How can we understand long-term change in world politics better? Based on readings of thinkers as diverse as Habermas, Foucault and Luhmann, the authors of this book propose a framework for understanding such change in terms of social evolution. They show that processes of social learning and unlearning are key to understanding the long-term historical evolution of complex societies, and propose to approach these with the core concepts of autonomization, hierarchical complexity, and co-evolution. Three case studies illustrate this social evolutionary perspective to the study of world politics, examining the evolution of forms of organizing political authority, of conflicts, of diplomacy, of law as boundary condition.
Author(s): Mathias Albert, Hauke Brunkhorst, Iver B. Neumann, Stephan Stetter
Series: Political Science | 143
Edition: 1
Publisher: Transcript Verlag
Year: 2023
Language: English
Commentary: TruePDF
Pages: 168
Tags: World Politics; International Relations; Social Evolution; World Society; Politics; Globalization; Political Theory; Political System; Political Science
Cover
Half title
About the Authors
Title
Copyright
Epigraph
Contents
Acknowledgements
1 Introduction: ‘Deep history’ for understanding world politics
1.1 Long‐term change in IR
1.2 Plan of the book
2 The coevolution of society and evolutionary theorythrough four Axial Ages
2.1 Pre‐Axial segmentary societies and the First Axial Age: Learning and institutionalizing equality and liberty, ca. 100,000–3500 BCE
2.2 The Second Axial Age or the age of counter‐present theorizing of stratified/imperial class societies and the memory of universalism, ca. 800–200 BCE
2.3 The Third Axial Age: Early functional differentiation and the turn to immanence‐theorizing societal change, ca. 1000–1750
2.4 The Fourth Axial Age: The planetary age of global constitutionalism and explicit social evolutionary theorizing, ca. 1750–present
3 Contemporary social evolution and social evolutionary theories
3.1 Social evolution and theories of society
3.2 Cognitive and normative evolution: Learning and unlearning
Normative evolution of the subject
Normative evolution of society
3.3 Core evolutionary concepts: Autonomization, hierarchical complexity and coevolution
3.4 Existing approaches to evolution in IR
4 Evolutionary trajectories in world politics
4.1 Forms of organizing political authorityin the emergence and transformationof a modern system of world politics
Autonomization
Hierarchical complexity
The restabilization of world politics and its coevolutionwith (international) law
4.2 The restabilization of world politics and peacebuilding
Autonomization
Hierarchical Complexity
Coevolution and global peacebuilding
4.3 The evolution of world politics through the practice of diplomacy
Autonomization
Hierarchical complexity
Coevolution
5 Social evolution and knowing world politics
References
