ABSTRACT
The decline of American hegemony and the post-Cold War world order has accelerated, mainly due to the rise of the People’s Republic of China. China’s successful and unprecedented state-led industrialization and its integration into the global political economy were followed by the creation of multilateral institutions such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), and ultimately the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This unanticipated development raises two interconnected key questions: (i) Does China meet the requirements to create an alternative hegemonic world order; and (ii) Does it have sufficient capabilities to restructure and reform the existing liberal world order set by the United States after World War II?
The common starting point for the majority of scholars of both (neo-)realist and (neo-)liberal schools of thought in International Relations (IR) and Global Political Economy (GPE) is the undeniable decline of the material and ideological foundation of the US-made world order. This study tries to find an answer to the aforementioned questions by exploring Robert W. Cox’s notion of hegemony and the method of “historical structures”. Historical structures refer to a set of three interconnected social forces, namely ideas, institutions, and material capabilities. Hegemony implies that the outcome of the interaction between ideas, institutions, and material capabilities in a particular historical time and space is an arrangement of power and authority considered to be natural and legitimate. Hegemony arises or expands when other (subordinated) social forces come to accept those conditions as natural. Hegemony is weakened and eroded when the legitimacy of the power structure is called into question and an alternative order seems acceptable and desirable.
In this study, we argue that China is underway to meet two of these dimensions of hegemony. However, regarding the third dimension, Chinese leadership lags behind in the creation of ideas to socialize other states and social forces into accepting China’s role in reforming or restructuring the world order.
