Governing radical uncertainty: Temporal superposition and the stability of world order projects

Abstract World order projects frequently exhibit a structural contradiction of projecting inevitable success, yet simultaneously warn of existential fragility. While traditional theories of hegemonic order transition often dismiss such contradictions as incoherence, they fail to explain how great powers sustain mutually exclusive temporalities. This article advances the concept of ‘superposed present futures’ to theorize how great powers govern the radical uncertainty of international politics by maintaining conflicting temporalities simultaneously. Adopting a discursive superposition heuristic, we argue that the resilience of a world order project depends on managing an intra-actor paradox, as the project is discursively constructed as both historically inevitable and imminently threatened. The framework is operationalized through a qualitative analysis of China’s ‘Global Community of Shared Future’ (GCSF) discourse from 2013 to 2025 as a case study. By bridging quantum social theory with historiographical typologies of future generation, it is demonstrated how Beijing stabilizes the GCSF by superposing a future of inevitability to enhance international coordination, alongside a future of fragility to enforce political discipline in the face of complacency. The article contributes to the temporal turn in International Relations (IR) by reframing world order projects from linear projections to complex temporal regimes of expectation management that sustain power through productive tension.