The arrival of the multi-order world—reflections on the state of play

This article revisits Flockhart’s Citation2016 article which outlined a coming global ordering architecture with several international orders—a multi-order world. It considers how geopolitical developments over the past decade have vindicated the argument and made adaptation of policy to the reality of the multi-order world an urgent matter, but also how new and unexpected developments have rendered the prospects for a cooperative multi-order world less likely. We outline updates to the original argument and we reflect on which aspects might need revision. Our focus is on the concept “the good life” as an essential element in ordering narratives and as a reference point for assessing the functionality of ordering practices within and between international orders. We conclude that the multi-order world of today is characterized by accelerating fragmentation, diversification and complexification where governance primarily takes place within orders rather than through cooperation between them.