Amy King discusses power, ideas and global order with Manjeet Pardesi and Nayoung Lee
On 24 May 2023, Amy King joined Associate Professor Manjeet Pardesi (Political Science and International Relations Programme, Victoria University of Wellington) and Nayoung Lee (Doctoral Candidate, Political Science and International Relations, University of Southern California) for a panel discussion on ‘Power and Ideas in Global Order’ as part of the 2023 GRADNAS Seminar Series.
In this seminar, Manjeet Pardesi contrasted the Classical Mediterranean and Indian Ocean orders as a way to examine the role of power and ideas in the making of international orders. Nayoung Lee discussed her ongoing research on the origins of ideas of hierarchy in the classical Confucian text, the Chunqiu (春秋), and the role of ritual in generating and maintaining hierarchical authority structures.
In her presentation, Amy King posed the question ‘What makes a “Chinese idea” Chinese’, as a way to consider the relationship between power, ideas, and international orders. Conceptualising order transitions as transitions in shared ideas about an international society’s primary and secondary institutions, King has argued elsewhere that subordinate states – like China during the 1940s – can shape an order’s shared ideas through strategies such as amplifying, grafting and rejection by appropriation.
However, trying to isolate ‘Chinese ideas,’ and their effects on an international order transition, is not a simple proposition. First, ideas move fluidly across state borders, often propelled by epistemic communities, experts, and other internationally-mobile actors. Referring to a ‘Chinese idea’, then, risks obscuring the ‘constant process of negotiation and appropriation’ that takes place as ideas are shared internationally between actors operating across local and global levels (Lu 2021: 6). Second, disentangling ‘Chinese ideas’ from the effects of superordinate state structural and productive power is particularly difficult when Chinese ideas converge with those of the superordinate state(s).
Instead, King argued that we need to pay attention to the role of superordinate power in shaping the knowledge and accepted meanings embedded in international institutions and practices, and its impact on subordinate actors operating within those institutions and practices. At the same time, however, her analysis of China’s role in shaping the post-WWII international economic order demonstrates that there are real limits to superordinate state power. A focus on ideas allows us to examine the ‘synthesis’ or ‘fusing’ that takes place when superordinate Western economic ideas intermingle with Chinese economic ideas and issues.
The result, King argues, is that Chinese economic ordering ideas in the 1940s and beyond exhibit — from the standpoint of Western intellectual history and experience — a high degree of duality and a willingness to accept in-built tension. To hear more on these discussions, please visit the seminar recording available here.
It was terrific to have the opportunity to discuss ongoing work with scholars working at the forefront of Asian Security through the Graduate Research and Development Network on Asian Security (GRADNAS) at ANU. Our thanks to Dr Stuti Bhatnagar and Professor Evelyn Goh for organising this seminar.
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