In the struggle to mitigate the worst impacts of global climate change, China’s energy transformation will be a critical example for the rest of the world. As the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases and the world’s second-largest economy, China’s strategies for blending economic growth with decarbonization will be watched carefully, particularly by rapidly-growing countries at earlier stages of development. China has made it clear to the world that it takes climate change seriously, and it is investing in multiple decarbonization strategies, from widespread deployment of wind and solar, to a growing nuclear program, to electrification of transportation. Indeed, China now leads the world in all three major forms of nonfossil energy deployment: wind, solar, and nuclear. China’s bilateral agreement with the United States in 2014 was critical to energizing the Paris Agreement. China agreed to stabilize current emissions by 2030, and to increase its share of nonfossil primary energy (i.e., hydro, nuclear, wind, and solar) to 20 percent of total primary energy. But beyond 2030, China will need to start reducing emissions, joining most other developed countries in a steady march toward zero emissions, if it is to make good on its pledge to reach carbon neutrality by 2060.

Complex governance aptly describes the nascent regulation of military and security services where a set of multi-stakeholder initiatives link action by national and international hierarchies with markets and networks around a common agenda. The regulation of small arms, however, follows more traditional forms – national hierarchies act with little coordination via one another, diametrically opposed networks battle to set the agenda, and markets are largely absent (though commercial money from arms flows through both national hierarchies and networks, market modes are not present in governance processes). Concomitant with these institutional configurations, effective governance, loosely defined as coordination of relevant actors, has progressed in military and security services but regressed in small arms. This chapter compares the evolution of governance in these two issue areas illustrating the interplay of structure and agency that yields change (or not) as well as more and less governance surrounding these two issues. It argues that while the “good enough” of complex governance may not be sufficient in some eyes, it is probably the best we can hope for and is far more likely to solve problems than forms that rely on top-down, commanding, and forceful measures alone.

If the world is going to decrease the rate of climate change, China, as the world’s largest emitter, must play a major role. Climate science tells us that to prevent the most catastrophic consequences, the world will ultimately have to reduce net emissions to zero. A reduction of this level over several decades will be unprecedented in world history; it took nearly seventy-five years after the invention of the steam engine for coal to surpass wood as the dominant source of energy in Europe and the United States. For a country such as China, with its enormous coal-dependent infrastructure, its large manufacturing base, and its rapid rate of urbanization, transitioning away from fossil fuels will be very challenging.

Informal modes of cooperation such as transgovernmental networks (TGNs) and informal international governmental organizations (IIGOs) have been proliferating rapidly at the international level. Most efforts to explain the rise of these arrangements as complements to or substitutes for formal international governmental organizations (FIGOs) have focused on the demand side of when states prefer to create and use informal over formal institutions. Here attention shifts to the supply side and how changing transportation and communication technologies have made new forms of cooperative arrangements possible. While these changes have facilitated the rise of both TGNs and IIGOs, the chapter focuses in particular on how they enable the combination of TGNs and IIGOs to work together. The “Hierarchy plus Networks” (HpN) model shows how quicker transportation possibilities for diplomats coupled with the instantaneous exchange of email messages and of attached documents make it much more feasible for state leaders to cooperate directly. Internationally, this allows states to (sometimes) bypass traditional FIGOs; domestically, it enables concentration of power close to executive leadership while (sometimes) bypassing foreign policy ministries in favor of direct international engagement among line departments. The chapter examines the emergence of the Proliferation Security Initiative to illustrate the argument.

This chapter explains why it is worth studying the thinking and practice of international relations and world order in three pre-modern civilizations. It argues that the end of the era of Western dominance is now happening, and these three cultures are becoming more powerful and influential in IR as the West declines. It is therefore important to know what they will bring to the table. IR grew up in the period of Western dominance but now needs to become more global in its sources.

While China is building nuclear reactors faster than any other country in the world, major constraints may limit nuclear energy’s ability to grow to the scale of hundreds of gigawatts that would be required for it to play a major part in decarbonizing China’s energy system. This chapter explores the major constraints on, and risks of, large-scale nuclear energy growth in China, and how both new policies and new technologies might address them. It focuses particularly on the two biggest constraints – economics and siting. Substantial government policies to support nuclear power and advanced reactor systems designed to address some of the key constraints are both likely to be needed for nuclear to have a chance of playing a major role in decarbonizing China’s energy system; nuclear energy’s role may be bigger in the second half of this century than in the first half.

This chapter reviews the three case studies in terms of six areas of comparison: power politics, hierarchy, peaceful coexistence, international political economy, territoriality/transnationalism, and modes of thinking. It observes a spectrum with China and hierarchy at one end, Europe and anarchy at the other, and India and the Islamic world in between. It notes how the thinking and practice of the past are as relevant in the three case studies as they are in Europe and charts out the similarities and differences among the cases, how they compare with Western IR, and how this provides the foundations for a more pluralist, global discipline of International Relations.

In 2018, China had 242 million motor vehicles on the road, with this number due to increase dramatically over the next decade. Its high-speed rail system stretched across most of the country and its airline industry has expanded. If China is going to have the capacity to decarbonize its energy mix, however, it will have to transition its vehicle fleet from one that is dependent on fossil-fuels to one that relies on electricity. In response to public concerns over high pollution levels and energy security, China hopes to have 80 million electric vehicles on the road by 2030. To meet this goal, China will have to accelerate its reform of its electricity system, build an effective electric charging infrastructure, and develop better and less costly battery technologies.

This chapter explores the perceived legitimacy of alternative modes global governance. Specifically, it examines whether the gradual shift from hierarchical international organizations and toward market- and network-based institutions can be explained by a decline in the legitimacy of old-style governance and the promise of higher legitimacy for new-style governance. The chapter suggests that legitimacy concerns are of limited importance in explaining this shift. It arrives at this conclusion in three steps. First, it shows how legitimacy concerns feature as a causal mechanism in prominent accounts of the transformation of global governance, highlighting geopolitical shifts, changing governance norms, and domestic backlash to globalization. Second, it draws on public and elite opinion data to assess empirically whether the legitimacy of traditional international organizations is in historical decline, and whether new-style governance nowadays is considered more legitimate than old-style governance, finding mixed or no evidence for these expectations. Third, it discusses potential reasons for why the legitimacy of hierarchical international organizations holds up well in comparison to new forms of global governance, emphasizing conformance to governance norms and the role of heuristics in the formation of legitimacy perceptions.

The global institutional arrangements that structure contemporary relations between states and other actors have grown beyond past benchmarks of diversity. This institutional diversity accentuates some challenges for contemporary global governance, including how states and global actors strike a balance in the integration of institutions. While in some periods and areas there have been successful efforts to integrate global governance arrangements, a sense has long prevailed among contemporary policy-makers and scholars that global governance has become conspicuously fragmented. Institutional incompatibilities that stem from diverse designs are one reason why the world is thought to be poorly equipped to effectively manage global challenges in the security, trade, finance, health, environmental, and other policy domains, especially when these intersect. This chapter probes the contributions of comparative institutional analysis for explaining past and present institutional diversity as well as answers to why institutional integration remains an elusive goal in contemporary global governance.

This chapter looks at the thinking and practice of international relations and world order in pre-Muslim India. It opens by setting India’s geopolitical context. In terms of thinking it covers Kautilya’s Arthashastra, Ashoka’s Dharma, and the ontology and epistemology of India’s epic literature. In terms of practice, it covers the Mahajanapadas and the peaceful spread of Indian culture.

Intergovernmental organizations and their member states enjoyed a transitory monopoly in global governance during a particular historical moment, when state hierarchies asserted their control over markets, internally and internationally. This Bretton Woods moment, in the decades after 1945, was an extension of the domestic regulatory state. Both before and after those decades, alternative forms of global governance emerged. During the interwar decades, networks and markets were embedded in private and hybrid modes of governing international monetary and financial affairs, cartels, and commercial arbitration. As liberalization encouraged by the Bretton Woods institutions expanded during the 1970s and 1980s, markets and networks resumed their earlier prominence in public and private governance. Economic globalization was a primary driver of this evolution in global governance, creating demand for governance as well as shaping supply.