Abstract
Birthe Hansen’s pioneered a shift in the analytic purpose of the polarity concept from explaining war and peace to understanding the stability and nature of international orders. This chapter questions that connection concerning the debate on the future of the liberal international order. First, I show that neither bi- nor multipolarity captures where the great power subsystem appears to be heading. Second, I demonstrate that polarity matters less than it used to because of the diffusion of power: the great power club commands a smaller share of material power vis-à-vis the rest of the international system than it did in the nineteenth century and up to the middle of the twentieth, when much of the world was owned by gigantic empires. These two reservations about polarity add up to a more robust future for the liberal international order than is commonly assumed.
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Wohlforth, W.C. (2022). Polarity and International Order: Past and Future. In: Græger, N., Heurlin, B., Wæver, O., Wivel, A. (eds) Polarity in International Relations. Governance, Security and Development. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05505-8_21
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