Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-kw2vx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-13T00:42:41.795Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - Cognitive Evolution and World Ordering

Opening New Vistas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 November 2021

By
Vincent Pouliot ,
Markus Kornprobst  and
Piki Ish-Shalom
Edited by
Piki Ish-Shalom ,
Markus Kornprobst  and
Vincent Pouliot
Piki Ish-Shalom
Affiliation:
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Markus Kornprobst
Affiliation:
University of Vienna
Vincent Pouliot
Affiliation:
McGill University, Montréal
Get access

Summary

This chapter provides an overview of how Adler’s social theory of cognitive evolution helps us study international orders. First, we compare and contrast world ordering theory with its main alternatives in International Relations, starting with Ikenberry’s. Second, we elaborate on the key building blocks of cognitive evolution theory, including evolution and process, communities of practice, creativity and learning, social order and bounded progress. Third and finally, we raise a number of critical questions about Adler’s theory, in order to chart new avenues for future research. We ask about the role of material forces, the interaction of multiple orders, the conceptualization of power and agency, the place of communication and the normative extensions that the theory suggests. We conclude by presenting the following chapters in the book.

Keywords

Theories of international orderevolution and changecommunities of practicelearningpowerprogress
Type
Chapter
Information
Theorizing World Orders
Cognitive Evolution and Beyond
 , pp. 1 - 34
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adler, Emanuel. 1991. Cognitive Evolution: A Dynamic Approach for the Study of International Relations and their Progress. In Progress in Postwar International Relations, edited by Adler, Emanuel and Crawford, Beverly, 43–88. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Adler, Emanuel. 1992. Europe’s New Security Order: A Pluralistic Security Community. In The Future of European Security, edited by Crawford, Beverly, 287–326. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Adler, Emanuel. 1997a. Imagined (Security) Communities: Cognitive Regions in International Relations. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 26(2): 249–77.Google Scholar
Adler, Emanuel. 1997b. Seizing the Middle Ground: Constructivism in World Politics. European Journal of International Relations 3(3): 319–63.Google Scholar
Adler, Emanuel. 2005. Communitarian International Relations: The Epistemic Foundations of International Relations. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Adler, Emanuel. 2008. The Spread of Security Communities: Communities of Practice, Self-Restraint, and NATO’s Post-Cold War Transformation. European Journal of International Relations 14(2): 195–230.Google Scholar
Adler, Emanuel. 2010. Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t: Performative Power and the Strategy of Conventional and Nuclear Defusing. Security Studies 19(2): 199–229.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adler, Emanuel. 2013. Resilient Liberal International Practices. In Liberal World Orders, edited by Dunne, Tim and Flockhart, Trine, 53–68. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Adler, Emanuel. 2019. World Ordering: A Social Theory of Cognitive Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Adler, Emanuel and Bernstein, Steven. 2005. Knowledge in Power: The Epistemic Construction of Global Governance. In Power and Global Governance, edited by Barnett, Michael and Duvall, Raymond, 294–318. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Adler, Emanuel and Crawford, Beverly. 2006. Normative Power: The European Practice of Region-Building and the Case of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership. In The Convergence of Civilizations: Constructing a Mediterranean Region, edited by Adler, Emanuel, Bicchi, Federica, Crawford, Beverly and Del Sarto, Raffaella, 3–47. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Adler, Emanuel and Greve, Patricia. 2009. When Security Community Meets Balance of Power: Overlapping Regional Mechanisms of Security Governance. Review of International Studies 35(S1): 59–84.Google Scholar
Alexander, Jeffrey C. 2004. Cultural Pragmatics: Social Performance between Ritual and Strategy. Sociological Theory 22(4): 527–73.Google Scholar
Armitage, Derek. 2008. Governance and the Commons in a Multi-level World. International Journal of the Commons 2(1): 7–32.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1986. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, translated by V. W. McGee. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Berger, T. 1996. Norms, Identity, and National Security in Germany and Japan. In The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics, edited by Katzenstein, Peter J., 317–56. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Bernstein, Richard. 1991. The New Constellation: The Ethical-Political Horizons of Modernity⁄Postmodernity. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Boltanski, Luc and Thévenot, Laurent. 2006. On Justification: Economies of Worth. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourbeau, Philippe. 2018. On Resilience: Genealogy, Logics, and World Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bull, Hedley. 1977. The Anarchical Society: A Study of World Politics. New York: Colombia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cox, Robert W. 1981. Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 10(2): 126–55.Google Scholar
Cox, Robert. 1986. States, Social Forces and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory. In Neorealism and Its Critics, edited by Keohane, Robert, 204–54. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Dewey, John. 1925. Experience and Nature. Chicago: Open Court.Google Scholar
Dewey, John. 1934. A Common Faith. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Fligstein, Neil and McAdam, Doug. 2015. A Theory of Fields. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1972. Wahrheit und Methode. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr.Google Scholar
Gill, Stephen R. and Law, David. 1989. Global Hegemony and the Structural Power of Capital. International Studies Quarterly 33(4): 475–99.Google Scholar
Gilpin, Robert. 1981. War and Change in World Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hall, Rodney Bruce. 1999. National Collective Identity: Social Constructs and International Systems. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Holsti, Kalevi J. 1991. Peace and War: Armed Conflicts and International Order, 1648–1989. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hopf, Ted. 2010. The Logic of Habit in International Relations. European Journal of International Relations 16(4): 539–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hymans, Jacques E. C. 2010. The Arrival of Psychological Constructivism. International Theory 2(3): 461–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ikenberry, G. John. 2001. After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Ikenberry, G. John. 2011. Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Joas, Hans. 1996. Die Kreativität des Handelns. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Keohane, Robert O. 1984. After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Keohane, Robert O. and Nye, Joseph S.. 1977. Power and Interdependence. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Kornprobst, Markus. 2019. Co-managing International Crises: Judgements and Justifications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kornprobst, Markus and Senn, Martin. 2016. A Rhetorical Field Theory: Background, Communication, and Change. British Journal of Politics and International Relations 18(2): 300–17.Google Scholar
Krasner, Stephen D. 1983a. International Regimes. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Krasner, Stephen D. 1983b. Structural Causes and Regime Consequences: Regimes as Intervening Variables. In International Regimes, edited by Krasner, Stephen D., 195–232. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Krause, Monika. 2017. How Fields Vary. British Journal of Sociology 69(1): 3–22.Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lebow, Richard Ned. 2008. A Cultural Theory of International Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Modelski, George. 1978. The Long Cycle of Global Politics and the Nation-State. Comparative Studies in Society and History 20(2): 214–35.Google Scholar
Neumann, Iver B. 2007. “A Speech That the Entire Ministry May Stand For,” Or: Why Diplomats Never Produce Anything New. International Political Sociology 1(2): 183–200.Google Scholar
Nexon, Daniel H. 2009. The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paul, T. V. 2017. Recasting Statecraft: International Relations and Strategies of Peaceful Change. International Studies Quarterly 61(1): 1–13.Google Scholar
Phillips, Andrew. 2010. War, Religion and Empire: The Transformation of International Orders. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pouliot, Vincent. 2016. International Pecking Orders: The Politics and Practice of Multilateral Diplomacy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Reus-Smit, Christian. 1999. The Moral Purpose of the State: Culture, Social Identity, and Institutional Rationality in International Relations. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Root, Hilton L. 2017. Network Assemblage of Regime Stability and Resilience: Comparing Europe and China. Journal of Institutional Economics 13(3): 523–48.Google Scholar
Rouse, Joseph. 2007. Social Practices and Normativity. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 37(1): 46–56.Google Scholar
Ruggie, John Gerard. 1993. Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations. International Organization 47(1): 139–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmidt, Vivien A. 2016. The Roots of Neo-liberal Resilience: Explaining Continuity and Change in Background Ideas in Europe’s Political Economy. British Journal of Politics and International Relations 18(2): 318–34.Google Scholar
Tickner, Ann J. 2001. Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War World. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Walker, Rob B. J. 1993. Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1974. The Rise and Future Demise of the World Capitalist System: Concepts for Comparative Analysis. Comparative Studies in Society and History 16(4): 387–415.Google Scholar
Waltz, Kenneth. 1979. Theory of International Relations. Reading: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
Wendt, Alexander. 1999. Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wendt, Alexander. 2000. On the Via Media: A Response to the Critics. Review of International Studies 26(1): 165–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wenger, Etienne. 1998. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wight, Martin. 1977. Systems of States. Leicester: Leicester University Press.Google Scholar
Young, Oran R. 1999. The Effectiveness of International Environmental Regimes: Causal Connections and Behavioral Mechanisms. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×