A Fresh Outlook on Order-Disorder Transition: The Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) Perspective

Abstract

A methodological framework is analyzed for conceptualizing regions and regional orders, such as the Liberal Order, as complex adaptive systems (CAS), envisioning the global order as a “grand whole” with a collage of complex adaptive sub-wholes. Drawing on complexity and chaos theory, this conceptualization of regional systems assists researchers to devise models for managing complexity, turbulence, and uncertainty in world affairs and creating conditions that foster greater interdependence and interconnectedness between different regional systems, which ultimately encourages multi-level cooperation and multilateralism and creates resilient governance structures. The quest for “order out of chaos” must involve methods for addressing “complexity” as an agent of change: complexity is a blessing and a curse, it is one of the greatest parameters in any effort to manage uncertainty at any level of the global system. Complexity expands the conceptual and methodological frameworks of IR Theory to diffuse policies intra-, inter-, and trans-regionally to deal with tipping points and systemic shocks and to address problems of a transnational nature. The chapter concludes that the reinvention of the Liberal Order must involve an agenda of “wholism” in order to create adaptation mechanisms and complexity management schemes to deal with the problems of uncertainty and prediction.