A new multipolar order: combined development, state forms and new business classes

Abstract

Christine Lagarde, head of the European Central Bank since 2019, is one of the highest-profile international financial experts to believe that the liberal international order (LIO) is now being replaced by a more fragmented and multipolar world, resulting in ‘lower growth, higher costs, and more uncertain trade partnerships’.1 Among policy-makers and politicians alike there is a consensus that the world is moving towards a more fragmented set of geopolitical and economic blocs that coalesce around the worsening tensions between China and the United States. Consequently, there has been an explosion of scholarly and policy literature describing and analysing the changing dynamics of the international political and economic order.2 Some observers characterize these dynamics straightforwardly as the ‘Second Cold War’3 or a ‘new Cold War’.4