Browse Hierarchy POLP103: Order and Security

This module offers a deep dive into two closely-related core concepts in international relations. The concept of order is foundational for IR theory because the international system was diagnosed as lacking the vertical power structures and hierarchy found within nation-states. This absence of hierarchy led IR theorists to describe the international system as anarchic and to view security as a priority. This module explores how states and international actors attempted to build and maintain order and security in the modern era, encompassing practices of violence and war-making as well as diplomacy and cooperation. It will examine the colonial underpinnings of international order, the mutations of the Liberal International Order and its recent crises, as well as attempts to build alternative forms of order and security by anticolonial actors.