Chapter 1: Introduction to Reconfigurations of Authority, Power and Territoriality
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This introductory chapter sets the stage for the exploration of evolving patterns of conflict and cooperation in world politics. It provides an overview of the fluidity and unsettledness of sites of power and authority/legitimacy as manifested in: 1) the rise of multiple states as powerful actors; 2) the securitization of migration/displacement; and 3) transformations of authority, the growing legitimacy deficit, and the erosion of normative constraints in addressing world order challenges. These are some of the developments out of which new rationalities of governance are emerging. The aim is not to predict the dawn of a new era, but to make intelligible some of the shifts and turns of politics in globally oriented spaces and the emerging axes of conflict, contestation, and cooperation.

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