Beyond Geopolitics: New Perspectives for Understanding International Relations

Michela Ceccorulli and Giovanni Agostinis, lecturers at the Department of Political and Social Sciences

The international order that has shaped the world over the past eighty years appears to be falling apart. Balance has been lost, and the traditional frameworks of international politics no longer serve their purpose. Yet amid conflicts with no end in sight and ever-expanding areas of tension, what possible alternatives remain? Where can we look to find traces of peace, practices of repair, and strategies for political action?

New insights emerged from the latest edition of the Pan-European Conference on International Relations, promoted by EISA, the European International Studies Association, and hosted by the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the University of Bologna. Supported by the Emilia-Romagna Region, the event brought around 1,400 scholars from all over the world to Bologna for five days of discussion in search of ways to promote and renew international dialogue.

UniboMagazine spoke with Michela Ceccorulli and Giovanni Agostinis, both lecturers in International Relations at the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the University of Bologna and organisers of this major event.

Looking at the international situation, it seems that the balance we have known in recent decades is in deep crisis. Is that really the case?
Michela Ceccorulli: If we consider the traditional view of International Relations, centred on the role of Europe and the United States, we indeed realise that this framework is reductive and no longer works. However, if we listen to scholars from different regions, with a focus on the non-Western world, things look different. They show us that international relations are not in crisis per se; instead, what is in crisis are certain categories and theories developed in the West to interpret and govern global politics, such as the idea of a liberal international order, undermined by its contradictions, its double standards, and its claim to moral superiority. The new international order must be viewed and understood through a broader, truly global lens.

Giovanni Agostinis: Indeed, the discipline of International Relations provides various conceptual and theoretical tools to explain what is happening in the world, to identify causes, and to anticipate effects. However, with the decline of Europe and the United States as central actors and the emergence of a multipolar international order, there is less consensus around those concepts and theories that originated in Western countries and became dominant due to the power position the West has held since the industrial revolution. Today, political and economic tensions and conflicts at a global level make it more difficult to reach a shared understanding of reality. Greater academic pluralism, at least for now, seems to produce cognitive fragmentation rather than genuine theoretical innovation.

What steps should be taken to achieve a broader and more shared perspective on relations between peoples and between states?

M.C.: An important step towards creating new political spaces and opportunities for dialogue would be to critically rethink the concept of “geopolitics”, which is widely invoked in both academic and public debate today. In Italy and Europe, there is still a strong tendency to analyse political relations and security issues through this framework, which is now too narrow to grasp the complexity of international dynamics. The ease with which the term is used carries significant risks, both theoretically and practically. Academia should make an effort to bring this complexity back into focus.

G.A.: I would add that the geopolitical approach considers states as the sole actors in international relations, ignoring the role of the various political, social, and economic actors operating both within states and across transnational networks of cooperation.

Yet the tendency to observe international dynamics through the lens of geopolitics still seems widespread.
M.C.: Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has revived this approach, likely because it can, at first glance, be linked to familiar categories of the past: the use of armed force against a weaker actor in order to reclaim one’s “sphere of influence” and to alter territorial borders and the political map. “Geopolitics” works precisely for this reason: it offers a simplified representation of reality. A map allows the “expert” to analyse, explain, and prescribe. But what we see on a map is only a very small part of a much richer set of historical, economic, legal, and cultural factors and processes.

G.A.: Geopolitics drastically simplifies the complexity of international relations by presenting states as monolithic actors, identical to one another, distinguished and opposed only by the amount of resources and territory they possess. Variations in the availability of these resources—especially in relation to neighbouring states—would determine state behaviour internationally. This logic is challenged by multiple studies and theories. For this reason, especially in public debate, it is important to show that there are alternatives to geopolitics, offering less aggressive and less conflictual ways of interpreting international relations.

What might these alternative approaches be?
M.C.: The Conference suggested that there are several possible paths. One analysing and considering the deep interconnections between economic processes and political decisions: how the economy shapes politics and how politics shapes the economy. Another interesting approach concerns the growing importance of individual political leaders, to the detriment of national and international political institutions, which are becoming increasingly less relevant.

G.A.: To understand current dynamics, it is crucial to examine the power relations between states and geographical areas that emerged during the colonial period and developed in the decades that followed. This “post-colonial” awareness can help us explain highly complex phenomena and behaviours that may appear contradictory at first sight: consider the responses of various world macro-regions to the war in Ukraine or the Israeli–Palestinian conflict; the same applies to the different reactions to China’s rapid rise.

How, then, can international relations be rethought?
G.A.: By starting from the recognition of past violent relations and the traumas they caused, and by seeking to implement policies of repair. The traditional lens of international relations has so far prevented us from fully grasping these aspects, but there is growing awareness of the need for new perspectives.

M.C.: This viewpoint allows us to reconstruct the deep-rooted causes of what we observe today and to understand that contemporary international dynamics are shaped by power structures originating in the colonial order. Reparative policies allow us to acknowledge these power relations and the global order that emerged from past events.

In all this, international institutions appear increasingly weak. What can be done to restore their centrality?
M.C.: This delegitimization of institutions is one of the defining features of the crisis of the liberal order. We see it very clearly today in the United States, with attacks on the judiciary, the central bank, or with withdrawals from international treaties and organisations. As institutions created to curb executive power and to negotiate shared solutions crumble, some world leaders legitimise political action that is less constrained by “checks”, with results that are plain for all to see.

G.A.: For global multilateral institutions such as the United Nations, a profound reform is needed to ensure greater weight and fairer, permanent representation for those regions of the world that have so far been underrepresented and unheard. This would be a crucial step for these institutions to once again become true platforms for dialogue in resolving international conflicts and disputes. This can only happen through bold reforms that restore universal legitimacy to the international institutions established after 1945.