The Critical Experience of Russia in Global Governance

Abstract

The author examines the transition of global governance from its positivist to post-positivist stage of development, which corresponds to the second wave of the evolution of the theory of governance in political science. Russia plays a significant role in this transition. To uncover this role, the author uses the postcolonial tradition in the social sciences, Habermas’s theory of communicative action, and the English school of international relations theory. From the historical perspective, the Soviet Union during the Cold War, being outside international society, created conditions under which the West for the first time began to interact on equal terms with an “outside” state. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia returned to international society, but now it has been expelled and is turning back to its critical experience. As an alternative, the author proposes global governance based on the pluralistic ethics of John Rawls.

Notes

1. For more detailed accounts of the division between “old” and “new” models of governance, see Ruggie (2014) and Abbott and Snidal (2009).

2. Communicative logic therefore underlies global governance.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

M. V. Kharkevich

Maksim Vladimirovich Kharkevich is a Candidate of Political Sciences and senior lecturer in the Department of World Political Processes at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia.