Abstract The concept of multiplexity describes an emerging world order in which non-western powers play an increasingly important role and US-centred western dominance is waning. Given the centrality of ‘the West’ to economic globalization since the Second World War, the geoeconomic turn and shift towards more nationally-oriented economic strategies in the 2010s and early 2020s could be considered a development that further accelerates the emergence of a less globalized and less western-centric world order. This article empirically re-examines these trends from an international political economy perspective. At odds with the deglobalization thesis, our assessment shows that across the spheres of trade, production and finance, western-led globalization continues to thrive. In terms of a redistribution of power, we find relative shifts in global economic power away from the United States—and the West more broadly—to be mostly restricted to international trade and largely concentrated towards China, whereas the West's structural power over global production and finance remains formidable. At the same time, China is rapidly catching up in some critical technologies, which in turn might account for the West's recent attempts to constrain China in its technological ambitions. From this perspective, we propose that the hidden purpose of the West's deglobalization agenda might not be a retreat from globalization, but an attempt to push back against and exclude potential rivals from the system. Hence, rather than accelerating, the geoeconomic turn may in fact be aimed at preventing a transition towards a more multiplex order.

Abstract This article seeks to enrich understanding of Amitav Acharya's formulation of the multiplex world order in two novel ways. First, it recentres violent extremist actors as being among the architects of such multiplexity and, second, it highlights their contribution to multiplexity's temporal pluralism. The article makes a theoretical contribution in conceptualizing temporalities as a defining feature of the multiplex's complexity and diversity; a methodological contribution in conceptualizing timelines as a framework to study the temporal element of extremist politics; and an empirical contribution through an original and comparative reading of the fictions, manifestos and newsletters of Islamic State and a selection of white power terrorists. The reading focuses on three elements: crisis discourse, accelerationist logic and millenarian visions. As meta-narratives of world political time, extremist timelines not only shed light on the world-views of their purveyors but also the phenomenological quality of their politics. Besides enriching and endangering its diversity and complexity, these radical timelines also historicize the multiplex as emergent within a collective mood of alienation, apocalyptic urgency and crisis.

Abstract Beginning with the United States in 2016, more than 70 countries and international organizations have published strategies and policy recommendations for artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructures. This article locates these policies in the shift from a hierarchical distribution of power to a flatter diffusion of power in which systemic interactions can be top-down, bottom-up or horizontal. A diffusion of power across multiple actors and regions weakens the material and socialization capabilities of hegemonic actors, resulting in global governance outcomes that are described here as ‘multiplexity’. Multiplexity offers a complex and pluralist menu of choices to actors. The computational models employed in this article show complex networks and clusters around multiplex choices that outline patterns of global governance for the evolving AI infrastructures. These networks and clusters cast doubt on many of the extant theories of global governance: those rooted in material power, wherein hegemonic states shape global governance; those where normatively motivated actors shape governance in national contexts; or those where regional patterns (North–South, East–West) are easily discernible. The article locates the origins of multiplexity in a diffusion of power entailing intersecting networks, regions, actors and world-views. There are leaders and great powers in AI, but the rest are not merely followers. In a diffused power scenario, multiple ontologies about the world coexist. The article employs big data mining, specifically latent Dirichlet allocation models from computer science, and process tracing to provide evidence of governance mechanisms for AI.