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²⁴ A multipolar order having three or more great powers, a bipolar order having two, and a unipolar order having a single dominant power. The latter two categories would normally refer to the ‘poles of power’ as ‘superpowers’ rather than ‘great powers’; see Buzan, Barry, The United States and the Great Powers: World Politics in the Twenty-first Century (Cambridge: Polity, 2004), pp. 69–71 Google Scholar.

²⁵ Bisley, Great Powers, pp. 92–109; Kupchan, No One’s World; Bremmer, Every Nation for Itself. This is also reflected to an extent in Buzan, Barry, ‘A world order without superpowers: Decentred globalism’, International Relations, 25:1 (2011), pp. 3–25 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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³² For a full discussion of the implications of redefining polarity along more constructivist lines, see Zala, Benjamin, ‘Rethinking polarity for the twenty-first century: Perceptions of order in international society’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Birmingham, 2013)Google Scholar, available at: {http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/4099/} accessed 9 February 2016.

³³ As Buzan and Lawson have pointed out, it was in the early nineteenth century that a shift occurred from the ‘ranking of powers’ based on precedence and title to the ‘grading of powers’ based on power capabilities. This then found expression in the formal recognition of great power status that was expressed through the practice of great power management. Buzan and Lawson characterise this as an exclusive set of states that ‘possessed special rights (for example, over intervention) and responsibilities (such as a duty to maintain international order).’ Buzan and Lawson, The Global Transformation, pp. 178–9.

³⁴ Kupchan, No One’s World.

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