'Navigating world orders over five millennia: does the past offer clues to the future?' with Prof Amitav Acharya

Past Event

Date
 07 March 2024, 5:00pm - 6:15pm

Location
 Oxford Martin School & Online
34 Broad Street (corner of Holywell and Catte Streets), Oxford, OX1 3BD

Event Recording:

Building world order is not the monopoly of any civilisation, region or nation.

Some of the foundational principles and institutions of world order that we have today were developed – both independently and through mutual contact – by multiple societies, in similar if not same forms at different stages of history. These include anarchic and hierarchic inter-state systems, republicanism, freedom of seas, open trade, human rights, nationalism, humanitarian law, Great Power cooperation, and realpolitik and moral statecraft.

These and others can be traced to non-Western civilisations: Islam, Africa, pre Columbian Americas, Mongols, India and China, among others. The modern West is also a contributor, but often a late one, influenced by others.

Join Professor Amitav Acharya, UNESCO Chair in Transnational Challenges and Governance, as he discusses with Professor Louise Fawcett, Co-Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Changing Global Orders, that though history does not repeat itself or is not cyclical, a five millennia look back does suggest possibilities and pathways for a pluralistic world order.

This is a joint event with the Oxford Martin Programme on Changing Global Orders.

Acharya Amitav

Professor Amitav Acharya
UNESCO Chair in Transnational Challenges and Governance

Amitav Acharya is the UNESCO Chair in Transnational Challenges and Governance and Distinguished Professor at the School of International Service, American University, Washington, DC.

His recent books include Constructing Global Order (Cambridge 2018); The End of American World Order (Polity 2014, 2018) and The Making of Global International Relations (Cambridge 2019: with Barry Buzan); His articles have appeared in International Organization, International Security, International Studies Quarterly, Foreign Affairs, Journal of Peace Research, International Affairs, Perspectives on Politics, and World Politics. A Past President of the International Studies Association (ISA), he is the winner of three ISA Distinguished Scholar Awards, that respectively cite his "contribution to non-Western IR theory and inclusion;” “influence, intellectual works and mentorship” in the field of international organisation; and “extraordinary impact” in globalising the study of International Relations.

Louise Fawcett cropped

Professor Louise Fawcett
Co-Director, Oxford Martin Programme on Changing Global Orders

Professor Louise Fawcett is Professor of International Relations and Wilfrid Knapp Fellow and Tutor in Politics, St Catherine’s College, University of Oxford, 1995 - present. From 2017-2020 she was Head of Oxford’s Department of Politics and International Relations (DPIR).

Her research focuses on comparative regional integration studies and the international relations of developing countries, notably the Middle East. Major publications include: Iran and the Cold War, Cambridge University Press, 2009; Regionalism in World Politics (ed. with Andrew Hurrell), Oxford University Press, 1995; The Third World Beyond the Cold War (ed. with Yezid Sayigh), Oxford University Press, 2000; Regionalism and Governance in the Americas (ed. with Monica Serrano), London, Palgrave, 2005; Interregionalism and the European Union (ed. with Mario Telò and Frederik Ponjaert) Ashgate 2015; The International Relations of the Middle East, ed., Oxford University Press, 5th edition (revised and expanded) 2019. She is currently working on a sixth revised edition of the International Relations of the Middle East. Professor Fawcett is a member of the editorial board of the UK journal International Affairs.