Is this the end? Resilience, ontological security, and the crisis of the liberal international order

ABSTRACT

The liberal international order is widely believed to be resilient because it has always had a remarkable ability to adapt in response to crisis and adversity. Today, the liberal order is clearly in crisis, and yet decisive action to adapt it is not taking place. Using insights from the resilience-thinking literature supplemented with insights from the literature on ontological security, the article seeks to understand why agents often fail to take decisive adaptive action, even when such action is clearly needed. The article develops a conceptual framework, including agent-level theorizing, to better understand agent motivation for undertaking adaptive action and a conception of the social site for resilience as an ideal-type social domain in which resilience is constituted and defined in the interaction between patterns of power, principles, and practice. The article contributes to resilience-thinking by demonstrating a plausible link between agents’ ability to invoke their agency and their ontological security.

KEYWORDS:

• Ontological security
• order
• change
• narrative
• multilateralism

Acknowledgements

This article has been a long time in the making with many excellent inputs from friends and colleagues. Special thanks go my co-editor Elena Korosteleva for her seemingly limitless support and encouragement. I would also like to thank the four anonymous reviewers who have each provided excellent feed-back and helpful comments to revise and develop my argument. Finally, a big thanks to Hylke Dijkstra for his diligence and impressive attention to detail.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Trine Flockhart is Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern Denmark. Her research focuses on international order and transformational change, NATO, European Security, the liberal international order (and its crisis), and transatlantic relations. Recent publications include “The Problem of Change in Constructivist Theory—Ontological Security Seeking and Agent Motivation” in Review of International Studies and “The Coming Multi-Order World” published in Contemporary Security Policy (2016) which was awarded the Bernard Brodie Prize.

ORCID

Trine Flockhart http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3709-2493