Abstract This article, and the special section in International Affairs it introduces, ask: how can we best read the post-liberal era of world politics? The resurgence of hard power has led many to turn to realism, even as a liberal lens reveals key features of the world we inherited. Meanwhile, diverse state and non-state actors around the globe are (re)asserting their voices in international affairs. This introduction to the special section builds on Amitav Acharya's work to offer a vision of ‘multiplexity 2.0’ that captures the interface of hard power, soft power and global diversity. It does so by unpacking the key components of Acharya's concept—‘multiplicity’ and ‘complexity’. Doing so, we contend, captures: 1) the rapidly multiplying set of actors, ideas and structural forces shaping our system's transformation, while 2) reading the interactions between these parameters through the lens of complexity theory. A ‘multiplicity + complexity = multiplexity 2.0’ approach captures non-linear, multidirectional patterns for an ultimately more ‘realistic’ reading of world (dis)order.

Abstract Beginning with the United States in 2016, more than 70 countries and international organizations have published strategies and policy recommendations for artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructures. This article locates these policies in the shift from a hierarchical distribution of power to a flatter diffusion of power in which systemic interactions can be top-down, bottom-up or horizontal. A diffusion of power across multiple actors and regions weakens the material and socialization capabilities of hegemonic actors, resulting in global governance outcomes that are described here as ‘multiplexity’. Multiplexity offers a complex and pluralist menu of choices to actors. The computational models employed in this article show complex networks and clusters around multiplex choices that outline patterns of global governance for the evolving AI infrastructures. These networks and clusters cast doubt on many of the extant theories of global governance: those rooted in material power, wherein hegemonic states shape global governance; those where normatively motivated actors shape governance in national contexts; or those where regional patterns (North–South, East–West) are easily discernible. The article locates the origins of multiplexity in a diffusion of power entailing intersecting networks, regions, actors and world-views. There are leaders and great powers in AI, but the rest are not merely followers. In a diffused power scenario, multiple ontologies about the world coexist. The article employs big data mining, specifically latent Dirichlet allocation models from computer science, and process tracing to provide evidence of governance mechanisms for AI.

Abstract This article acts as a conclusion to the special section in this issue of International Affairs. It draws on the articles included in the special section and the broader research project behind it, which seeks to offer a reading of power and pluralism in the post-liberal era, building on the concept of a ‘multiplex world order’ first introduced in Acharya's 2014 work The end of American world order. The article presents four key dimensions of multiplexity: political-economic, technological, critical and temporal, to foster a fresh understanding of continuity and change in the world order. Multiplexity is partly a structural theory which holds that a decentred and pluralistic structure of world order can influence stability and development, but it also views the international system as agent-centric and points to the importance and likelihood of cooperation at the regional level.

Abstract This article seeks to enrich understanding of Amitav Acharya's formulation of the multiplex world order in two novel ways. First, it recentres violent extremist actors as being among the architects of such multiplexity and, second, it highlights their contribution to multiplexity's temporal pluralism. The article makes a theoretical contribution in conceptualizing temporalities as a defining feature of the multiplex's complexity and diversity; a methodological contribution in conceptualizing timelines as a framework to study the temporal element of extremist politics; and an empirical contribution through an original and comparative reading of the fictions, manifestos and newsletters of Islamic State and a selection of white power terrorists. The reading focuses on three elements: crisis discourse, accelerationist logic and millenarian visions. As meta-narratives of world political time, extremist timelines not only shed light on the world-views of their purveyors but also the phenomenological quality of their politics. Besides enriching and endangering its diversity and complexity, these radical timelines also historicize the multiplex as emergent within a collective mood of alienation, apocalyptic urgency and crisis.

Abstract Since 2018, the presidents of the five central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have gathered annually to participate in the Consultative Meetings of Heads of States of the region. This institutional development has been hailed as a new step towards integration and cooperation in central Asia. Yet several scholars and commentators describe this format as mostly a ‘talking shop’ that pays lip service to the idea of regional integration. To challenge this view, this article offers an emic and idiographic analysis of the Consultative Meetings from the analytical perspective of the English School, positing a twofold argument. First, it considers such meetings as an institution, i.e., a durable practice imbued with normativity and a sense of legitimacy and appropriateness that serves specific functions. Second, it maintains that the Consultative Meetings embody a regional cultural code in which consensus and informality are structuring elements of order, as opposed to representing weaknesses or failure thereof; and by which specific indigenous and political norms such as personal connections between presidents, seniority, respect and prestige affect the operations of fundamental regional primary institutions such as sovereignty, international law and diplomacy. The analysis relies on official materials and news items available online, unpublished documents provided to the author by central Asian diplomats, and interviews with foreign ministry staff members and officials from the region familiar with the workings of the meetings. The arguments offered in this article have implications for understanding processes of central Asian regionalism and non-western logics of order and legitimacy.