Global Order and Resistance

From its inception, CAIS has been a home for the study and critical appraisal of the ‘politics of governance and resistance’. The rise and contestation of the Liberal International Order has been explored theoretically and empirically in a number of path breaking areas: liberal peace-building and humanitarian interventions; international organizations and new social movements; the emergence of transnational authoritarian states; contestation by rival ideologies including Islamism and the far-right; and the resistance politics of class, race and gender.

In terms of the theme of ‘resistance’, major funded research projects have focused on how counter-hegemonic social movements challenge, subvert and transform global power in discrete locales, including the conflict on the West Bank and occupied territories, challenging patriarchy within anti-globalization movements, constitutionalising in anarchist groups, and claims to indigenous sovereignty on the grounds of settler colonial parliaments. Last but not least, our research team has unique expertise on thematics of order and resistance across a range of regions including Europe, North America, the Middle East and North Africa, Russia, China, Central Asia, South-East Asia, and Western and Eastern Africa.