TEORIJA IN PRAKSA Vol. LVI, Special Issue, 2019 333 EDITORIAL Anton GRIZOLD, Marjan SVETLIČIČ* THE EMERGING NEW WORLD ORDER: NEW TRENDS CALLING FOR NEW ANSWERS** Our world has been experiencing radical economic and social structural changes, ranging from the ‘golden age’ of globalisation (the 1990s to 2010) through to the backlash of globalisation, also known as “slowbalization” (Bakas, Economist 19. 1. 2019: 17). Interstate poverty and inequalities were reduced, only to see them re-emerge internally, within state borders. Scientific, informational/technological and technical progress means that all parts of the world form what is metaphorically referred to as a ‘global village’. In this framework, we often forget that the success of each part of this global village depends on the international system’s stability and order at the global level. Today’s globalising world has reached the state whereby repeated outbursts of distrust, even hostility between countries not seen since the Cold War, are preventing actors in the international community from successfully working together to provide international stability, peace and safety. The biggest concern is that the economic and financial crisis that hit several years ago swelled to become an all-encompassing challenge for the international community both substantively and spatially. One of the deepest starting points is that in recent years the crisis has developed into a serious structural crisis, involving all vital areas of human life in society, including values, social and health care, education, culture, politics, environ- mental issues and others. Some even speak about the crisis of civilisation (Grizold, 2011: 1089). In this setting, many extremist movements are offer- ing new visions of the world based on one-sided interpretations (such as the prohibitions and commandments of so-called political Islam completely opposed to the structure of modern democracies based on freedom and equality; and the rise of extreme movements and political parties built on populism, authoritarianism and the negation of human rights and freedoms, democracy, and the rule of law). SPECIAL ISSUE * Anton Grizold, PhD, Professor, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, Editor- in-Chief; Marjan Svetličič, PhD, Professor Emeritus, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, Guest Editor. ** The editors would like to express their gratitude to SID Bank, which is committed to supporting sustain- able development, and Studio Moderna that financially supported our joint effort to draw attention to “how the world has changed” as the president of the SID management board stated in his interview (Svilan, 2019). The authors of the articles acknowledge the financial support from the Slovenian Research Agency (research core funding No. P5-0177; “Slovenia and its actors in international relations and European integrations”). TEORIJA IN PRAKSA Vol. LVI, Special Issue, 2019 334 Anton GRIZOLD, Marjan SVETLIČIČ Today, state and non-state actors in international relations face the basic dilemma of how to best respond to the radically altered international envi- ronment that has developed since the end of the Cold War (such as geo- political, geo-strategic and geo-economic changes in this environment, including the end of the bipolar international order as well as of certain multinational states – the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia – and the formation of new centres of economic, political and military power along with the emergence of a multipolar international order). The fact is that the path of unilateralism taken by some major international relations actors (e.g. America’s still applicable announcement of the war against ter- rorism and the doctrine of preventive war, the Russian Federation’s annexa- tion of Crimea etc.) is inadequate for the emerging global society or a world of globality (Grizold et al., 2015: 11). The basic common departure point for different views and approaches to understanding the new world order is that the material foundations together with the scientific and technologi- cal developments and consequences of globalisation have already under- mined the key starting points of the traditional concept of state sovereignty, thereby requiring that an answer be found urgently concerning the possible forms of ‘post-territorial’ governance of international relationships at the national, regional and global levels (Baylis and Smith, 2001: 30). This means that today we are faced with a turbulent and chaotic inter- national environment in terms of actual economic, social, political, security and other trends, but also the would-be policies/strategies of some states for dealing with such trends and challenges. Problems are becoming ever more global, while governance generally remains national. The present times somehow resemble the period before World War II. Accordingly, it is important to determine what our position is in this vulnerable, unpredict- able, complex and ambiguous world and, second, what should be done about it on the level of state and non-state actors, institutions, not to men- tion individuals. The editors of Teorija in Praksa therefore decided to prepare a special issue of the journal aimed at evaluating some of the biggest trends, shifts and changes in order to set the stage for the actors involved to make suit- able adjustments in time. We know it is hard to predict the future and that academics are not fortune tellers. However, to stay on the conservative side and try to reduce the shock and cost of the unpredictable, some things can be predicted at least as trends, without being able to identify the exact tim- ing of potential events. Endeavours along these lines include ex ante poli- cies/strategies, contingency plans or plan-Bs, as well as certain pre-mortem analyses. This special issue commences by evaluating the current state of affairs of the “breaking world system… and emerging the one in which winners TEORIJA IN PRAKSA Vol. LVI, Special Issue, 2019 335 Anton GRIZOLD, Marjan SVETLIČIČ take all… with growing confrontations between state and corporations” (Češko, 2019). Raškovič, Vuchkovski and Svetličič contribute the first text in which they reflect on where we are and where we may be going, and question what is occurring in these global shifts. The article also builds on certain conclusions made by other articles found in this issue. The sec- ond article addresses a critical issue, namely, the crisis of the global liberal world order. It shows that, despite apparently negative trends, liberal inter- nationalism remains highly relevant as a principle for arranging the new world order and as an explanatory tool and should thus not be overlooked when considering alternative paths for the future. Liberal internationalism is followed by another big challenge before us – how to adjust to China’s growing role in the world. Blaming others, e.g. globalisation or even China itself, is a frequent response to the crisis and to the growing inequalities which are chiefly home-grown, not imported from abroad. Therefore, we look at the role played by China with a view to establishing a new balance of power in the world (Šabič and Pejič). This group of articles concludes with an overview of what drives the populist stances in foreign policy and Euroscepticism in five Central European countries as part of the overall tide of populism across the world (Bojinović-Fenko, Lovec, Požgan and Crnčec). The transition of CEE into liberal democracies via EU enlargement has been hailed as one of the greatest achievements of the EU and liberal interna- tionalism in general. Their backsliding into populism and authoritarianism shows how fragile small developing democracies are in our rapidly chang- ing global world. Such an approach can be applied not only to the analysed countries, but to the world as a whole. The second set of articles considers particular sectors/issues and the issue of which strategies to possibly follow in such a transformed world. It starts with the sustainable development goals (SDGs) as a consensual plat- form. The world has chosen to address development in the new environ- ment under the threat of climate change and degradation of the environ- ment. By applying a robust network approach, the author Kunčič considers the application of the criteria of efficiency and targeting the interconnected nature of the SDGs as being necessary if optimal results are to be achieved. Innovations can decisively influence the positions held by the global play- ers. International trade and foreign direct investment were generally expanding up until the start of the great recession, also due to the many regional trade-liberalising schemes. However, the new structure of interna- tional trade, with services gaining in importance, means the role of such trade liberalisation has dramatically changed, particularly in terms of distri- bution of the costs and benefits of further liberalisation, triggering a popu- list backlash against such agreements, as Nahtigal claims in his article. The next contribution (Arbeiter, Bučar, Udovič) applies a more global approach TEORIJA IN PRAKSA Vol. LVI, Special Issue, 2019 336 Anton GRIZOLD, Marjan SVETLIČIČ to a single country – Slovenia, its development cooperation and commer- cial diplomacy. Can commercial diplomacy help materialise the SDGs as both twins and rivals in terms of its implementation? The authors contend the two interrelated policy instruments have as yet not become clearly inte- grated foreign policy instruments, even less so complementary instruments. Trade wars are not only threatening the macroeconomics of countries involved in trade wars, but also the companies that are increasingly included in global value chains (GVCs). Those who start ‘trade wars’ tend to forget how such behaviour can hurt their own companies since up to 70% of global trade may be occurring through GVCs. The authors Jaklič, Stare and Knez demonstrate the role played in GVCs by services which create over 50% of value added in exports. Their empirical analysis reveals the intensity of links between services and manufacturing in the EU from 2000 to 2014, and the structure of domestic and foreign components which digitalisation (industry 4.0 and services 4.0) is transforming. Due to the growing share of foreign services in the value added of manufactured exports, the rising pro- tectionist measures and trade wars may negatively affect GVCs and make GVCs reorient their operations to the regional level.The final article critically evaluates the role academics have played in analysing and publicly explain- ing the last world financial crisis, the causes and consequences of globali- sation, the backlash against free trade, etc. It concludes that not only did academics not see the crisis coming, but they are also responsible for being unable to communicate the whole story about globalisation and the costs of free trade, which has partly fuelled the backlashes, populism and rebellion against the elites we are witnessing today. To conclude, following the end of the Cold War and in light of the devel- oping discussions on the “new international/world order” and the social, economic, political, diplomatic, security and other dimensions of modern international relations, the sensibility of each of us regarding these prob- lems has been building, thereby contributing to the greater responsibil- ity of civil society and the state as a whole. Of course, many aspects of the complex, changing international system today (such as the emergence of a whole new global structure of economic, political, military and ideologi- cal power, the provision of security at national, regional, international and global levels; the greater number of non-state actors with an important impact on world politics, etc.) remain unsettled and unaddressed. Nevertheless, the articles gathered in this thematic issue are true food for thought. They introduce doubt in the self-evidence of the previously mentioned unilateralism as the path taken by certain major actors in inter- national relations. In the current stage of global development (entailing the re-nationalisation of world politics, especially security policy, amid disa- greement and even conflicts between the main actors in the international TEORIJA IN PRAKSA Vol. LVI, Special Issue, 2019 337 Anton GRIZOLD, Marjan SVETLIČIČ relations, etc.) the imperative of the social sciences is to continue perform- ing its basic mission: to not simply hold up a mirror before society and peo- ple, but to actively participate in the search for appropriate solutions to the social patterns of today, not yesterday, for the good of all people and the entire world. BIBLIOGRAPHY Baylis, John and Steve Smith (eds.) (2001): The Globalization of World Politics. An Introduction to International Relations, second edition. New York: Oxford Uni- versity Press. 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