In this blog post, Senior Researcher at the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA), Gustavo de Carvalho, interrogates the deep contradictions within International Relations today, where hegemonic powers both uphold and undermine global institutions.
In March 2025, I attended my first International Studies Association (ISA) conference in Chicago. As a Brazilian researcher based in South Africa and Senior Researcher at the South African Institute of International Affairs, and a PhD candidate at the University of Witwatersrand, I arrived despite warnings from Global South colleagues, one even asking, “Why go to ISA? It’s not a space for me!”
Through my work and PhD research, I focus on how Global South countries navigate geopolitical imaginaries, structural constraints, and legitimacy imperatives within a fragmented world order. In a moment of heightened geopolitical uncertainty, I have come to see the urgent need to engage deeply with the theoretical debates that shape global discourse—despite the limitations faced by Southern scholars and with a commitment to bridging the epistemic and structural divides that persist.
What unfolded was a striking reflection of International Relations (IR) ‘s current predicament: a discipline caught between its Western-centric foundations and a more plural future it has yet to fully embrace. The conference functioned less as a neutral marketplace of ideas and more as a mirror reflecting both the field’s potential, and its persistent blind spots. Through this microcosm, we can better understand the profound changes reshaping global order—and why IR must evolve accordingly.
Parallel Worlds of Knowledge
Contemporary IR emerged from experiences of war, empire and efforts at reconciliation in Europe and North America. Its foundational theories—realism (emphasising power), liberalism (a faith in institutions), constructivism (which focuses on ideas) originated within Western contexts. These theories have been treated as universal, which often obscures or overlooks their specific historical and geopolitical origins. Today, however, this intellectual hegemony is fracturing, as emerging powers across Asia, Africa, and Latin America assert increasing diplomatic, economic and normative influence. The United States and Europe no longer monopolises global rule setting but must contend with alternative power centres and voices amidst transnational challenges like climate change, pandemics and cyber threats.
At ISA 2025, this evolving geopolitical reality seemed at odds with the conference’s intellectual architecture. The implicit hierarchy of knowledge was evident in how traditional security discussions on NATO dynamics and American strategic doctrines appeared positioned as central to the discipline, while equally pressing issues—Sahelian food insecurity, Pacific Island climate vulnerability and African Union peacekeeping innovations—were structured primarily within specialised regional tracks.
This created an intellectual stratification where Euro-Atlantic concerns framed the central discourse, while Southern perspectives occupied spaces that felt peripheral – despite their critical relevance to contemporary global challenges. While panels on decolonial theory and indigenous epistemologies certainly existed, their relative separation from what is perceived as “mainstream” conversations suggests that ISA’s journey toward genuine intellectual pluralism remains incomplete.
While spaces for non-Western scholarship certainly flourished evidenced by the intellectual vibrancy of our “Voices from the Global South: Perspectives on the Evolving Global Order and International Relations Theory” roundtable, where colleagues from Brazil, Nigeria, and South Africa offered sophisticated analyses of knowledge networks and strategic non-alignment. These conversations often existed in parallel to mainstream discourse.
In my experience across different panels, such as being a discussant for “The Liberal International Order in Crisis” and “Africa’s Place in the Emerging Global Order,” I saw a genuine appetite for diverse perspectives. However, these views struggled to break through the discipline’s theoretical core. The paradox was clearly apparent: while valuable, creating spaces for alternative voices did not automatically translate into reshaping IR’s foundational frameworks or methodological approaches.
Geopolitical Realities vs. Academic Discourse
From my first day at ISA, I noticed a striking disconnect between our theoretical frameworks and the rapidly shifting geopolitical landscape. Landing in Chicago amid headlines about a tense Oval Office confrontation between Presidents Zelensky and Trump which vividly showed how unstable alliances had become, I found that the conference discussions seemed to proceed with curious conceptual inertia, as if these major shifts had not been fully considered in our analyses.
This disconnect crystallised during a panel, in which I was a discussant, where a prominent colleague identified China and Russia as the primary challenges to international stability. The analysis seemed stuck in traditional adversarial framings, and it failed to consider how established powers, particularly the United States, are actively destabilising the very normative architecture they created and championed. The discipline appears to be unprepared for a world where both challengers and creators of the system are equally responsible for undermining it.
Our theoretical frameworks are insufficient for today’s reality, where hegemonic actors and dominant powers simultaneously both support and undermine global governance. The concept of hegemonic stability theory that dominant powers uphold international order through institutions seems obsolete when these same powers selectively undermine their created systems. We urgently need new analytical tools that recognise paradox, institutional contradiction, and strategic inconsistency by acknowledging how power operates through selective rule enforcement rather than consistent system maintenance.
IR requires more nuanced theoretical apparatus which captures the paradoxical nature of contemporary power projection. Our discipline must move beyond the simple dichotomy of institutional cooperation versus conflict, and examine how actors simultaneously build and undermine practices. Such frameworks would recognise how states strategically oscillate between following and breaking rules and use institutional ambiguity to their advantage, by leveraging uncertainty in foreign policy. This requires us to challenge several dominant theoretical perspectives: the liberal assumption that more institutions automatically lead to greater stability; the constructivist belief that norms are simply internalised by states; and the realist tendency to overlook how power operates through the strategic manipulation of institutions.manipulating institutions.
Most importantly, these theoretical innovations must incorporate insights from Global South scholars who have long recognised the selective application of international norms. Their perspectives on strategic autonomy, epistemic injustice, and the politics of institutional design provide foundations for understanding a world where power operates more through strategic inconsistency and less through hegemonic stability, which has been experienced by the periphery long before becoming visible at the centre.
Academic Freedom in a Fragmented World
During ISA’s official opening, I heard reports of a silent protest by scholars standing in solidarity with Palestinian academics. Though not personally present, messages described participants lining a hallway with signs highlighting academic freedom restrictions in Gaza and the West Bank. Despite ISA’s code of conduct cautioning against protests, this peaceful demonstration revealed solidarity with colleagues under occupation but also highlighted the discipline’s struggle to reconcile professional neutrality with moral positioning.
This episode illuminated a deeper tension within IR: the field increasingly acknowledges multiple knowledge systems yet remains uncomfortable when these perspectives challenge dominant geopolitical narratives. The varied reactions with some participants showing support, while others visible discomfort, reflected personal politics and competing visions of what academic discourse should encompass. The question isn’t simply about including different regions but about embracing epistemological pluralism and whether IR can truly accommodate perspectives that fundamentally question Western-centric assumptions about sovereignty, security, and legitimate dissent.
This microcosm taking place at ISA mirrors the broader challenges to intellectual freedom, where immigration policies increasingly function as ideological filters. Under the Trump administration, visa revocations and deportation threats have targeted researchers whose views challenge official positions, creating unequal risks for scholars based on their nationality, institutional affiliation, and research focus. Scholars from the Middle East, South Asia, and parts of Africa face heightened and intense scrutiny, creating disparities in whose critical perspectives can safely enter academic debates.
If researchers fear visa cancellation for expressing academic dissent, how can ISA guarantee its 2026 Columbus meeting will represent the full spectrum of IR thought? The field cannot claim to support theoretical pluralism while allowing systemicallowing systemic exclusion of politically problematic perspectives.
These dynamics produce intellectual distortions that go beyond individual conferences. When certain theoretical viewpoints particularly those questioning Western security paradigms or critiquing settler-colonial frameworks carry disproportionate professional risks for non-Western scholars, the resulting discourse inevitably skews toward safer, more conventional and established perspectives. If researchers fear visa cancellation for expressing academic dissent, how can ISA guarantee its 2026 Columbus meeting will represent the full spectrum of IR thought? The field cannot claim to support theoretical pluralism while allowing systemic exclusion of politically problematic perspectives.
Material barriers further compound these ideological filters. Despite the commendable efforts from the ISA Global South Caucus (GSCIS) and institutions like the Global South Colloquium Fund, countless Southern based scholars couldn’t attend due to visa complications and prohibitive costs. This absence represents more than missed networking opportunities; it reinforces citation imbalances and publishing hierarchies that marginalise scholarship from outside Western centres. As a result, the discipline’s knowledge production will remain to be disproportionately shaped by those with secure institutional positions and unrestricted mobility.
The ongoing preference for American venues amplifies these inequities. Complex US visa procedures and substantial travel costs create unequal access based on nationality, institutional resources, and geographic location, effectively determining whose ideas physically enter these spaces of intellectual exchange.
A true commitment to epistemological diversity would involve rotating these conferences through Africa, Latin America, Asia, and even Europe, as well as actively creating conditions where scholars with diverse theoretical orientations can participate without fearing professional or political repercussions. Genuine academic pluralism demands geographic inclusion and protects the right to express fundamental theoretical dissent.
Beyond Reform: Reimagining IR
The issues raised at ISA 2025 go beyond event programming. They call for a re-examining of how IR produces knowledge and whose experiences shape its framework. Decolonial and postcolonial scholars have long challenged Western-centrism, calling for epistemic justice and recognition of alternative worldviews. Indigenous research paradigms emphasise relationality and collective memory; African philosophy offers notions of ubuntu and community; Asian approaches focus on harmony and cyclical time. These frameworks can enrich our theories of order, conflict and cooperation, moving past simplistic “West versus rest” narratives.
However, embracing such diversity requires more than token panels. It calls for editorial boards reflecting regional plurality and peer review processes open to non-traditional methodologies. More collaborative research networks can help decentralise agenda-setting and reform pedagogical approaches, exposing students to a variety of intellectual traditions. As the leading association in the field, ISA is well-positioned to lead these reforms—but only if it is willing to challenge the hierarchical norms that contribute to exclusion and embrace.
My first ISA was both exhilarating and unsettling. It reaffirmed the field’s vitality through spirited debates and indispensable networks but also laid bare our blind spots. We are living through a critical period: witnessing the dissolution of unipolar certainties, the rise of new power dynamics, and the deliberate deployment of uncertainty as foreign policy. IR must become genuinely international, intellectually plural and institutionally adaptable to make sense of this world. IR must become genuinely international, intellectually plural and institutionally adaptable to make sense of this world.
Would I return to ISA? Yes, because it remains a vital hub connecting ideas and people. However, I do hope that future conferences transcend 2025’s limitations: rotating across continents, involving more Southern scholars in leadership roles, and fostering dialogues that bridge traditional divides. Beyond ISA, the Global South must continue building platforms such as conferences, journals and networks that centre our questions, methodologies and lived experiences.
The global order stands at a turning point, and so does IR. We can cling on to outdated paradigms and risk irrelevance as the world transforms, or we can embrace a universal more inclusive vision recognising multiple paths to order, conflict resolution, and justice. The conversations in Chicago highlighted our discipline’s potential and limitations; the challenge now is to build an IR that truly reflects global complexity rather than reproducing established hierarchies of knowledge.
About Gustavo de Carvalho
Gustavo de Carvalho is a Senior Researcher at the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) and a PhD Candidate in International Relations at the University of Witwatersrand. His research examines the Global South agency in contemporary international politics. His participation at ISA 2025 was made possible through institutional support from SAIIA and a conference grant from the Global Souths Colloqium Fund.
