Theorizing Transitions in World Order: Ideational Consensus and Its Contestations

Abstract Conventional literature on world order assumes order as static and privileges it over change or transition, conflating the latter with disorder/interregnum. It also reduces order to material elements and overlooks its ideational underpinnings. Moving beyond the order-disorder paradox and the hegemonic centrality of material elements, the paper argues that ideational elements are important in theorising world order since they help in stabilisation of a particular meaning of order and according it legitimacy. Besides, ideational elements deployed for the construction and normalization of liberal world order and its interrogation by contesting frames may be seen as harbinger of a new world order, which may or may not obtain and hence transition is integral to order. The purpose of this paper is to understand how order is legitimised, normalised and perpetuated and how it goes through transition, both as a way to reinforce its legitimacy but also to adapt itself to the challenges from the powerful as also the powerless actors. To examine the role that ideas play in this process of stabilisation, contestation and transition of order, the paper anchors itself in a critical analysis of the ideational premises of the liberal order—both political and economic—as enumerated in select indices, namely, the Freedom House indices, KOF index, V-Dem, Multidimensional Poverty index, and World Inequality Index. These indices are simultaneously about reinforcing the liberal order; hierarchising the world within a universalising narrative; as also contesting it, and, hence an important component in theorising world order transitions.