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"Bipolarity (International relations)"
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Divided but Not Poles Apart: Europe, the United States, and the Rise of China
While differences remain, the gap between US and European debates over the likely impact of China's rise on the global order has narrowed in recent years. At the same time, China's leaders have been more confident in establishing dichotomized distinctions between their view of how the world should be ordered and how China will act as a great power on one hand, and what they depict as the West's preferences and the typical modus operandi of Western powers on the other. Despite evidence of ever clearer dividing lines between different visions of China's impact on the future of the global order, this is not the same as a return to bipolarity. The problems of disentangling transnational economic relations, different levels of followership for potential leaders, and pragmatic considerations of governance efficacy in diverse issue areas all suggest something other than fixed bloc-type alliances on either side of a bipolar divide.
Journal Article
The return of bipolarity in world politics : China, the United States, and geostructural realism
\"International relations scholar Oystein Tunsjo argues that the international system is transitioning to a bipolarity between the United States and China. Tunsjo develops the case for contemporary bipolarity not only by examining the current distribution of capabilities, but contends that the contemporary distribution of capabilities in the international system is roughly similar to the origins of the last bipolar system of the 1950s. Beginning with a foundation in theory, the book defines polarity and discusses how we can measure power and rank states. Tunsjo introduces three criteria for studying shifts in the distribution of capabilities among the top ranking powers: their rank based on a combined capability score derived from Kenneth Waltz's theory, the space between the second and third ranking power, and a historical comparison of the state's most recent bipolar system. With these models in place, we find that the Soviet hard-balancing seen in the Cold War is replaced by geographical conditions in the U.S.-China bipolar system to create instability and a likelihood for conflict. This is a provocative text that challenges long-held theories in the field and provides new insights on the important relationship between geography and bipolarity--in fact most of the current debates do not even consider bipolarity. Tunsjo discusses implications for the behavior of the U.S. and China and especially the effects of a new bipolar system for the dynamics of international politics\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Power dynamics at the global-regional nexus: examining structural constraints on regional conflict management
How does the interaction of power at the global-regional nexus impact the behavior of regional powers? Neorealism predicts that changes in polarity accompany changes in expectations regarding great power behavior. The cases below consider strategic approaches to crisis mediation pursued by regional powers Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and Russia under conditions of bipolarity, unipolarity, and multipolarity to assess the impact of the international system’s structure on regional power behavior. Consistently, the cases in this article show regional powers adopting roles that seek to preempt great power involvement, regardless of the regional power’s orientation toward the system. Even if different polarities generate variations in uncertainty among great powers at the international level, as neorealism predicts, those variations do not filter any clarity regarding great power intentions down to the regional level. This consistency in regional power behavior may provide a baseline for analysis as emerging multipolarity increases the complexity of regional disputes.
Journal Article
Leading sectors and polarity change in the context of US–China competition: a process-based analysis of the origins of polarity shift
The rise of China has reignited scholarly interest in power transition and systemic polarity. Applying the leading-sector approach as a theoretical background, this paper seeks to understand the extent with which leading-sector dominance can explain polarity change through the study of the post-World War II shift from multipolarity to bipolarity and the post-Cold War transition from bipolarity to unipolarity. Moreover, this paper also analyzes how leading sectors are shaping US–China competition and the relative military balance between both countries. We find that leading sectors tend to be important factors for polarity shift, but their degree of causal primacy depends on the contextual process under which they operate. Moreover, we also find that the current system remains unipolar due to US military superiority over China in command of the commons-related capabilities.
Journal Article
Discrepancy and Disliking Do Not Induce Negative Opinion Shifts
Both classical social psychological theories and recent formal models of opinion differentiation and bi-polarization assign a prominent role to negative social influence. Negative influence is defined as shifts away from the opinion of others and hypothesized to be induced by discrepancy with or disliking of the source of influence. There is strong empirical support for the presence of positive social influence (a shift towards the opinion of others), but evidence that large opinion differences or disliking could trigger negative shifts is mixed. We examine positive and negative influence with controlled exposure to opinions of other individuals in one experiment and with opinion exchange in another study. Results confirm that similarities induce attraction, but results do not support that discrepancy or disliking entails negative influence. Instead, our findings suggest a robust positive linear relationship between opinion distance and opinion shifts.
Journal Article
Shock Propagation and the Geometry of International Trade: The US–China Trade Bipolarity in the Light of Network Science
What is the impact of geopolitics on the geometry of global trade? What is the key structural role that led to the emergence of the US–China trade bipolarity? Here, we study the geometry of international trade, taking into account not only the direct but also the indirect trade relations. We consider the self-weight of each country as an indicator of its intrinsic robustness to exogenous shocks. We assess the vulnerability of a country to potential demand or supply shocks based on the entropy (diversification) of its trade flows. By considering the indirect trade relations, we found that the key structural role that led to the emergence of the US–China trade bipolarity is that of the intermediary hub that acts as a “bridge” between different trade clusters. The US and China occupied key network positions of high betweenness centrality as early as 2010. As international trade was increasingly dependent on only these two intermediary trade hubs, this fact led to geopolitical tensions such as the US–China trade war. Therefore, betweenness centrality could serve as a structural indicator, forewarning of possible upcoming geopolitical tensions. The US–China trade bipolarity is also strongly present in self-weights, where a race in terms of their intrinsic robustness to exogenous shocks is more than evident. It is also interesting that the US and China are not only the top shock spreaders but also the most susceptible to shocks. However, China can act more as a shock spreader than a shock receiver, while for the USA, the opposite is true. Regarding the impact of geopolitics, we found that the Russia–Ukraine conflict forced Ukraine to diversify both its exports and imports, aiming to lower its vulnerability to possible shocks. Finally, we found that international trade is becoming increasingly oligopolistic, even when indirect trade relationships are taken into account, thus indicating that a “Deep Oligopoly” has formed.
Journal Article
Introduction. Finding order in disorder: geopolitics, cooperation and 40 years of Revista CIDOB d’Afers Internacionals
As the introduction to the 40th anniversary issue of Revista CIDOB d’Afers Internacionals, this paper looks at developments in international relations over the last four decades, alongside the publication’s content and against the backdrop of the current crisis of the international order (or disorder). It spans the end of the Cold War and the faith deposited in globalisation and liberal democracy in the unipolar world of the mid-1990s, taking in the spread of the values and ideas of global governance at the end of the last century, before arriving at the growing multipolarity, rivalry between China and the United States and the challenge to the liberal order and permacrisis of recent years. Special mention is made of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Journal Article
Military Primacy Doesn't Pay (Nearly As Much As You Think)
A common argument among scholars and policymakers is that America's military preeminence and deep international engagement yield significant economic benefits to the United States and the rest of the world. Ostensibly, military primacy, beyond reducing security tensions, also encourages economic returns through a variety of loosely articulated causal mechanisms. A deeper analytical look reveals the causal pathways through which military primacy is most likely to yield economic returns: geoeconomic favoritism, whereby the military hegemon attracts private capital in return for providing the greatest security and safety to investors; direct geopolitical favoritism, according to which sovereign states, in return for living under the security umbrella of the military superpower, voluntarily transfer resources to help subsidize the costs of hegemony; and the public goods benefits that flow from hegemonic stability. A closer investigation of these causal mechanisms reveals little evidence that military primacy attracts private capital. The evidence for geopolitical favoritism seems more robust during periods of bipolarity than unipolarity. The evidence for public goods benefits is strongest, but military predominance plays only a supporting role in that logic. While further research is needed, the aggregate evidence suggests that the economic benefits of military hegemony have been exaggerated in policy circles. These findings have significant implications for theoretical debates about the fungibility of military power and should be considered when assessing U.S. fiscal options and grand strategy for the next decade.
Journal Article
Proliferation and the Logic of the Nuclear Market
The evolution of the nuclear market explains why there are only nine members of the nuclear club, not twenty-five or more, as some analysts predicted. In the absence of a supplier cartel that can regulate nuclear transfers, the more suppliers there are, the more intense their competition will be, as they vie for market share. This commercial rivalry makes it easier for nuclear technology to spread, because buyers can play suppliers off against each other. The ensuing transfers help countries either acquire nuclear weapons or become hedgers. The great powers (China, Russia, and the United States) seek to thwart proliferation by limiting transfers and putting safeguards on potentially dangerous nuclear technologies. Their success depends on two structural factors: the global distribution of power and the intensity of the security rivalry among them. Thwarters are most likely to stem proliferation when the system is unipolar and least likely when it is multipolar. In bipolarity, their prospects fall somewhere in between. In addition, the more intense the rivalry among the great powers in bipolarity and multipolarity, the less effective they will be at curbing proliferation. Given the potential for intense security rivalry among today’s great powers, the shift from unipolarity to multipolarity does not portend well for checking proliferation.
Journal Article