The Ambiguity of Peace: Global Governance as an Unequal Ordering of War

Hendrik Simon and Siddharth Mallavarapu

Chapter 22 in Research Handbook on Global Governance, 2025, pp 493-510 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: In this chapter, we deal with global governance as a process of unequal ordering of violence in international and increasingly global relations. To do so, we sketch a brief genealogy of the international normative order of violence in modernity. In analyzing the complex political and normative patterns, a fundamental leitmotif of governing violence becomes clear: the pacification of international relations at the center of great powers is accompanied by (violent) coercion and the exclusion of a (semi-)peripheral ‘other’. As we argue, this unequal process of order in the modern sense began in the Concert of Europe of the ‘long nineteenth century’. Its ambivalences and paradoxes, however, have not been overcome by the UN Charter's prohibition of violence. Rather, they are also evident in today's conflicts over the ordering of violence, as we illustrate with a reference to the Russian aggression against Ukraine. Our critique of global governance as an unequal ordering of the use of force is thus about both: highlighting governance as productive progress – and criticizing it as discriminatory violence.

Keywords: War; International order; Nineteenth century; Ukraine; Critical theory; TWAIL (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781789906325
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