Global (Dis)Order Evidence Hub

The materials in this hub have been produced through the activities related to our Global (Dis)Order programme, and the hub is updated on an ongoing basis as we publish new research materials, futures-based scenario analyses, policy briefings, and concrete insights to address the challenges of a changing global order.

You will also be able to read summary notes of conferences, international policy forums and working group meetings.

All of this material contributes to the programme’s overall aim to provide rigorous, objective, evidence-based analysis of the shifting dynamics of global orders from regional, multidisciplinary, sectoral and temporal perspectives. We will be bringing all of this together to provide real-time insight and roadmaps to navigate these dynamics across policy areas and regions.

What is the effect of rapid technological changes on the ways that wars are fought? And are countries now less likely to show restraint in using force?

The latest paper by Mats Berdal explores these timely questions, and argues that the result of developments leads to more conflict and a blurring between war and peace.

The democratisation and diversification of war by Mats Berdal

These two publications are from an International Policy Forum we hosted in Brazil in December 2025 on the Global South and the transformations of world order, including a summary note and a discussion paper from Robert Muggah on how crime, violence and their perception are reshaping politics and elections in the Americas, and what measures can be taken in response.

Crime, violence and the reshaping of politics in the Americas by Robert Muggah

The Global South and the transformations of world order - summary note

We will be publishing full summary notes of our previous conferences, workshops and international policy forums soon, a brief description of each event can be found below:

London Conference January 2025

On January 13-15 2025 the British Academy and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace launched its Global (Dis)Order International Policy Programme. 2024, was a significant year for international geopolitics following several major international elections and shifts in global power structures. This was a timely and significant moment to gather over 160 participants from across policy, professional and research backgrounds from a wide range of global contexts.

Attendees participated in a range of panel discussions on the following themes: Historical Antecedents and Imagined Planetary Futures; Global Order and its Discontents; A more insecure securitising world; Organising for transnational and planetary challenges; Policymaking in a fragmenting global economy; Global Security Orders.

As part of this conference, the British Academy convened eight policy roundtables on cross-cutting themes relevant to intersections across the programme’s work streams. These were: Can a Fragmenting World Economy Be Governed?; Conflict in Ukraine: Scenarios and Implications for European and Global Order; Sources of International Leadership in the Context of Trump 2.0; The Road to Belem and Beyond: Where Does Climate Diplomacy Go Post-COP29?; What are the prospects and pathways for regalvanising accountability for violations of the laws of war?; Managing Risks and Maximizing Benefits from AI: The Paris Action Summit and Beyond; BRICS Expansion and its Implications for Multilateral Cooperation; The Future of Financing for Development.

Berlin Workshop October 2025

From 30 September to 1 October, the British Academy and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace brought together scholars, policymakers and practitioners for a two-day workshop in Berlin as part of the Global (Dis)Order International Policy Programme focusing on ‘The Multiple Appeals to History: Conceptual and Historical Underpinnings of International order’ and ‘Europe and Global Disorder.’

Discussions during the conference demonstrated that time and history are structures of power and serve as a resource for political contestation. Competing narratives, such as liberal progress and conservative decline, as well as thoughts on technology, capitalism, and geopolitics shape how people view the present. Thus, understanding global order requires analysing not only institutions, actors, and geopolitics, but also the temporal architectures that shape how societies understand the past, experience the present, and envision the future.

Brazil International Policy Forum December 2025

Our policy forum events are designed to bring regionally specific perspectives to policy areas being explored in the wider programme which cut across sectors, geographies and disciplinary insight. This forum, delivered in December 2025, focused on the topic of ‘The Global South and the Transformations of World Order’ and was co-chaired by Matias Spektor, Fundação Getulio Vargas and Stewart Patrick, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Questions of order and disorder have long been framed through the lens of great power politics and Western dominance. Yet, in recent years the Global South has surfaced as central to the global distribution of power, the contestation of international norms, and the management of governance and institutions. The transformation is not confined to changes at the level of the state alone - it includes the rise of new civil society actors, the disruptive role of social change outside the West, and the transnational influence of non-state actors such as religious movements and organised crime. As authority in world politics diffuses beyond traditional hierarchies, prospects for global ordering once again require deep engagement with change in the Global South.

Participants participated in a range of conversations on the following themes: Imagining Global Governance in 2050: How to Render Multipolarity Less Unstable; The Return of the Monroe Doctrine; The Future of the BRICS; How US-China Rivalry Constrains the Global South; Climate Governance and Effective Global Financing; Illicit Flows and Transnational Organised Crime; World Order and the Global South