Changing Global Orders

Professors Patricia Clavin, Louise Fawcett, Andrew Hurrell and Andrew Thomson are leading a 3-year research programme, funded by the Oxford Martin School, which examines the roles played by international and regional organisations in managing past and current shocks. The past is a rich resource to inform the future in a way that is policy-relevant: in particular, it can help us to locate the barriers to effective cooperation and identify politically grounded pathways to overcome them. Our central contention is that these historically-established pathways have – and continue to – animate and constrain the management of shocks, yet in ways which are insufficiently acknowledged and understood by scholars and policy makers. Better understanding of these pathways will assist better decision-making in the future.

This project draws heavily on cutting-edge historical and social science scholarship, including deep cultural knowledge of how different regions of the world have viewed the notions of ‘international order’ and ‘global governance’, and explicitly links the challenge of institutional change and adaptation to the reality of global crises or emergencies and their management.

Click here to find out more about the project and events.