Conference Program

In this paper, I emphasize the need to disaggregate the rise and current decline of the Liberal International Order (LIO) from the emergence, evolution, and changing dynamics of the international society (IS). There seems to be quite a confusion regarding the overlapping of the IS and the LIO, which have co-constituted each other, though sustaining diferent trajectories over time.

The paper includes the following sections. First, there is a conceptual clarification drawing the distinctions between the IS and the LIO, emphasizing their commonalities and differences. Second, there is a brief historical review of the emergence and evolution of the IS and the LIO over the last two centuries. Third, there is a discussion of the contemporary challenges posed to both the IS and the LIO. Some of these challenges overlap, while others are distinctive in each domain. Finally, I speculate about the practical and policy implications of drawing the distinction between the International Society and the Liberal Order by referring to three paramount themes of current international relations: the role of China; the role of the Global South; and the future of the international order.

This paper suggests that in order to do justice to the complexities of current interntaional politics, we need to radically re-think the idea of multiple orders beyond conceptualising them as multiple geographical orders. Likewise, international society ought to be thought not as one global international society, but as the intersection of multiple societies with different constituents. International politics may thus best be thought of from specific locales, in which critical proximities emerge and these different societies and their orders intersect. The restoration of peace will thus not depend on the provision of order in one societal context, but needs to serioiusly take into account orders across societies. While this has been an old theme in the debare about different sectors of security or "networked security", its implications have not come to real fruition because of an incapacity to expand out conceptual gaze beyond single orders.

According to EU's Josep Borrell, “with this war on Ukraine, the world will never be the same again”. The Russian-Ukrainian war marked the end of the post-bipolar era. It increased the need to update the issue of a new international order in both theoretical and practical dimensions. The dominant neorealist and neoliberal interpretations, despite certain gains in the understanding of the nature of international order, proved unable to overcome the challenges of their inherent ahistoricism, to go beyond the traditional concepts of international anarchy, the balance of power, the role of international institutions.

The purpose of the paper is, first, to identify the impact of the Russian-Ukrainian war on the agenda and content of the discussion of the issue of the post-war international order, and second, to reveal the methodological potential of Historical Sociology in International Relations to break out of the closed circle of ahistoricism of understanding international order. Historical Sociology examines International Relations through the prism of the interaction of various social orders. It focuses on models of continuity and change, which is extremely important in radical and large-scale transformations, including the collapse of the old and the formation of a new international order. The historicist approach will allow an open-minded vision of implementing a rules-based order, which takes note of the heterogeneity of the social nature of the key players of world politics. Secondly, it will induce the West to abandon the disastrous “preventing Ukraine from losing” strategy and figure out the “how Ukraine can win” strategy.

For all Baltic Sea region (BSR) institutions, the critical juncture caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 created both chaos and an important window of opportunity for building mutual relations. The main objective of this paper is to examine how the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS) and the Helsinki Commission, the two most important international regional organizations in the Baltic Sea Region, use their relations to build the region and its architecture again. The analysis first focuses on the concepts of inter-organizational relations (IORs) and critical juncture. The second part analyses the sources, mechanisms, and consequences of the relations between the CBSS and the HELCOM and how each IO utilizes this cooperation to participate in the process of building a more resilient region able to withstand the pressures of revisionist Russia. This research takes an interpretative epistemological foundation and is a qualitative comparative case study. The data will be gathered through qualitative means, specifically semi-structured interviews and document analysis.