liberal positions. As opposed to Ikenberry’s liberal
internationalism, it searches out the ‘deeply rooted’ sources of order on
which Ikenberry is silent. As opposed to realism, it argues that power
is a social fact and not merely a matter of capacity. It argues against
both that the different aspects of the power transition—the rise of China,
the waning of American hegemony and the general spread of power to
regional managers—are not autonomous processes. They do not happen
in a vacuum. They are affected by the more fundamental or primary insti-
tutions of world order such as sovereignty, great power management,
diplomatic practices, international law, the regulation of war and trade
rules (Bull, 1977; Watson, 1992; Wight, 1977, 1978). The fundamental
institutions also include the demands of legitimacy such as national self-
determination, humanitarian intervention and environmental stewardship,
as well as embedded concepts of ‘right action’ by states (Buzan, 2004;
Holsti, 2004; Jackson, 2000; Knudsen & Navari, 2019; Mayall, 1990).
These fundamental institutions channel change and affect it. Moreover,
it is at this deep and institutionalized level of contemporary international

society that the most significant changes in world order can be identified
and understood (Knudsen & Navari, 2019).1
In sum, the international society approach to the study of international
relations maintains that powers, international organizations and coopera-
tive patterns of activity are rooted in institutionalized practices and rules
that constitute a social order of international relationships. In regard to
the liberal view, it maintains that liberal internationalists have confused a
liberal world order with world order as such. In regard to the realist view,
it considers how fundamental institutions and international organizations
shape the changing balance of power rather than the other way round.
It conceives the power transition as a three-level game, consisting of
(1) fundamental institutions and great power status, (2) international
organizations and great power agency and (3) international organizations
as organizers and feeders of fundamental institutions.
The Foundational Argument

In their theory of international society, Martin Wight (1977, 1978),
Hedley Bull (1977), Adam Watson (1992) and other classical exponents
of the English School stressed the importance of what they thought
of as the ‘fundamental’ or ‘basic’ institutions of international society.
More precisely, they referred to mutual recognition of sovereignty, trade,
diplomacy, international law, great power management, the balance of
power (as shared understandings and practices) and the regulation of war
(among others) as the bases of meaningful interaction among states, as
well as other participants in international society. In his systematic account
for The Anarchical Society, Bull (1977, xiv, 74) attributed its orderly quali-
ties to the collaborative institutions of world order and characterized them
as ‘sets of habits and practices shaped towards the realisation of common
goals’. Martin Wight (1977, 129–152; 1978, 105–112) stressed their
importance for the unique societal qualities of the modern states system
and Alan James (1973, 1978, 1986) referred to the bases of international
1 We share this belief in a fundamental institutional approach to the new world order
with a parallel research team and project led by Trine Flockhart and Zachary Paikin on
‘Rebooting International Society’ (forthcoming, 2022), which approaches the subject on
the basis of the concepts of change, contestation, and resilience.
order and society. In English School theory, such institutions constitute

international society and underpin international order.2
This historical and sociological conception of international institutions
has been contrasted with the more ‘specific’, ‘formal’, ‘instrumental’
and ‘economic’ organizations such as the United Nations (UN), the
League of Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank
and the World Trade Organization (WTO)—the focus of neoliberalism
and regime theory (Buzan, 1993; Evans & Wilson, 1992; Hurrell, 1993;
Keohane, 1988; Wendt & Duvall, 1989). In 2004, Barry Buzan related
these two forms of institutionalism to each other by means of his seminal
distinction between ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ institutions, formalizing
the long-standing habit of writers of both the English School and
neoliberalism to treat the latter (international organizations) as situated
within the former (fundamental institutions). Drawing on K. J. Holsti’s
(2004) distinction between ‘constitutive’ and ‘procedural’ institutions,
Buzan (2004, 167–190) further divided ‘primary’ institutions into ‘mas-
ter’ and ‘derivative’ and specifically linked both master and derivative
to the international organizations which they underpinned, for instance
the UN Security Council as the organizational expression of great power
management.
Taking these premises further were the efforts of Schouenborg (2011),
Wilson (2012), Knudsen (2013, 2016), Buzan (2014), Friedner Parrat
(2014, 2017), Spandler (2015), Navari (2016) and Knudsen and Navari
(2019). These aimed to put new vitality into the notion of primary or
fundamental institutions and the idea that such institutions underpin
international order. But they were also part of the broader attempt
to situate the study of international organization—which has de facto
always been close to the English School3 —more firmly within its general
theory of international society. The theoretical propositions to which
these efforts gave rise are as follows:
2 For an overview over English School as well as liberal, constructivist and poststruc-
turalist literature on fundamental or primary institutions see Knudsen (2021), Navari
(2021).
3 See for instance Manning’s work on Peaceful Change (1937), Wight’s (1978) study
of the League of Nations and the UN, Bull’s (1977, part II) recurrent references to
international organization in the account for the working of primary institutions, and
the numerous English School studies of international organizations and their machineries
by Alan James, Hidemi Suganami, Lorna Lloyd, Adam Roberts, Nicholas Wheeler, Tim
Dunne, Alex Bellamy, Paul Williams, and Jennifer Welsh among others.
1. Fundamental institutions are intersubjective understandings

(Dunne, 1995; Wendt & Duvall, 1989, 53).
2. Constitutive principles and reproducing practices are the central
logic of fundamental institutions (Knudsen & Navari, 2019;
Wendt & Duvall, 1989, 60–61).
3. Changes in the working (Bull, 1977) or reproduction (Wendt &
Duvall, 1989) of fundamental or primary institution are possible and
likely (Buzan, 2004; Holsti, 2004; Knudsen, 2019).
4. Although fundamental institutions are ontologically privileged in
the sense that they are constitutive of international society as such,
international organizations are important as means and drivers of
fundamental institutional change (Knudsen & Navari, 2019).
5. The mutually constitutive relationship between (state) actors and
fundamental or primary institutions are replayed in the relationship
between primary and secondary institutions where the latter display
a strong element of agency (Navari, 2019; Spandler, 2015; Wendt &
Duvall, 1989, 62–63, 65–66).
6. International organizations not only have regulative, constraining
and organizing effects on state behavior and interaction (as some-
times indicated in neoliberal institutionalism), they also have consti-
tutive potential (Spandler, 2015; Wendt & Duvall, 1989).
The dynamic between fundamental institutions and international organi-

zations was theorized by Buzan (2004) who suggested that his Master
and ‘Derivative’ institutions were expressed by and deposited in inter-
national organizations. Knudsen (2013) carried his idea forward with
the argument that international organizations were not just reproducers
but could also be ‘drivers of fundamental institutional change’. Spandler
(2015) went further still and proposed ‘constituting’ and ‘instituting’
for the relationship between primary and secondary institutions. In
their edited volume (Knudsen & Navari, 2019), Navari brought these
proposals together and created a general composite model of the rela-
tionship between fundamental institutions and international organization,
integrating structure and agency with power effects, which produced a
‘grand theory’ of the institutional bases of international order. The theory
appears as a two-level structure in which the productive and reproductive
structures of international society are initiated, maintained and elaborated
by the iterations of (state) agents, who themselves are authorized by the
structures.
The model portrays a dynamic set of processes and integrates liberal

institutional and constructivist insights concerning the critical role of
international organization into the English School’s general theory of
fundamental or primary institutions as the source of order and change
in the relations of sovereign states (Fig. 1.1).
While the model appears heavily ‘structural’ in the two levels of
institutionalization, the dynamic elements are the ‘interested agents in
interaction’. In this sense, it is an agentic and not a structural theory, in
that it is the agents in their interaction that are the dynamic elements that
move, confirm, reaffirm and adjust the structures. Secondly, the model is
Fig. 1.1 The composite model: The institutional structure of world order
particularly attuned to the registration of changes and proposes a dynamic

of change.
Theoretical Requirements of the Power Shift

While the model (and theory) captures a central dynamic, it leaves some
important questions unanswered. First, power in the model appears only
as an outcome of the interests, actions and interactions of states, as a
distribution eventually affecting both primary and secondary institution-
building, and not as an ‘input’. If however we are arguing that power shift
has potential consequences for both primary institutions and secondary
organizations, and, further, that it is at the level of primary and secondary
institutions that power shift is to be understood and gauged in impor-
tance, then power is acting not only as an outcome but also as an
‘input’, as existing before the fact. It is necessary, therefore, that this
‘before-the-factness’ be theorized.
The composite model suggests elements of such a theory: (1) The
fundamental institutions of international society represent a deeply rooted
international order which constitutes and shapes the ongoing interaction
of states (and other actors). (2) International organizations reproduce,
specify and change this basic order, for instance as more or less pluralist,
solidarist or liberal, and in particular historical periods such as the post-
Cold War order. (3) The rapid material power shift occurs as a shock to
this order, and as a potential trigger of fundamental institutional or orga-
nizational change. (4) The consequences of the power shift (as new shared
understandings, principles and practices) are shaped by already established
fundamental institutions and organizations.
Cogent as these suggestions are, they do not consider other dimen-
sions of power or the seat of power. Secondly, the model has no specific
historical features. It is ‘transhistorical’ in that it can be applied to any
historical period and to any form of international society. But the current
power shift is occurring within a very specific political, economic and
social context. How is this to be theorized? Third, the model does not
‘explain everything’ with regard to power transitions. How are this model
and theory to be understood in relation to other theories of power shift?
The early literature addressed some of these issues. First, to recall, Bull
(1977) argued that the relevant ‘before-the-fact’ power is an attribute
of agency. It is agentic, material and ideational. He also suggested

that agentic power is distinguishable from power in the sense of the
‘structuring effects’ that follow from the inequalities of power in the
international order (that is; power in the sense understood by Waltz and
structural realists). He also suggested, however, that both are relevant;
that is, that power operates as a structure as well as an attribute of agency.
Secondly, both Manning (1962) and Bull (1977) associated the agents’
power with distinct social roles , notably the role of the Great Power. They
further suggested that the role created expectations in respect of world
order, which could be understood as special duties and special rights in
accord with those duties. Accordingly, though rather unspecified, the early
literature posed that the hierarchy of states was not only material but also
social, and that both were fundamental to processes of institutionaliza-
tion, and accordingly to the explanation of change. They had, however,
no theory of socialization within which to place their nascent ideas.
Secondly, there is the relation between agentic power and structural
power, which Bull (1977, 114–15) anticipated in the distinction between
the ‘fortuitous’ balance of power and the ‘contrived’ balance, the one
clearly structural and the other agentic. From his account, it is clear
that changes in agentic power can have effects on the fortuitous balance.
In terms of the model, power-as-structure would belong to the general
environment within which the processes of institutionalization and consti-
tuting take place. Equally, however, structural power does not pre-exist
agentic power, nor does it exist separately from agentic power. It is the
immanent or collective effect of changes in agentic power.
Third, there is power shift in itself and especially the spread of power.
Bull in the famous chapter on ‘The Revolt against the West’ (Bull &
Watson, 1984, 211–228) noted the aspirations of the Latin American
republics, the Group of 77 and the non-aligned movement for equal
sovereignty, decolonization, racial equality and economic justice. But he
portrayed a process in which the West was losing advantages in ways that
‘assist[ed] the efforts of the non-Western states and peoples to transform
the system’ rather than a process in which power itself moved to regions
and in which regions began to make the rules.
Fourth, there is power shift as a historical phenomenon. Dan Green has
pointed to the English School’s understanding of history as individual
moments rather than trans-historical trends (Green, 2021, 45). Manning
(1962) has noted the different ‘games’ that states play and have played at
different times. Bull’s theory was influenced by the particular structural
features of the Cold War (Ayson, 2012, 59–60), and his focus was the
character of institutionalization in world politics at a particular time, and
the particular parameters for action that particular patterns of institution-
alization allowed. Hurrell (2021, 39) points out that it is precisely the
historical aspect of order that ‘opens up the discussion of different types
of international society and especially the distinction between pluralism
and solidarism’. In Manning’s terms, what is the current game that the
powers are engaged in, how does it compare with previous games and
what are the implications of that game for the institutional structure of
world order?
More precisely, we arrive at the following initial research questions on
power transition, institutional change and the new world order:
1. What can the English School theory of international society explain

and understand, that the rival theories of the power shift cannot,
and vice versa?
2. What changes does the ongoing power shift give rise to at the funda-
mental institutional level, that is in the (sociological) working of
sovereignty, great power management, the balance of power, diplo-
macy, international law, war, trade, etc.? (The power shift affecting
fundamental institutions—power before the social fact.)
3. How do the (historical) fundamental institutions of international
society shape the ongoing power shift and its consequences? (Funda-
mental institutions affecting the power shift—power after the social
fact.)
4. How does the framework of international organization mediate the
mutually constitutive relationship between states and fundamental
institutions during the ongoing power transition?
5. What does the ongoing power transition mean for the balance
between pluralist and solidarist elements of the post-Cold War
order?
6. What does the ongoing power transition mean for the balance
between liberal and nationalist elements of the post-Cold War order?
7. What does the ongoing power transition and spread of power mean
for the formation of distinct regional international societies (the
regional and local shaping of common norms, rules and practices)?
The Structure of the Present Volume

Part I addresses some central theoretical issues. Knudsen compares the
different ontologies of the rival theories of power transition, the different
levels at which they locate change, and their most recent revisions. This
leads to a theoretical framework for the study of power transition, which
combines the English School and constructivist focus on the role of
fundamental institutions with related realist work on status, liberal insights
on international organization, and post-colonial perspectives on interna-
tional order and justice. Navari addresses the notion of power as a social
role, its generating theories and its use in foreign policy analysis (the ‘ego’
perspective) as well as the ‘alter’ or structural perspective; that is, the roles
that have consequences for the shaping of international society.
Part II considers the powers whose material and social resources,
postures and foreign policy orientations, have contributed to the changes
in the structure of international society. Buzan and Cox focus on the US,
and more particularly the duopoly of America and Britain, characterized
as the ‘core of the core’ of the Post-War and post-Cold War eras, and
the gradual loss of its ascendancy, in material terms largely as a matter of
others gains, and in normative terms as a loss of moral authority. Skak
considers contemporary Russia as a revisionist power in the context of its
self-image as a natural-born Great Power deserving recognition of such a
status and the privileges of consultation, voice and the forbearance clas-
sically due to a Great Power. Accordingly, the revisionism of Russia is
as much about demonstrating power in respect of a claim to be a Great
Power as about maintaining influence in regional and global fora. Zhang
points to the material base of China’s rise as the critical factor affecting
views on the structure of the coming world order, but also how China has
defended pluralist institutions embodied in the UN Charter-based order
from its privileged position in the ‘legalized hegemony’ of the P5 in the
UN Security Council. China’s goal is to preserve a pluralist international
society, based on the tolerance of difference, as against the contesting
visions of liberalism’s universal liberal order and realism’s ‘New Cold
War’. Diez considers the position of the European Union as a ‘normative
power’, its history, and the tension accruing to this role in the context of
the new power configurations and rivalries, in respect of which the EU’s
geopolitical ambitions and outlooks have risen in importance. The result
is a more pluralist foreign policy orientation, but also a potential for a

renewed solidarist leadership operating inside the pluralist foundations of
the new multipolar and regionalized world order.
Part III considers the fundamental institutions and the changes (or
otherwise) to them engendered by the new power rivalries and the
changing structure of power relations. Schmidt considers how the case
of China neatly illustrates how international law both structures and
constitutes current power transition dynamics, because rising powers must
observe, engage with, apply and practice key aspects of international law
to obtain the status and authority that their new material position implies.
At the same time, he points toward a potentially more fragmented global
institutional architecture in which regionalized versions of law and order
are developed by regional powers, translating geo-strategic power and
status into formalized and institutionalized authority structures. Gaskarth
raises the question of the culture of a Western-oriented diplomatic system
in the context of the rise of non-Western powers, and provides a grid of
cultural signs and a comparative framework between low context individ-
ualist and high context collectivist cultures (broadly West and East) within
which to consider the power transition. He suggests that diplomatic
tensions are likely to rise between high context cultures wanting to main-
tain ambiguity in negotiations and low context ones wishing to ensure
that all expectations are rendered in black and white text. Navari describes
the transition from a human rights led international order infused by
post-Cold War liberalism to a more limited shared understanding about
international humanitarian law and humanitarian intervention based on
longstanding solidarist principles. Likewise, she accounts for the curtailing
of the liberal democracy promotion movement and the tailoring of the
demands of democracy to the perceptions and needs of different regional
orders, largely at the behest of the Global South. Jakobsen and Knudsen
plot how humanitarian intervention has been shaped by the various
practices of great power management, between concert, soft and hard
balancing, in the emerging multipolar and post-hegemonic era, with
strong evidence that regional ownership is of critical importance when it
comes to the initial definition of the game.
Part IV considers how these changes are registered in international
organizations and regimes, and how those regimes, in turn, might affect
the fundamental institutions. Palmujoki registers no major changes in
trade rules in the agreements of the Regional Comprehensive Economic

Partnership (the Asia–Pacific trade arrangement initiated by ASEAN),
where those institutions that define the WTO rules, namely sovereignty,
equity, justice and market, remain strong. Moreover, the trade disputes in
the WTO do not support the idea of a world divided into geo-economic
blocs operating under different rules. Finally, if China is considered a
challenging power, it has remained remarkably passive in creating new
trade rules—which has benefitted the US in spite of its risky retreat from
trade rulemaking under President Donald Trump. This indicates a consid-
erable resilience of trading rules during the ongoing power transition.
Kopra observes how China’s rise, and its promotion of the Arctic as a
global commons, is challenging the eight-power-based Arctic Council as
the legitimate body for decision-making over the Arctic region. On the
one hand, the increasing involvement of China and other external states
in the Arctic may potentially instigate the development of an Arctic gover-
nance regime and decrease the territorial definition of the Arctic. On the
other hand, the Artic Council, in which China is an observer member
state, rests on a strong sovereignty-based regime, which China is unlikely
to challenge due to its pluralist orientation and geographic distance.
Still, China’s growing regional presence may fuel the (further) securiti-
zation of the Arctic—a process in which the coastal ‘Arctic Five’ could
seek to strengthen their position in regional governance. By contrast,
the space regime continues to reflect American hegemony, but a hege-
mony in which Great Power Management was critical. A US–Soviet
partnership established the rules of the regime that America’s material
capacities supported, and a Russia–China initiative forestalled the Bush
administration’s attempts to militarize space.
The New World Order

These studies allow us to make a preliminary assessment of the shape and
nature of fundamental Institutions in the Emerging New World Order.
The Balance of Power

In material and political terms, the balance of power has become more
complex with no overall superpower, but three major great powers with
global power resources and aspirations (the US, China and Russia), a
number of powers with a combination of regional resources and global
aspirations (France, UK, Germany, Japan, India and possibly Brazil), and a
number of regional great powers (such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey in
the Middle East and Nigeria and South Africa in Africa). To that come key
institutional actors which are not independent players in a narrow military
balance of power, but still important to the political balance of power and
international intervention (especially the EU, the AU and ECOWAS).
The hegemonic functions that the US formerly provided have not
thereby disappeared completely. The US continues to underpin the open
space regime and to police it. It continues to be the central pivot in intel-
ligence gathering for the liberal world. It still provides a basic security
guarantee for many states; and it may still be the lender of last resort
in the financial order. But other public goods traditionally supported by
the US are presently, and in future will have to be, supported by varying
coalitions of powers. This is already evident in UN peace operations and
humanitarian interventions, in anti-piracy efforts, in climate change, in
the management of trade regimes, in Middle East security (or lack of it),
in managing China’s ‘rise’ and in dealing with Russian adventurism.
As an institution, the balance of power is inherently voluntaristic and
rationalistic rather that deterministic. It is maintained by a combination of
military adjustments and re-armaments on the one hand and political and
institutional attempts to maintain a balance of power on the other (Bull,
1977, 101–126). Mutual recognition, and the drive for mutual recogni-
tion as great powers, seems to be at the heart of the present game between
the US, China and Russia. In this respect, the veto power at the UN Secu-
rity Council is instrumental for these great powers to keep a balance of
power in terms of status, influence and gains, and as a bargaining resource
in equal negotiations. The constitutive principle of the balance of power
remains Vattel’s—no power can lay down the law to others—but the prac-
tices by which this principle is maintained are increasingly political and
economic.
For Russia the use of military force remains a key instrument for
anti-hegemonic and balancing purposes as evident in Syria and Ukraine,
and for the pursuit of great power status by power-political demonstra-
tions of it. For China, economic growth, integration and success are key
assets in the maintenance of the global balance of power, supplemented
by considerable military armament, as well as political mobilization and
soft balancing in global organizations like the UN. For the EU, the key
remains a combination of economic and normative power, while the chal-
lenge is to navigate in a more power-political world order where Europe’s
security and economic interests may not coincide (e.g., the balancing rela-
tionship between China and Russia). The US still has formidable means at
its disposal, but strongly prefers economic and political to military means
for specific balancing purposes, following the expensive and disappointing
interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. These include the strengthening
of alliance systems and political coalitions, and the attempt to regain lost
leadership credibility.
As evident, the post-hegemonic balance of power is complex, reflecting
both different combinations of power resources, flexible alignments, and
the ongoing formation of great power roles. The signs that the US
and China are drifting toward strategic rivalry across military, economic
and political issues, have grown stronger as this book has taken shape.
However, this tendency is mediated by the presence of other great power
actors who are not so keen on the formation of a bipolar world order,
including Russia, India, the EU and the West European great powers.
Great Power Management

The constitutive principle of this historical institution remains the special
responsibility of the great powers for the maintenance of international
order and justice and their associated rights and duties (Bull, 1977;
Knudsen, 2019). These rights and duties were further institutionalized
with the establishment of the UN Security Council and the associated
collective security system, of which the five great powers are permanent
caretakers with the main responsibility for the maintenance of interna-
tional peace and security, and a veto right to prevent their possible internal
differences from destructing the system. This system of collective great
power management assumes mutual restraint, invites great power concert
with broader involvement of rotating members and regional organizations
and allows for peaceful balancing. Since 1945, it has become habitual
and routinized due to the practices of negotiation, compromise, mandate
drafting and the recurrent application of measures for the settlement of
international disputes.
What happens to the institution of great power management after
US hegemony, widespread international criticism of Western interven-
tionism, and the onset of great power competition? One possibility is
that it will wither away because of falling effectiveness in the absence of
American leadership, falling legitimacy due to past great power abuses
or the demand of regional quarters to manage their own affairs, and a
lack of great power candidates with the will and legitimacy to lead in the
new world order. If all great powers step back from the historical under-
standing that special rights and duties come together, the institution will
fade in importance, and the coming order will be characterized by ‘great
irresponsibles’ as pointed out by Buzan and Cox with reference to Hedley
Bull’s (1980) classical critique of the US and the Soviet Union during the
Cold War.
Another possibility is a historical normalization of great power manage-
ment in the absence of US dominance and the increasing relevance of a
variety of practices reflecting a multipolar world order, including concert,
soft balancing and hard balancing. In this scenario, great power manage-
ment becomes a more dynamic institution reflecting a more equal balance
of power and a shared understanding that balancing as well as coopera-
tion may be rational and legitimate options, as argued by Jakobsen and
Knudsen. The concerted, and regionally including, game of great power
management has been evident in, for instance, the UN Security Council
approach to the crises in Kenya 2008, Libya 2011 (with an unhappy
ending), Côte d’Ivoire 2011, Mali 2012 and Congo 2013, while soft
and hard balancing has been evident in the case of Syria since 2011.
Furthermore, the UN Security Council has increasingly relied on regional
ownership (for instance by the African Union, ECOWAS, and the Arab
League) in dealing with a number of these crises. This may be seen as an
attempt to respond to one of the downsides of the UN Security Council
as a stabilizer of (cooperative) great power management, namely that is
very difficult to adapt the system to the ongoing changes in the balance
of power (Friedner Parrat, 2014, 2017).
Arguably, the power transition is shaped by the great power preference
for the UN Security Council, and the balancing as well as cooperative
options it offers. New practices evolve, well-known practices continue,
but in different ways and driven by different actors. Russia and China
may take initiatives, the Western powers may balance softly, and the great
powers may seek the involvement of regional actors. Since vetoing can
be done politically, and not just militarily, the Security Council and the
underlying institution of great power management can be expected to
continue to moderate the incentives for full-blown rivalry or war, and the
risks of the transition.
Among the great powers themselves, there is an evident consensus on
great power management as a key institution, now increasingly unlimited
by US-hegemonic leadership, for better and worse, and a corresponding
consensus that the UN Security Council remains an organizational

cornerstone of world order. As shown by Zhang and Skak, China and
Russia are highly committed players in pursuit of not only status and
interests, but also a desire to shape and manage the new world order.
For Great Britain and France, their great power status utterly depends on
it. For several other Western and non-Western great powers, permanent
membership of the UN Security Council is a main goal. The exception
could be the US. As argued by Buzan and Cox, it has perhaps never been
keen on the collective institution of great power management, unless it
was in a position of unipolar control (which it may still be with regard
to the space regime, where it seeks collective great power management,
as argued by Stroikos). However, the US hardly has a choice, given the
magnitude of global security, economic and political problems and the
occasional or habitual ability of other great powers and actors to solve
problems collectively in various organizational or ad hoc settings. As
argued by Palmujoki in the analysis of the trade regime, you can only
affect the rules, if you join the negotiation table. In the unfolding world
order, the US is challenged to play the game of great power manage-
ment, and face up to the role, from a position of less superiority and the
requirements of negotiation and cooperation.
Sovereignty, Humanitarian Intervention and Democracy

The changing balance of power, and not least the broader decentral-
ization of power, has paved the way for more pluralist or Westphalian
understandings of international society. The Westphalian quarters, notably
China, India, Asia more generally, the majority of African and Latin
American states—have put more substance into a renewed strength-
ening of sovereignty and non-intervention. But the reproduction of the
constitutive principle of sovereignty as an institution, namely mutual
recognition, has arguably become so firmly institutionalized in interna-
tional society that a change in power is more likely to lead to operational
than fundamental changes. The same goes for the main post-Cold War,
and historical, qualification of absolute sovereignty: that mass atrocity
crimes are illegitimate, and may give rise to humanitarian intervention
(Knudsen, 1997; Wheeler, 2000).
The UN-based sanctions system, the principles and practices of the
R2P and humanitarian intervention, and (by implication) the dual court
system of the International Criminal Court, are likely to live on in the
new world order, but on the basis of longstanding solidarist principles

of international humanitarian law rather than specifically liberal doctrines
of political community (see Navari’s chapter on liberalism). This means,
basically, a set of practices that reproduce sovereignty and the mutual
recognition of it on the solidarist condition that mass atrocity crimes
are not tolerable in present-day international society. Such abuses are still
likely to come with a price, either a loss of prestige, political marginal-
ization or exclusion, sanctions or sometimes international enforcement
on the basis of UN Security Council authorization or regional owner-
ship. The alternative, namely that a state and its government is free to
do whatever it pleases to maintain internal order and power at home, is
hardly on the horizon.
The principles and practices of humanitarian intervention are likely to
undergo changes, and these are already evident, but more complex than
often anticipated. Rising powers will not be able to annul the legal and
institutional framework (which they have also endorsed at key moments
such as the 2005 UN adoption of the R2P), but they are likely to limit it,
or influence it. The veto and balancing are becoming an integrated part
of humanitarian intervention. New norms and practices concerning the
drafting of mandates, inclusion of regional actors and organizations, and
legitimate end-states are materializing. Some powers are inclined to limit
the use of the R2P principle and the resort to humanitarian intervention
(China) or to secure balancing outcomes (Russia). Others (some regional
organizations and powers) are more inclined to reform these principles
and practices to make humanitarian intervention a vehicle for the restora-
tion of domestic and regional order, the legitimate decisive role of the
region itself, and to integrate it with the regional rules and practices
such as the anti-coup principle in Africa (see the chapter by Jakobsen
and Knudsen). In the new world order, humanitarian intervention will be
negotiated and localized as a more equal and nuanced practice that will
rely on principles and practices of regional ownership to bring the global
R2P in line with regional outlooks.
At the same time, the BRICS—and much of the Global South, desire a
return to more traditional and Westphalian understandings of sovereignty.
To them democracy cannot be a pre-condition of legitimate membership
of international society or the enjoyment of the rights of sovereignty and
non-intervention, and this is supported not only by rejections of liberal-

democratic regime change in the absence of UN-authorization or regional
backing, but also by the absence of democratic rule as a requirement of
international law. In the unfolding new world order, the spread of democ-
racy depends on national and regional support for it, as in the case of
West Africa where the evolution of democracy has been supported by the
ECOWAS denial of military and constitutional coups. For the EU, the US
and other promoters of democracy, this means that democratic rule is not
something that can be enforced or pushed. Rather, it can be supported,
especially if it comes in versions, which are sensitive to regional systems
of rules and institutions.
International Law, Diplomacy and Trade

International law continues to shape international relations. As shown by
Schmidt, rising powers like China need to apply and practice international
law in order to translate material power into corresponding amounts of
authority, status and legitimacy. At the same time, they seek to affect
the evolution and interpretation of global rules, and to codify regional
variations, in accordance with their own interests, values and designs.
This is more likely in relative new areas of international law like envi-
ronmental, cyber and space law, since already established legal bodies of
for instance international humanitarian law command much authority and
legitimacy, which is not easy to change or dismantle. Instead, regional
powers and regional organizations seek to assert their own interpretations
and authority over established systems of law. China and Russia use their
veto power in the UN Security Council for this purpose, while the African
Union, ECOWAS and other (sub) regional organizations have placed the
authorization or legitimation of humanitarian intervention under African
charters. The logic of this development is regional ownership over the
enforcement of international law, also in the deliberations of the UN
Security Council.
The power transition and horizontal spread of power brings new
players to the table also at the level of great power diplomacy. This raises
the question as to whether cultural difference will lead to clashes over
diplomatic styles, or to misunderstandings, or whether the established
diplomatic conventions will serve as a part of a pluralist societal framework
which allows culturally different players, meaning especially Western and
Eastern powers, to engage in dialogue and negotiation. While Gaskarth
notes that this has been the historical role of diplomacy, he also expects
that Eastern powers like China and India will bring collectivist values
and personal leadership styles into the diplomatic system in ways that will
challenge the West.
Continuity and change is also discernable in the management of trade,
judging from the study by Palmujoki. This is evident in the continuing
operation of the WTO according to the principles of trade rather than the
logic of power transition, and in the growing role of ASEAN in the Asia–
Pacific region, rather than Chinese direction. In terms of trade, power
transition is shaped by international organizations and the underlying
fundamental institutions including sovereignty and equity. Moreover, the
balancing of power and interests is complex, multi-agentic and not always
in line with rationalistic power transition theory.
War
With regard to the institution of war, treated only in part in this volume,
there are reasons to believe that the basic principles and rules will remain
in place under post-hegemonic conditions. The constitutive principle of
war as an institution, namely that the legitimate use of force is reserved for
self-defense and collective defense of the common good, meaning inter-
national peace and security and the prevention of mass atrocity crimes,
has been challenged but not undone since the millennium. At critical
moments such as the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the Russian
annexation of Crimea in 2014, the resort to force was rejected as illegiti-
mate in UN Security Council meetings and General Assembly resolutions
(Crawford, 2014; Knudsen, 2004). In contrast, the use of force in Syria
has sent mixed signals regarding legitimacy, since regional and global
powers supported different sides in the atrocious civil war with reference
to a variety of more or less doubtful legal standards surrounding collec-
tive self-defense, humanitarian intervention and the limitation of terror.
Equally, however, the Russian use of airpower was heavily criticized for the
targeting of civilians and populated areas, while the Kurdish and interna-
tional rescue operation of the Yazidi population in the Sinjar Mountain in
2014 was widely condoned.
The relative legal clarity of the rules of war and the indications that they
matter cannot conceal certain important changes in the actual resort to
force. With the partial exception of France, the Western great powers have
become less keen on military intervention, also for the sake of peace and
humanitarian standards, Russia has become more keen on hard balancing

(Georgia 2008, Ukraine 2014, Syria 2015), China has taken decisive steps
into armed peacekeeping (Mali 2012) and African states and organiza-
tions have become full players in humanitarian intervention. These are
mixed signals indicating a more power-political game on the one hand,
but also a broader engagement in collective intervention based on UN
and regional organizational mandates on the other.
The possession of nuclear weapons makes open great power war almost
unthinkable, and proxy wars risky (though not necessarily too risky for
Russia as evident from the case of Syria). Instead, ‘hybrid warfare’ (the
blending of conventional, irregular and cyber warfare) has become a
habitual element in the attempt by some great powers to challenge, or
defend, the waning hegemonic order, and in the unfolding struggle over
great power status and position (Paul et al., 2014). Without recourse to
traditional war, hybrid warfare is one of several novel options to signal or
demonstrate great power status, position and intent alongside the revival
of traditional practices of hard balancing, soft balancing, coercive diplo-
macy and concerted intervention that go back to the Napoleonic and
post-Napoleonic eras. These novel and classical forms of force are likely
elements in the unfolding post-hegemonic world order. They are not
necessarily at odds with a stable balance of power but they imply consid-
erable challenges to both the jus ad bellum (the legal resort to force) and
jus in bello (the legal conduct of the use of force) bodies of international
law.
Pluralism, Solidarism and Regional Ownership

According to Buzan and Cox, the evolving world order is characterized
by ‘deep pluralism’, because it is rooted in civilizational differences, all
empowered and connected by modernity, and because the structure of
wealth, power and political authority are becoming more diffuse, while
US hegemony is losing its material and moral bases. At the same time, key
players like China, Russia, and most of the Global South actively promote
a pluralist world order based on mutual recognition of sovereignty, non-
intervention and the tolerance of difference (which is, of course, not the
same as always respecting such principles). These remain key elements in
the constitution of modern international society (Jackson, 2000) and an
obvious source of ongoing international order following the power shift
and regionalization (Hurrell, 2018).
In Zhang’s analysis of China’s approach to world order, pluralism

accounts for the resilience of international society. This is supported by
Kopra’s argument that China is bound by the rules on sovereign juris-
diction in its Arctic policies, firstly because it confirmed them upon its
entry as an observer member state, secondly because this is China’s own
program for world order. Skak’s discussion of Russia indicates a pluralist
orientation as well, even if revisionism and the pursuit of national inter-
ests are always evident in its foreign and security policies. There is also
a strong pluralist message in the analyses of international law, diplomacy
and trade in the chapters by Schmidt, Gaskarth and Palmujoki.
This does not mean that solidarism is down and out in the new
world order as a set of organizing principles and practices. In Diez’
analysis, the EU has understood and accepted the basically pluralist
organization of world order, which means that the normative power of
Europe now lies in a non-preaching promotion of solidarist principles.
According to Skak, Russia has not been immune to solidarist princi-
ples and organization, judging from its relationship with the Council of
Europe. Moreover, the potential and occasional resort to humanitarian
intervention against mass atrocity crimes—a cornerstone of the solidarist
conception of international society (Bull, 1966)—is likely to survive in
the post-hegemonic and multipolar world order, but divorced from larger
liberal doctrines and under regional influence (see the chapters by Navari
and Jakobsen and Knudsen). In the case of African organizations, espe-
cially the African Union and ECOWAS, solidarist and post-colonial values
have merged into an alignment of humanitarian concerns, state-building
and international equality.
The resulting diagnosis for the unfolding world order is the evolution
of a larger pluralist design in which the retreat and widespread rejection
of hegemonic rule will fuel the formation of distinct regional interna-
tional societies and the revision of global rules and decision-making power
at the center, but not necessarily to the exclusion of solidarist rules and
institutions. This underlines the importance of regional ownership as an
institutional device for the provision of legitimacy and the adaptation of
global rules to regional norms and circumstances. The deeper potential is
an integration of global and regional international societies even under the
forces of deep structural and political pluralism, especially when regional
ownership is incorporated in global organizations like the UN.
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PART I
Theoretical Investigations
CHAPTER 2
Power Transition and World Order: Three

Rival Theories and the Dynamics of Change
Tonny Brems Knudsen
Two decades into the twenty-first century the relative decline of the
United States (US) and the rise of China (Layne, 2012; Mearsheimer,
2019) looks a lot like a classical power-transition situation involving
a risk of great power war and profound international turbulence over
hegemonic succession (Gilpin, 1981; Organski, 1968). However, the
possession of nuclear weapons makes open great power war almost
unthinkable and proxy wars risky. Moreover, the current power transi-
tion seems to lead toward a post-hegemonic, multipolar and regionalized
world order, and a power diffusion in all directions, rather than simply
a hegemonic succession (Hurrell, 2018; Ikenberry, 2009). For these
reasons, among others, great power war seems less likely than predicted
by classical power-transition theory, even to hard-nosed realist observers
(Mearsheimer, 2019).
T. B. Knudsen (B)
Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
e-mail: tbrems@ps.au.dk
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 31

Switzerland AG 2022
T. B. Knudsen and C. Navari (eds.), Power Transition in the Anarchical
Society, Palgrave Studies in International Relations,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97711-5_2
32 T. B. KNUDSEN
At the same time there is a broad consensus in the discipline of

International Relations (IR) that the post-Cold War order is under trans-
formation (Hurrell, 2018; Ikenberry, 2009, 2018, 2020; Mearsheimer,
2019; Wæver, 2018). However, there is considerably less agreement
about the direction of change and the character of the new world order.
The differences do not arise so much from different readings of the
evidence as from different analytical perspectives: the explanatory domains
of the major theories differ, so that the different theories not only read
the evidence differently, but also have alternative views of what constitutes
relevant evidence. This is certainly true for the question of power tran-
sition and the new world order. Moreover, the main theories on power
transition and world order are all preoccupied with a revision of their
traditional assumptions and expectations, and the associated attempts
to translate revised theories into convincing and coherent world order
scenarios.
The purpose of this chapter is to clarify the different explanatory
domains of the main theoretical approaches to power transition, their
most recent revisions and their competing world order analyses and
predictions. In particular, the chapter seeks to clarify and develop the
distinctive contribution of the international society approach of the
English School as a theory of fundamental institutional change, and to
contribute to an updated framework of analysis on the subject of power
transition and world order. This involves an appreciation of contributions
from other theoretical perspectives, in particular constructivist ones which
share the English School understanding of international order as basi-
cally social, and Global South perspectives which offer theoretical and
historical support of English School predictions concerning the forma-
tion of regional international societies and the push for a post-colonial
and pluralist world order. On key points, the resulting social-institutional
perspective on power transition and the new world order is in opposition
to both realism and liberalism, but it is also an active engagement with
these streams of thought on, respectively, the nature of power and the
role of international organizations.
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over that scene a hundred times and a hundred to that, roused to its
importance only after it was over. What had been the meaning of it? never
to this day had she been quite able to make up her mind, nobody had talked
to her of her mother’s death. Instead of those lingerings upon the sad
details, upon the last words, upon all the circumstances which preceded that
catastrophe, which are usual in such circumstances, there had been a hush
of everything, which had driven the subject back upon her mind, and made
her dwell upon it doubly. Time had a little effaced the impression, but the
return to the Square had brought it back again in greater force, and in those
lonely hours which the girl had spent there at first, left to her own
resources, many a perplexed and perplexing fancy had crowded her mind.
The new life, however, which had set in later, the companionship, the gentle
gaieties, the new sentiment, altogether strange and wonderful, which had
arisen in her young bosom, had quietly pushed forth all painful thoughts.
But now, with the pang of parting already in her heart, and the sense, so
easily taken up at her years and so tragically felt, that life never could again
be what it had been—a certain pang of opposition to her father had come
into Cara’s mind. Going away!—to break her heart and alter her life
because he would not bear the associations of his home! was a man thus,
after having all that was good in existence himself, to deprive others of their
happiness for the sake of his recollections? but when this further revelation
fell upon his conduct, Cara’s whole heart turned and shrank from her father.
She could not bear the suggestion, and yet it returned to her in spite of
herself. The shame of it, the wrong of it, the confused and dark ideas of
suspicion and doubt which had been moving vaguely in her mind, all came
together in a painful jumble. She put away her flowers, flinging away half
of them in the tumult of her thoughts. It was too peaceful an occupation,
and left her mind too free for discussion with herself. The girl’s whole
being was roused, she scarcely knew why. Love! she had never thought of
it, she did not know what it meant, and Oswald, whom her aunt supposed to
entertain that wonderful occult sentiment for her, certainly did not do so,
but found in her only a pleasant confidante, a friendly sympathiser.
Something prevented Cara from inquiring further, from asking herself any
questions. She did not venture even to think in the recesses of her delicate
bosom, that Edward Meredith was anything more to her, or she to him, than
was Miss Cherry. What was the use of asking why or wherefore? She had
begun to be happy, happier certainly than she had been before; and here it
was to end. The new world, so full of strange, undefined lights and
reflections, was to break up like a dissolving view, and the old world to
settle down again with all its old shadows. The thought brought a few hot,
hasty tears to her eyes whenever it surprised her as it did now. Poor
inconsistent child! She forgot how dull the Square had been when she came,
how bitterly she had regretted her other home in those long dreary evenings
when there was no sound in the house except the sound of the hall-door
closing upon her father when he went out. Ah! upon her father as he went
out! He who was old, whose life was over (for fifty is old age to seventeen),
he could not tolerate the interruption of his habits, of his talk with his
friend; but she in the first flush of her beginning was to be shut out from
everything, banished from her friends without a word! And then there crept
on Cara’s mind a recollection of those evening scenes over the fire: Aunt
Cherry bending her brows over her needlework, and Edward reading in the
light of the lamp. How innocent it was; how sweet; and it was all over, and
for what? Poor little Cara’s mind seemed to turn round. That sense of
falsehood and insincerity even in the solid earth under one’s feet, which is
the most bewildering and sickening of all moral sensations, overcame her. It
was for her mother’s sake, because of the love he bore her, that he could not
be at ease in this room, which had been so specially her mother’s; all those
years while he had been wandering, it was because the loss of his wife was
fresh upon his mind, and the blow so bitter that he could not resume his old
life; but now what was this new breaking up of his life? Not for her
mother’s sake, but for Mrs. Meredith’s! Cara paused with her head
swimming, and looked round her to see if anything was steady in the
sudden whirl. What was steady? Oswald, whom everybody (she could see)
supposed to be ‘in love,’ whatever that was, with herself, was, as she knew,
‘in love,’ as he called it, with somebody else. Cara did not associate her
own sentiments for anyone with that feeling which Oswald expressed for
Agnes, but she felt that her own position was false, as his position was
false, and Mrs. Meredith’s and her father’s. Was there nothing in the world
that was true?
The next day or two was filled with somewhat dolorous arrangements
for breaking up again the scarcely-established household. Miss Cherry
occupied herself with many sighs in packing away the silver, shutting up
the linen, all the household treasures, and covering the furniture with
pinafores. Cara’s clothes were in process of packing, Cara’s room was being
dismantled. Mr. Beresford’s well-worn portmanteaux had been brought out,
and John and Cook, half pleased at the renewed leisure which began to
smile upon them, half-vexed at the cessation of their importance as
purveyors for and managers of their master’s ‘establishment,’ were looking
forward to the great final ‘cleaning up,’ which was to them the chief event
of the whole. All was commotion in the house. The intercourse with the
house next door had partially ceased; Oswald still came in the morning, and
Edward in the evening; but there had been no communication between the
ladies of the two houses since the evening when Mr. Beresford took final
leave of Mrs. Meredith. To say that there were not hard thoughts of her in
the minds of the Beresfords would be untrue, and yet it was impossible that
anyone could have been more innocent than she was. All that she had done
was to be kind, which was her habit and nature. ‘But too kind,’ Miss Cherry
said privately to herself, ‘too kind! Men must not be too much encouraged.
They should be kept in their place,’ and then the good soul cried at the
thought of being hard upon her neighbour. As for Cara, she never put her
thoughts on the subject into words, being too much wounded by the mere
suggestion. But in her mind, too, there was a sense that Mrs. Meredith must
be wrong. It could not be but that she must be wrong; and they avoided
each other by instinct. After poor James was gone, Miss Cherry promised
herself she would call formally and bid good-by to that elderly enchantress
who had made poor James once more an exile. Nothing could exceed now
her pity for ‘poor James.’ She forgot the darts with which she herself had
slain him, and all that had been said to his discredit. He was the sufferer
now, which was always enough to turn the balance of Miss Cherry’s
thoughts.
When things had arrived at this pitch, a sudden and extraordinary change
occurred all at once in Mr. Beresford’s plans. For a day no communications
whatever took place between No. 7 and No. 8 in the Square. Oswald did not
come in the morning—which was a thing that might be accounted for; but
Edward did not appear in the evening—which was more extraordinary.
Miss Cherry had brought out her art-needlework, notwithstanding the
forlorn air of semi-dismantling which the drawing-room had already
assumed, and Cara had her hemming ready. ‘It will only be for a night or
two more,’ said Miss Cherry, ‘and we may just as well be comfortable; but
she sighed; and as for Cara, the expression of her young countenance had
changed altogether to one of nervous and impatient trouble. She was pale,
her eyes had a fitful glimmer. Her aunt’s little ways fretted her as they had
never done before. Now and then a sense of the intolerable seized upon the
girl. She would not put up with the little daily contradictions to which
everybody is liable. She would burst out into words of impatience
altogether foreign to her usual character. She was fretted beyond her powers
of endurance. But at this moment she calmed down again. She acquiesced
in Miss Cherry’s little speech and herself drew the chairs into their usual
places, and got the book which Edward had been reading to them. The
ladies were very quiet, expecting their visitor; the fire sent forth little puffs
of flame and crackles of sound, the clock ticked softly, everything else was
silent. Cara fell into a muse of many fancies, more tranquil than usual, for
the idea that he would not come had not entered her mind. At least they
would be happy to-night. This thought lulled her into a kind of feverish
tranquillity, and even kept her from rousing, as Miss Cherry did, to the
sense that he had not come at his usual hour and might not be coming.
‘Edward is very late,’ Miss Cherry said at last. ‘Was there any arrangement
made, Cara, that he was not to come?’
‘Arrangement? that he was not to come!’
‘My dear,’ said good Miss Cherry, who had been very dull for the last
hour, ‘you have grown so strange in your ways. I don’t want to blame you,
Cara; but how am I to know? Oswald comes in the morning and Edward in
the evening; but how am I to know? If one has said more to you than the
other, if you think more of one than the other, you never tell me. Cara, is it
quite right, dear? I thought you would have told me that day that Oswald
came and wanted to see you alone; of course, we know what that meant; but
you evaded all my questions; you never would tell me.’
‘Aunt Cherry, it was because there was nothing to tell. I told you there
would be nothing.’
‘Then there ought to have been something, Cara. One sees what Edward
feels, poor boy, and I am very sorry for him. And it is hard upon him—hard
upon us all to be so treated. Young people ought to be honest in these
matters. Yes, dear, it is quite true. I am not pleased. I have not been pleased
ever since——’
‘Aunt Cherry,’ said the girl, her face crimson, her eyes full of tears, ‘why
do you upbraid me now—is this the moment? As if I were not unhappy
enough. What does Edward feel? Does he too expect me to tell him of
something that does not exist?’
‘Poor Edward! All I can say is, that if we are unhappy, he is unhappy
too, and unhappier than either you or me, for he is——. Poor boy; but he is
young and he will get over it,’ said Miss Cherry with a deep sigh.
‘Oh, hush! hush! but tell me of him—hush!’ said Cara, eagerly; ‘I hear
him coming up the stairs.’
There was someone certainly coming up stairs, but it was not Edward’s
youthful footstep, light and springy. It was a heavier and slower tread. They
listened, somewhat breathless, being thus stopped in an interesting
discussion, and wondered at the slow approach of these steps. At last the
door opened slowly, and Mr. Beresford, with some letters in his hand, came
into the room. He came quite up to them before he said anything. The
envelope which he held in his hand seemed to have contained both the open
letters which he carried along with it, and one of them had a black edge. He
was still running his eyes over this as he entered the room.
‘I think,’ he said, standing with his hand upon Cara’s table, at the place
where Edward usually sat, ‘that you had better stop your packing for the
moment. An unfortunate event has happened, and I do not think now that I
can go away—not so soon at least; it would be heartless, it would be
unkind!’
‘What is it?’ cried Miss Cherry, springing to her feet. ‘Oh, James, not
any bad news from the Hill?’
‘No, no; nothing that concerns us. The fact is,’ said Mr. Beresford,
gazing into the dim depths of the mirror and avoiding their eyes, ‘Mr.
Meredith, the father of the boys, has just died in India. The news has come
only to-day.’
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE HOUSE OF MOURNING.
The news which had produced so sudden and startling an effect upon the
inmates of No. 7 had been known early in the morning of the same day to
the inmates of No. 8. This it was which had prevented either of the young
men from paying their ordinary visits; but the wonder was that no rumour
should have reached at least the kitchen of Mr. Beresford’s house of the sad
news which had arrived next door. Probably the reason was that the servants
were all fully occupied, and had no time for conversation. The news had
come early, conveyed by Mr. Sommerville personally, and by post from the
official head-quarters, for Mr. Meredith was a civil servant of standing and
distinction. There was nothing extraordinary or terrible in it. He had been
seized with one of the rapid diseases of the climate, and had succumbed like
so many other men, leaving everything behind him settled and in order. It
was impossible that a well-regulated and respectable household could have
been carried on with less reference to the father of the children, and
nominal master of the house, than Mrs. Meredith’s was; but perhaps this
was one reason why his loss fell upon them all like a thunderbolt. Dead! no
one had ever thought of him as a man who could die. The event brought
him near them as with the rapidity of lightning. Vaguely in their minds, or
at least in the wife’s mind, there had been the idea of some time or other
making up to him for that long separation and estrangement—how, she did
not inquire, and when, she rather trembled to think of, but some time. The
idea of writing a kinder letter than usual to him had crossed her mind that
very morning. They did not correspond much; they had mutually found
each other incompatible, unsuitable, and lately Mrs. Meredith had been
angry with the distant husband, who had been represented as disapproving
of her. But this morning, no later, some thrill of more kindly feeling had
moved her. She had realised all at once that it might be hard for him to be
alone in the world, and without that solace of the boys, which from
indifference, or from compunction, he had permitted her to have without
interference all these years. She had thought that after all it was cruel, after
such a long time, to deny him a share in his own children, and she had
resolved, being in a serious mood and agitated state of mind, to make the
sacrifice, or to attempt to make the sacrifice more freely, and to write to him
to express her gratitude to him for leaving her both the boys so long; had
not he a right to them no less than hers?—in the eye of nature no less, and
in the eye of the law more. Yet he had been generous to her, and had never
disputed her possession of her children. These were the softening thoughts
that had filled her mind before she came downstairs. And no sooner had she
come down than the news arrived. He was dead. When those die who are
the most beloved and cherished, the best and dearest, that calamity which
rends life asunder and overclouds the world for us, has seldom in it the
same sickening vertigo of inappropriateness which makes the soul sick
when someone essentially earthly is suddenly carried away into the unseen,
with which he seems to have had nothing to do all his previous life. He!
dead! a man so material, of the lower earth. What could dying be to him?
What connection had he with the mystery and solemnity of the unseen? The
vulgar and commonplace awe us more at these dread portals than the noble
or great. What have they to do there? What had a man like Mr. Meredith to
do there? Yet he had gone, no one knowing, and accomplished that journey
which classes those who have made it, great and small, with the gods. A
hundred discordant thoughts entered into his wife’s mind—compunction,
and wonder, and solemn trembling. Could he have known what she had
been thinking that morning? Was it some dumb approach of his soul to hers
which had aroused these more tender thoughts? Had he been aware of all
that had gone on in her mind since the time when, she knowing of it, he had
died? Nature has always an instinctive certainty, whatever philosophy may
say against it, and however little religion may say in favour of it, that this
sacred and mysterious event of death somehow enlarges and expands the
being of those who have passed under its power. Since we lost them out of
our sight, it seems so necessary to believe that they see through us more
than ever they did, and know what is passing within the hearts to which
they were kindred. Why should the man, who living had concerned himself
so little about what his wife did, know now instantaneously all about it,
having died? She could not have given a reason, but she felt it to be so. The
dark ocean, thousands of miles of it, what was that to an emancipated soul?
He had died in India; but he was there, passing mysteriously through the
doors, standing by her, ‘putting things into her head,’ in this corner of
England. Which of us has not felt the same strange certainty? All at once
the house seemed full of him, even to the children, who had scarcely known
him. He was dead; passed into a world which mocks at distance, which
knows nothing of fatigue. He was as God in some mysterious way, able to
be everywhere, able to influence the living unconsciously, seeing, hearing
them—simply because he was dead, and had become to mortal vision
incapable of either seeing or hearing more.
There is nothing more usual than to rail at the dreadful and often unduly
prolonged moment between death and the final ceremonial which clears us
away from cumbering the living soil any longer; but this moment is often a
blessing to the survivors. In such a case as this ‘the bereaved family’ did not
know what to do. How were they to gain that momentary respite from the
common round? If the blinds were drawn down, and the house shut up,
according to the usual formula, that would be purely fictitious; for of course
he had been buried long ago. Edward paused with the shutter in his hand
when about to close it, struck by this reflection, and Oswald gave vent to it
plainly—‘What’s the good? he’s in his grave long ago.’ Mrs. Meredith had
retired to her room on the receipt of the news, where her maid took her her
cup of tea; and the young men sat down again, and ate their breakfast, as it
were under protest, ashamed of themselves for the good appetites they had,
and cutting off here and there a corner of their usual substantial meal, to
prove to themselves that they were not quite without feeling. What were
they to do to make the fact evident that they had just heard of their father’s
death, and to separate this day, which was to them as the day of his death,
from other days? They were very much embarrassed to know how they
were to manage this. To abstain altogether from their usual occupations was
the only thing which instinctively occurred to them. They sat down after
breakfast was over, as though it had been a doubly solemn dolorous Sunday,
on which they could not even go to church. Edward was doubtful even
about The Times, and Oswald hesitated about going to his smoking-room as
usual. A cigar seemed a levity when there was a death in the house. On the
whole, however, it was Oswald who settled the matter most easily, for he
began a copy of verses, ‘To the memory of my Father,’ which was a very
suitable way indeed of getting through the first hours, and amusing too.
The house was very still all the morning, and then there was another
subdued meal. Meals are a great thing to fall back upon when young
persons of healthful appetite, not broken down by grief, feel themselves
compelled to decorous appearance of mourning. By this time Oswald and
Edward both felt that not to eat was an absurd way of doing honour to their
dead father, and accordingly they had an excellent luncheon; though their
mother still ‘did not feel able,’ her maid reported, to come down. After this
the two young men went out together to take a walk. This, too, was a kind
of solemn Sabbatical exercise, which they had not taken in the same way
since they were boys at school together. When they met any acquaintance,
one of them would bow formally, or stretch out a hand to be shaken,
passing on, too grave for talk, while the other paused to explain the ‘bad
news’ they had received. When it was a friend of Oswald’s, Edward did
this, and when it was Edward’s friend, Oswald did it. This little innocent
solemn pantomime was so natural and instinctive that it impressed everyone
more or less, and themselves most of all. They began to feel a certain
importance in their position, enjoying the sympathy, the kind and pitying
looks of all they met as they strolled along slowly arm-in-arm. They had not
been so much united, or felt so strong a connection with each other, for
years. Then they began to discuss in subdued tones the probable issues.
‘Will it change our position?’ Edward asked.
‘I think not, unless to better it,’ said Oswald. ‘I don’t think you need go
to India now unless you like.’
He had just said this, when they were both addressed by someone
coming up behind them, as hasty and business-like as they were languid and
solemn.
‘I say, can you tell me whereabouts the India Office is?’ said the new
comer. ‘Good-morning. I shouldn’t have disturbed you but that I
remembered you were going to India too. I’m in for my last Exam., that is, I
shall be directly, and I’ve got something to do at the India Office; but the
fact is, I don’t know where to go.’
It was Edward who directed him, Oswald standing by holding his
brother’s arm. Roger Burchell was very brisk, looking better than usual in
the fresh spring sunshine, and Oswald’s eye was caught by his face, which
was like someone he had seen recently—he could not remember where—
the ruddy, mellow, warmly-toned complexion, brown eyes, and dusky gold
of the hair. Who was it? Roger, being out of his depth in London, was glad
to see faces he knew, even though he loved them little; and then he had
heard that Cara was to return to the Hill, and felt that he had triumphed, and
feared them no more.
‘I hope your neighbours are well?’ he said. ‘They are coming back, I
hear, to the country. I suppose they don’t care for London after being
brought up in a country place? I should not myself.’
‘Mr. Beresford is going abroad,’ said Edward, coldly.
‘Everybody is going abroad, I think; but few people so far as we are. I
don’t think I should care for the Continent—just the same old thing over
and over; but India should be all fresh. You are going to India too, ain’t
you? at least, that is what I heard.’
‘I am not sure,’ said Edward. ‘The truth is, we have had very bad news
this morning. My father died at Calcutta——’
‘Oh, I beg your pardon,’ said Roger, who had kind feelings. ‘I should not
have stopped you had I known; I thought you both looked grave. I am very
sorry. I hope you don’t mind——?’
‘Don’t mind my father’s death?’
‘Oh, I mean don’t mind my having stopped you. Perhaps it was rude; but
I said to myself, “Here is someone I know.” Don’t let me detain you now. I
am very sorry, but I wish you were coming to India,’ said Roger, putting out
his big fist to shake hands. Oswald eluded the grip, but Edward took it
cordially. He was not jealous of Roger, but divined in him an unfortunate
love like his own.
‘Poor fellow!’ Edward said as they went on.
‘Poor fellow!—why poor fellow? he is very well off. He is the very sort
of man to get on; he has no feelings, no sensitiveness, to keep him back.’
‘It is scarcely fair to decide on such slight acquaintance that he has no
feelings; but he is going to India.’
‘Ned, you are a little bit of a fool, though you’re a clever fellow. Going
to India is the very best thing a man can do. My mother has always made a
fuss about it.’
‘And yourself——’
‘Myself! I am not the sort of fellow. I am no good. I get dead beat; but
you that are all muscle and sinew, and that have no tie except my mother
——’
‘That to be sure,’ said Edward with a sigh, and he wondered did his
brother now at last mean to be confidential and inform him of the
engagement with Cara? His heart began to beat more quickly. How different
that real sentiment was from the fictitious one which they had both been
playing with! Edward’s breath came quickly. Yes, it would be better to
know it—to get it over; and then there would be no further uncertainty; but
at the same time he was afraid—afraid both of the fact and of Oswald’s way
of telling it. If Cara’s name was spoken with levity, how should he be able
to bear it? Needless to say, however, that Oswald had no intention of talking
about Cara, and nothing to disclose on that subject at least.
‘You that have no tie—except my mother,’ repeated Oswald, ‘(and of
course she would always have me), I would think twice before I gave up
India. It’s an excellent career, nothing better. The governor (poor old
fellow) did very well, I have always heard, and you would do just as well,
or more so, with the benefit of his connection. I wonder rather that my
mother kept us out of the Indian set, except the old Spy. Poor old man, I
daresay he will be cut up about this. He’ll know better than anyone,’
continued Oswald, with a change of tone, ‘what arrangements have been
made.’
‘I wonder if it will be long before we can hear?’ Thus they went on
talking in subdued tones, the impression gradually wearing off, and even
the feeling of solemn importance—the sense that, though not unhappy, they
ought to conduct themselves with a certain gravity of demeanour becoming
sons whose father was just dead. They had no very distinct impression
about the difference to be made in their own future, and even Oswald was
not mercenary in the ordinary sense of the word. He thought it would be but
proper and right that he should be made ‘an eldest son;’ but he did not think
it likely—and in that case, though he would be absolutely independent, he
probably would not be very rich—not rich enough to make work on his own
part unnecessary. So the excitement on this point was mild. They could not
be worse off than they were—that one thing he was sure of, and for the rest,
one is never sure of anything. By this time they had reached the region of
Clubs. Oswald thought there was nothing out of character in just going in
for half an hour to see the papers. A man must see the papers whoever lived
or died. When the elder brother unbent thus far, the younger brother went
home. He found his mother still in her own room taking a cup of tea. She
had been crying, for her eyes were red, and she had a shawl wrapped round
her, the chill of sudden agitation and distress having seized upon her. Mr.
Meredith’s picture, which had not hitherto occupied that place of honour,
had been placed above her mantelpiece, and an old Indian box, sweet with
the pungent odour of the sandal-wood, stood on the little table at her elbow.
‘I was looking over some little things your dear papa gave me, long before
you were born,’ she said, with tears in her voice. ‘Oh, my poor John!’
‘Mother, you must not think me unfeeling; but I knew so little of him.’
‘Yes, that was true—yes, that was true. Oh, Edward, I have been asking
myself was it my fault? But I could not live in India, and he was so fond of
it. He was always well. He did not understand how anyone could be half
killed by the climate. I never should have come home but for the doctors,
Edward.’
She looked at him so appealingly that Edward felt it necessary to take all
the responsibility unhesitatingly upon himself. ‘I am sure you did not leave
him as long as you could help it, mother.’
‘No, I did not—that is just the truth—as long as I could help it; but it
does seem strange that we should have been parted for so much of our lives.
Oh, what a comfort it is, Edward, to feel that whatever misunderstanding
there might be, he knows all and understands everything now!’
‘With larger, other eyes than ours,’ said Edward piously, and the boy
believed it in the confidence of his youth. But how the narrow-minded
commonplace man who had been that distinguished civil servant, John
Meredith, should all at once have come to this godlike greatness by the
mere fact of dying, neither of them could have told. Was it nature in them
that asserted it to be so? or some prejudice of education and tradition so
deeply woven into their minds that they did not know it to be anything but
nature? But be it instinct or be it prejudice, what more touching sentiment
ever moved a human bosom? He had not been a man beloved in his life; but
he was as the gods now.
By-and-by, however—for reverential and tender as this sentiment was, it
was neither love nor grief, and could not pretend to the dominion of these
monarchs of the soul—the mother and son fell into talk about secondary
matters. She had sent for her dressmaker about her mourning, and given
orders for as much crape as could be piled upon one not gigantic female
figure, and asked anxiously if the boys had done their part—had got the
proper depth of hatbands, the black studs, &c., that were wanted. ‘I suppose
you may have very dark grey for the mourning; but it must be very dark,’
she said.
‘And you, mother, must you wear that cap—that mountain of white
stuff?’
‘Certainly, my dear,’ said Mrs. Meredith with fervour. ‘You don’t think I
would omit any sign of respect? And what do I care whether it is becoming
or not? Oh, Edward, your dear papa has a right to all that we can do to show
respect.’
There was a faltering in her lip as of something more she had to say, but
decorum restrained her. That first day nothing ought to be thought of,
nothing should be mentioned, she felt, in which consolation had a part. But
when the night came after that long, long day, which they all felt to be like a
year, the secret comfort in her heart came forth as she bade her boy good-
night. ‘Edward, oh, I wish you had gone years ago, when you might have
been a comfort to him! but now that there is no need——’ Here she stopped
and kissed him, and looked at him with a smile in her wet eyes, which, out
of ‘respect,’ she would no more have suffered to come to her lips than she
would have worn pink ribbons in her cap, and said quickly, ‘You need not
go to India now.’
This was the blessing with which she sent him away from her. She cried
over it afterwards, in penitence looking at her husband’s portrait, which had
been brought out of a corner in the library downstairs. Poor soul, it was
with a pang of remorse that she felt she was going to be happy in her
widow’s mourning. If she could have restrained herself, she would have
kept in these words expressive of a latent joy which came by means of
sorrow. She stood and looked at the picture with a kind of prayer for pardon
in her heart—Oh, forgive me! with once more that strange confidence that
death had given the attributes of God to the man who was dead. If he was
near, as she felt him to be, and could hear the breathing of that prayer in her
heart, then surely, as Edward said, it was with ‘larger, other eyes’ that he
must look upon her, understanding many things which up to his last day he
had not been able to understand.
But they were all very glad when the day was over—that first day which
was not connected with the melancholy business or presence of death which
‘the family’ are supposed to suffer from so deeply, yet which proves a kind
of chapel and seclusion for any grief which is not of the deepest and most
overwhelming kind. The Merediths would have been glad even of a mock
funeral, a public assuming of the trappings of woe, a distinct period after
which life might be taken up again. But there was nothing at all to interrupt
their life, and the whole affair remained unauthentic and strange to them.
Meanwhile, in the house next door these strange tidings had made a sudden
tumult. The packings had been stopped. The servants were angry at their
wasted trouble; the ladies both silenced and startled, with thoughts in their
minds less natural and peaceful than the sympathy for Mrs. Meredith, which
was the only feeling they professed. As for Mr. Beresford himself, it would
be difficult to describe his feelings, which were of a very strange and
jumbled character. He was glad to have the bondage taken off his own
movements, and to feel that he was free to go where he pleased, to visit as
he liked; and the cause of his freedom was not really one which moved him
to sorrow though it involved many curious and uncomfortable questions.
How much better the unconscious ease of his feelings had been before
anyone had meddled! but now so many questions were raised! Yet his mind
was relieved of that necessity of immediate action which is always so
disagreeable to a weak man. Yes, his mind was entirely relieved. He took a
walk about his room, feeling that by-and-by it would be his duty to go back
again to Mrs. Meredith’s drawing-room to ask what he could do for her, and
give her his sympathy. Not to-night, but soon; perhaps even to-morrow. The
cruel pressure of force which had been put upon him, and which he had
been about to obey by the sacrifice of all his comforts, relaxed and melted
away. It was a relief, an undeniable relief; but yet it was not all plain-sailing
—the very relief was an embarrassment too.
CHAPTER XXXII.
TAKING UP DROPT STITCHES.
Next day Mr. Beresford paid Mrs. Meredith a visit of condolence. It was
natural and necessary, considering their friendship; but the manner in which
that friendship had been interrupted, and the occasion upon which it was
resumed, were both embarrassing. It had been a short note from Maxwell
which had communicated the news to him, and in this it had been taken for
granted that he would now remain at home. Old Mr. Sommerville had
himself communicated the information to Maxwell, and his letter was
enclosed. ‘I hear your friend Beresford had made up his mind to go away,
out of consideration for Mrs. Meredith,’ he had written, ‘which was very
gentlemanly on his part, and showed fine feeling. I think it right
accordingly to let you know at once of the great change which has taken
place in her position. I have received the news this morning of her husband
and my poor friend John Meredith’s death at Calcutta on the 3rd inst. It was
sudden, but not quite unexpected, as he had been suffering from fever. This
of course changes Mrs. Meredith’s situation altogether. She is now a widow,
and of course responsible to no one. I would not for the world be
answerable for depriving her of the sympathy of a kind friend, which may in
the long run be so important for her, at a period of trouble. So I trust you
will communicate the news to your friend with the least possible delay. I
have not seen Mrs. Meredith; but as they have been long separated, I do not
doubt that she bears the loss with Christian composure,’ said the sharp-
witted old man. ‘I send you old Sommerville’s letter,’ Mr. Maxwell added
on his own account; ‘it does not require any comment of mine; and of
course you will act as you think proper; but my own opinion is, that he is an
old busybody, making suggestions of patent absurdity.’ Mr. Beresford was
much nettled by this note. Whatever Sommerville’s suggestion might mean
it was for him to judge of it, not Maxwell, who thrust himself so calmly into
other people’s business. Sommerville’s letter might not have pleased him by
itself, but Maxwell’s gloss was unpardonable. He tore it up and threw it into
his waste-basket with unnecessary energy. But for that perhaps he might
have felt more abashed by the embarrassing character of the reunion; but
being thus schooled, he rebelled. He went to the house next door in the
afternoon, towards the darkening. The spring sunshine had died away, and
the evening was cold as winter almost. There had been no reception that
day—visitor after visitor had been sent away with the news of the
‘bereavement.’ The same word has to be used whether the loss is one which
crushes all delight out of life, or one which solemnly disturbs the current for
a moment, to leave it only brighter than before. All the servants at Mrs.
Meredith’s were preternaturally solemn. The aspect of the house could not
have been more funereal had half the population succumbed. Already, by
some wonderful effort of millinery, the maids as well as their mistress had
got their black gowns.
Mrs. Meredith herself sat in the drawing-room, crape from head to foot,
in all the crispness of a fresh widow’s cap. Never was black so black, or
white so white. She had an innocent satisfaction in heaping up this kind of
agony. Already a design drawn by Oswald was in the hands of the
goldsmith for a locket to hold her husband’s hair. She would not bate a jot
of anything that the most bereaved mourner could do to show her ‘respect.’
Even the tears were ready, and they were sincere tears. A pang of
compunction, a pang of regret, of remorseful pity and tenderness, melted
her heart, and there was a certain pleasure of melancholy in all this which
made it spontaneous. It was the very luxury of sentiment, to be able to feel
your heart untouched underneath, and yet to be so deeply, unfeignedly
sorry, to be so true a mourner at so little real cost. Mrs. Meredith held out
her hand to her visitor as he came in—he was the only one whom she had
received.
‘This is kind,’ she said—‘very kind. As you were always such a good
friend to us, I could not say no to you.’
‘I was very sorry,’ he said; as indeed what else was there to say?
‘Oh, yes, I knew you would feel for us. It was so sudden—quite well
when the last mail came in, and this one to bring such news! You scarcely
knew him; and, oh, I feel it so much now, that none of my friends, that not
even the boys knew him as they ought to have known him. It seems as if it
must have been my fault.’
‘That it could never have been. You must not reproach yourself; though
one always does, however the loss happens,’ he said, in a low and sorrowful
tone. He was thinking of his wife, for whom he had mourned with the
intensity of despair, but the same words answered both cases. He stood as
he had done the last time he was there, not looking at her in her panoply of
mourning, but looking dreamily into the fire. And she cried a little, with a
childish sob in her throat. The grief was perfectly real, childlike, and
innocent. He was much more affected by the recollection of that last
meeting at which he had taken leave of her than she was—he remembered it
better. The new incident even kept her from seeing anything more than the
most ordinary every-day fact, one friend coming to see another, in his
return.
‘I suppose you have no details?’
‘Not one. We cannot hear till the next mail. It will be some comfort to
have particulars. Poor John! he was always so strong, one never had any
fear. I was the one that could not stand the climate; and yet I am left and he
is taken!’
‘But you have not been exposed to the climate,’ said Mr. Beresford. She
was not wise in these expressions of her personal grief, though her friends
always thought her so wise in her sympathy. She resumed softly:
‘I have no fears about the boys to embitter my grief. I know they will be
well cared for. He was so good a father, though he had them so little with
him. Oh, why did you not tell me to send him one of the boys?’
Mr. Beresford would have felt himself the cruellest of malignants, had he
ventured to make such a suggestion in former days, but he did not say this
now. ‘You did what you thought was best for them,’ he said.
‘Ah, yes,’ she said eagerly, ‘for them; there was their education to be
thought of. That was what I considered; but I do not think—do you think,’
she added, with an unconscious clasping of her hands and entreating look,
‘that, since the great occasion for it is over—Edward need go to India
now?’
The form of the speech was that of an assertion—the tone that of a
question. She might follow her own inclinations like other people; but she
liked to have them sanctioned and approved by her friends.
‘Surely not, if you don’t wish it. There is only your wish to be
considered.’
‘It is not myself I am thinking of. It is for him,’ she said, faltering. Of all
things that could happen to her, she was least willing to allow that her own
will or wish had any share in her decisions. It was a weakness which
perhaps the more enlightened of her friends were already aware of. As for
Mr. Beresford, he was more critical of her than ever he had been before,
although more entirely sympathetic, more ready to throw himself into her
service. She looked at him so anxiously. She wanted his opinion and the
support of his concurrence. There was nothing for him to do, to be of use as
he proposed, but to agree with her, to support what she had thought of—that
was friendship indeed.
On the next day Miss Cherry paid a similar visit of condolence, but she
was not so tenderly sympathetic as, under other circumstances, she would
naturally have been. She looked at the new-made widow with a critical eye.
A short time before no one had been more anxious than Miss Cherry that
Mrs. Meredith should suffer no harm, should lose no title of respect due to
her. She had with her own soft hand struck a blow, the severity of which
astonished herself, at her favourite and only brother on Mrs. Meredith’s
account; but the sudden revolution in their neighbour’s affairs, instead of
touching her heart, closed it. The position was changed, and a hundred
tremors and terrors took at once possession of her gentle bosom. Who could
doubt what James would wish now—what James would do? and who could
doubt that the woman who had permitted him so intimate a friendship
would respond to these wishes? This idea leaped at once into the minds of
all the lookers-on. Old Sommerville sent the news with a chuckle of grim
cynicism yet kindness; Maxwell communicated it with a grudge; and Miss
Cherry received it with an instant conviction yet defiance. They had no
doubt of what would, nay, must ensue, and jumped at the conclusion with
unanimous agreement; and it would be quite true to say that Mr. Meredith’s
death brought quite as great a pang to Miss Cherry, who had never seen
him, as it did to his wife, though in a different way. If the first marriage, the
natural youthful beginning of serious life, brings often with it a train of
attendant embarrassments, almost miseries, what is a second marriage to
do? Good Miss Cherry’s maidenly mind was shocked by the idea that her
brother, so long held up somewhat proudly by the family as an example of
conjugal fidelity and true sorrow, had allowed feelings less exalted to get
possession of him. And what would Cara do? How would her imaginative
delicate being, too finely touched for common issues, conform to the vulgar
idea of a stepmother? Miss Cherry grew hot and angry as she thought of it.
And a man who had such a child, a grown-up daughter, sweetest and only
fit substitute for the mother dead, what did he want with a new companion,
a new love? Faugh! to use such a word disgusted her; and that James—
James! the most heart-broken and inconsolable of mourners, should come
to that! With all this in her mind, it may be supposed that Miss Cherry’s
feelings when she went to see Mrs. Meredith and found her in all her crape,
crying softly by the fire, were not so sweet as they ought to have been. She
said the usual things in the way of consolation—how, as it was to be,
perhaps it was best that they had heard of it all at once, and had not been
kept in anxiety; and how she supposed such afflictions were necessary for
us, though it was very sad that the dear boys had known so little of their
father; but, on the other hand, how that fact must soften it to them all, for of
course it was not as if he had died at home, where they would have felt the
loss every day. This last speech had a sting in it, which was little
intentional, and yet gave Miss Cherry a sense of remorse after it was said;
for though she had a certain desire to give pain, momentary, and the result
of much provocation, yet the moment the pain was given, it was herself
who suffered most. This is what it is to have a soft nature; most people have
at least a temporary satisfaction in the result when they have been able to
inflict a wound.
‘Oh, yes, my dear, she feels it, I suppose,’ Miss Cherry said, when she
returned. ‘She was sitting over the fire, and the room much too warm for
the season; for it is really like spring to-day. Of course a woman must feel it
more or less when she has lost her husband. I have never been in these
circumstances, but I don’t see how one could help that—however little one
cared for the man.’
‘Did she care little for the man?’ Cara was at the age when most things
are taken for granted. She had not entered into any peculiarities in the
position of Mrs. Meredith with her husband. She was like Hamlet,
recognising more and more, as she realised her own position, the quagmires
and unsafe footing round her—was this another? There was a sinking
sensation in Cara’s youthful mind, and a doubt and faltering wherever she
thought to place her foot.
‘My dear child,’ said Miss Cherry, ‘when a woman spends years after
years away from her husband, never making any effort to join him, quite
satisfied with a letter now and then, receiving her own friends, making a
circle, going into society—while the poor man is toiling to keep it up,
thousands and thousands of miles away’—here Miss Cherry paused, a little
frightened by the blackness of the picture which she had herself drawn. ‘I
hope I am not doing anyone injustice,’ she faltered. ‘Oh, my dear, you may
be sure I don’t mean that. And I believe poor Mrs. Meredith could not stand
the climate, and of course there was the boys’ education to think of—
children always must come home. Indeed, how anyone can settle in India
knowing that their children must be sent away——’
‘Aunt Cherry, no one is to be trusted,’ said the girl, tears coming to her
eyes; ‘there is no truth anywhere. We are all making a pretence one way or
another; pretending to care for people who are living, pretending to mourn
for people who are dead; pretending that one thing is our object, while we
are trying for another; pretending to be merry, pretending to be sad. Ah! it
makes my heart sick!’
‘Cara, Cara! What do you know about such things? They say it is so in
the world, but you and I have very little to do with the world, dear. You
must not think—indeed, indeed, you must not think that it is so with us.’
‘I don’t know anything of the world,’ said Cara. ‘I only know what is
round me. If Mrs. Meredith is false, and papa false, and other people——’
‘My dear,’ said Miss Cherry, trembling a little, ‘it is always dangerous to
apply abstract principles so. When I say that Mrs. Meredith was a long time
away from her husband, I do not say that she is false. Oh, Cara, no! that
would be terrible. If I say anything, all I mean is that she could not be so
grieved, not so dreadfully grieved, as a woman would be whose husband
had been always with her. Think of the boys, for instance; they did not
know him really; they may be very sorry; but, how different would it be if it
was a father like your father! And other people—what do you mean by
other people?’
‘Nothing,’ said Cara, turning away, for she could not reply to Miss
Cherry’s argument. Would she indeed, in her own person, grieve for her
father more than the Merediths did for theirs? Here was another mystery
unpenetrated by Miss Cherry, incomprehensible to herself. Nobody knew
the gulf that lay between her and him, and she could not tell herself what it
meant. How kind he had been to her, though she repaid him in this way; but
did he love—really love—his child any more than she loved him? Did
anybody love any other, or only pretend and go through the semblance of
loving? She did not doubt her aunts, it is true; but then her certainty in
respect to them took, to some degree, the form of indifference. Taken for

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Power Transition in the Anarchical

Society: Rising Powers, Institutional

More information about this series at

Palgrave Studies in International Relations

Cover illustration: baona/Getty image

Aarhus, Denmark Tonny Brems Knudsen

1 Power Transition and Institutional Change:

Part I Theoretical Investigations

7 Power Transition as a Challenge to Normative Power

Part III Fundamental Institutions

Part IV Organizations and Regimes

Barry Buzan is Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the LSE

Global Climate Justice (co-author, Routledge, 2021), The EU, Promoting

(2010). Recent contributions include “Russian strategic culture: the role

Fig. 1.1 The composite model: The institutional structure

Power Transition and Institutional Change:

Cornelia Navari and Tonny Brems Knudsen

This book argues a position contrary to much of the conventional wisdom

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

The Context of the Argument

‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P) and humanitarian intervention (Spektor,

is leading inexorably to a period of confrontation, disorder and orga-

it is at this deep and institutionalized level of contemporary international

The Foundational Argument

order and society. In English School theory, such institutions constitute

1. Fundamental institutions are intersubjective understandings

The dynamic between fundamental institutions and international organi-

The model portrays a dynamic set of processes and integrates liberal

particularly attuned to the registration of changes and proposes a dynamic

Theoretical Requirements of the Power Shift

of agency. It is agentic, material and ideational. He also suggested

1. What can the English School theory of international society explain

The Structure of the Present Volume

is a more pluralist foreign policy orientation, but also a potential for a

trade rules in the agreements of the Regional Comprehensive Economic

The New World Order

The Balance of Power

Great Power Management

consensus that the UN Security Council remains an organizational

Sovereignty, Humanitarian Intervention and Democracy

new world order, but on the basis of longstanding solidarist principles

non-intervention, and this is supported not only by rejections of liberal-

International Law, Diplomacy and Trade

humanitarian standards, Russia has become more keen on hard balancing

Pluralism, Solidarism and Regional Ownership

In Zhang’s analysis of China’s approach to world order, pluralism

Crawford, E. (2014). Introductory note to the UN general assembly resolution

James, A. (1978). International society. British Journal of International Studies,

Wight, M. (1977). Systems of states (edited with an introduction by Hedley Bull).

Power Transition and World Order: Three

Tonny Brems Knudsen

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 31

At the same time there is a broad consensus in the discipline of

THE HOUSE OF MOURNING.

TAKING UP DROPT STITCHES.

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