The concept of change is overused in International Relations. From Covid’s pandemic to the war in Ukraine or increasing levels of global polarization and autocratization, through usual suspects like a US administration change, technological advancements or any new steps in the so-called “rise of China”, everything has the chance to becoming labeled as a deep transformative change of the international system, as an event or the beginning of a long-lasting trend that will turn international politics upside down. Transformations of the global power structure, changes in the nature or the behaviors of key international actors, shifts in norms and institutions at global scale are in many occasions all put together under one single whole-encompassing label. Besides, events that still smoothly fit in within the limits of the contemporary global order and its institutions -that do not exceed its normative precepts- are presented as critical shifts. As all these different phenomena are equated, it becomes increasingly difficult for IR scholars to make sense of the reality of the international system: the discipline might be still struggling to cope with the uncertainty associated with the end of the Cold War, on international politics terms, and with the emergence of global “liquid societies”, on sociological terms.
This panel will focus on research contributions on the uses and overuses of the notion of change and alike in International Relations. It aims at establishing operational differentiation criteria between distinct events and processes labeled as transformative turning points. How should we define change in IR? Is there room to set its thresholds? And to categorize different phenomena under multiple analytical labels? To what extent this confusion talks about the discipline’s flaws to deal with contemporary uncertainty? Purely theoretical contributions as well as practical ones exploring concrete examples on the conceptual stretch of the notion are in order.
