A new multipolar order: combined development, state forms and new business classes

Abstract

Abstract What are the key social forces and interests that underpin an emerging multipolar world? Existing research oscillates between the retreat of the liberal international order and the rise of the rest, which remains trapped in a form of geopolitical fetishism. These explanations tell us little about the kinds of forces that are driving a more fragmented and disordered global order. In this article, we suggest going beyond this by fleshing out the underlying social class relations that this new emerging order is based on. At the core of it is the emergence of a new business class—fraction of capital—that in turn sustains what we call competing regulatory geographies. The latter are internalized within state institutions and policies and have reconsolidated a combination of state and market-led industrial policy. Empirically, we also show how these dynamics unfold in key non-core states. In highlighting this particularly potent dynamic of the contemporary global order, this article calls for policy-makers to better recognize the internal contestation within states that shapes and is shaped by combined capitalist development.