ABSTRACT
The chapter aims to apply complex eclecticism’s conceptual tools to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in order to evaluate their usefulness. Accordingly, concepts taken from the mainstream IR theories of liberalism, realism and constructivism are applied first. The analysis reveals the extent to which the contested concept of power transcends traditional paradigmatic boundaries in IR and has impacts across all of them as well as in the implementation of the BRI. Material, institutional and ideational factors also do not fit neatly into one paradigm or another, much as one might wish this to be the case. This confirms the need for an eclectic approach which fully accounts for complexity and necessitates the reconfiguring of the IR conceptual tools. Next abductive analysis reveals some non-mainstream tools which are useful for examining the BRI. They are economic inequality, Confucian harmony, male domination, and the natural environment. Six CT conceptual tools – feedback loops, nonlinearity/sensitivity to initial parameters, emergence/self-organisation, path dependence, tipping points/edge of chaos, and black swans – are also outlined. CT can be used at both the macro-level, as an overall framing device, and at the meso- and micro-levels, through the application of individual concepts to explain and elucidate specific phenomena within the BRI.
