ABSTRACT

In this final chapter, the long-term future is considered in terms of both practical likelihood of political developments and the theoretical value of speculation about the shape and character of those developments. For practical purposes long-term planning requires a sense of the direction in what has been known as ‘international relations’ and more recent aspirations for a global politics, and this in itself must be the outcome of a political process. For theoretical purposes, a moral context will be a necessary basis for political design, if engagement and commitment or contestation and resistance is to be prescribed, managed, or simply understood. Constructive hopes for a happy common future may inform world politics, but it might equally be influenced by conflicts and differences, and so both the uncertainties and the political process demand a coping mechanism. Behind this are substantive issues, typically involving change, which no amount of process will evade and will thus remain a source of anxiety – ever more need for a coping strategy. These challenges remain, even if there is parallel change in the discourses of world politics which may point to conformity. Change may thus involve, or generate, new forms of governance as conventional political structures are tested to their limits. In this unfolding future, fundamental questions of identity and political legitimacy will continue to challenge the more cosmopolitan projects, but it will nevertheless be a future of world politics. If there is a plan for posterity, it may at best be one which is sensitive to the coping needs of particular groups reflecting their moral location in the wider context of global governance.