Abstract Multiplexity is a promising but underdeveloped concept that describes the shift towards a post-hegemonic global order, which is more decentred, diversified and pluralistic, yet deeply interdependent and increasingly shaped by non-western agency. This article is the first to apply and to reassess the concept of multiplexity in the context of the international space order. Two key arguments follow. First, space reveals some important limitations of multiplexity, particularly given the enduring power of the United States, reinforced by commercialization and privatization. This cautions against treating the multiplex world as a single, unitary order. The article therefore introduces functionally differentiated multiplexity, which disaggregates world order into functional suborders, such as space, to show how the general features of multiplexity manifest unevenly across functional orders. Second, multiplexity retains strong analytical value when considering China, rising powers and the emergence of space regionalism in the developing world. It is not simply that an analysis of these themes has the merit of shifting our attention from a predominant focus on competition and national military considerations to cooperative patterns that are usually neglected, but it helps to underscore the agency of non-Western actors, which is often lacking in what remains a largely Eurocentric literature.

Abstract The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is widely criticized for its inability to fulfil its liberal reform agenda, and many view it as a defunct institution amid the broader crisis of the liberal international order. With the Helsinki Final Act having turned 50 in August 2025, this article asks why the OSCE persists despite its apparent failures and the criticism from its illiberal members. It argues that the organization endures not because of its liberal achievements and purposes, but because of its dual nature as an enterprise association and as a civil association grounded in sovereign equality. While the OSCE has struggled to promote democracy and human rights, particularly in the face of contestation by Russia and rising illiberalism across Eurasia, it continues to be a platform for principled internationalism. This article shows how states in central Asia have curtailed the organization's liberal agenda while remaining members in order to retain an equal voice in multilateral dialogue and to adapt its reformist agenda to their benefit. The OSCE's persistence, therefore, reflects not institutional failure but the enduring appeal of a civil association based on sovereign equality—a principle that tenuously binds its diverse members, even amid deep political division across Eurasia.

Abstract This article investigates the moralistic realism of the emerging multiplex world order. It does so by examining the recent expansion of the BRICS alongside the launch of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF). Drawing on a critical analysis of official documents complemented by media reportage and secondary assessments by regional experts, synthesized alongside secondary data on key political and economic trends, the article illustrates the ways in which members of the two groupings advance a view of the world that checks efforts at domination of both established and aspiring hegemons. The article makes three contributions to the literature. Empirically, it charts recent developments in the BRICS and the IPEF from the perspective of member countries—such as India—which participate in both groupings. Methodologically, it introduces the moral economy approach to the study of international affairs. Theoretically, it offers insights into ways in which the agency of the global South contributes to producing a multiplex world order. The two groupings analysed in this article help assemble the building blocks of conceptualizing southern agency in advancing multiplexity. Underpinning this agency is a moralistic realism that blends moralpolitik with realpolitik. This moralistic realism in turn draws on a moral economy of international affairs that constrains the concentration of power and resists domination by a single actor. Mobilizing insights from Mandala theorizing, the article demonstrates the ways in which moral considerations and realist calculations combine to render the two groupings as decentred zones of competition, rather than rival blocs that each revolve around a single pole.

Abstract Since the 1980s, the participation of non-state actors in international organizations has brought promises of greater inclusion and efficiency in the promotion and protection of human rights. The institutional inclusion of Indigenous Peoples in the United Nations system is a clear example of this evolution, thanks to which an Indigenous elite has made great strides in securing the recognition of Indigenous rights. However, in the context of the vigilance policies by which the UN attempts to monitor respect for human rights, criticism from Indigenous activists has brought attention to the violations of international law by states. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, I demonstrate three key dynamics. First, socialization mechanisms create an Indigenous elite while marginalizing less experienced activists. Second, divergent registers of intervention—elite versus activist—reveal tensions between contributing to international law and denouncing rights violations. Third, resource scarcity and intensifying state repression expose the limits of vigilance policies, as informal networks designed to monitor violations inadvertently expose activists to greater danger. These findings challenge optimistic accounts of civil society participation in international organizations and reveal how institutional inclusion can coexist with systematic exclusion from meaningful protection.

Abstract This article examines the role of expertise in the emergence and evolution of new diplomatic issue areas. Contemporary diplomatic practice increasingly requires coordination across knowledge domains. Nowhere is this more evident than in issues involving fast evolving technology, such as artificial intelligence or cyber issues. Examining the case of cyber diplomacy, we show how diplomats have adapted to these concerns. Contrary to claims that growing demands for issue-specific expertise erode the traditional diplomatic monopoly over authoritative knowledge, the article shows that traditional diplomats have expanded their role. Rather being displaced by technical experts, diplomats act as key points of passage through which knowledge enters the diplomatic arena. Their ability to mediate between competing knowledge claims is becoming a defining feature of diplomatic practice in complex issue areas. We further demonstrate how early framings of cyber diplomacy produced lasting effects diplomatic practice, prioritizing great power politics and skewing debates towards the international security dimensions of cyber issues. The article thus contributes to diplomatic studies by showcasing how early issue framings institutionalize particular practices and constrain adaptation over time, offering broader insights into the tensions between institutional stability and technological change in the governance of digital technology.

Abstract Russia's war on Ukraine has given rise to a broad debate about Russian imperialism and colonialism. Yet despite Russia's significant imperial history, the field of International Relations has few detailed accounts of its distinguishing historical features. This article builds on existing work to unpack the varied attempts successive imperial projects made to legitimate Russia's rule over other populations and territories. Reconstructing Russia's imperial history, I show its claims to imperial legitimacy, past and present, varied widely. These claims were borrowed or otherwise acquired from an equally wide range of sources. They have tended to accumulate or sediment in Russian discursive practice. To illustrate this, I focus on the period that marked the height of Russian colonialism, the nineteenth century, showing a profusion of practices, styles and ways of speaking. I then argue Russia's wide-ranging claims to imperial legitimacy resurface in contemporary attempts to justify its expansionism. Recognizing the range of attempted imperial justifications helps analysts to better calibrate or specify critiques of Russian imperial ideas today.

Abstract This article acts as a conclusion to the special section in this issue of International Affairs. It draws on the articles included in the special section and the broader research project behind it, which seeks to offer a reading of power and pluralism in the post-liberal era, building on the concept of a ‘multiplex world order’ first introduced in Acharya's 2014 work The end of American world order. The article presents four key dimensions of multiplexity: political-economic, technological, critical and temporal, to foster a fresh understanding of continuity and change in the world order. Multiplexity is partly a structural theory which holds that a decentred and pluralistic structure of world order can influence stability and development, but it also views the international system as agent-centric and points to the importance and likelihood of cooperation at the regional level.