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Long-term scenarios for the development of the international system (‘winter frost’ and ‘spring thaw’)

Kortunov A.V.,

Independent researcher, Moscow, Russia, akortunov@russiancouncil.ru

elibrary_id: 548604 | ORCID: 0000-0002-3897-6434 |

Article received: 2025.10.18 14:51. Accepted: 2025.11.20 14:52


DOI: 10.17976/jpps/2026.01.06
EDN: DDQOUG

Rubric: Laboratory

For citation:

Kortunov A.V. Long-term scenarios for the development of the international system (‘winter frost’ and ‘spring thaw’). – Polis. Political Studies. 2026. No. 1. https://doi.org/10.17976/jpps/2026.01.06. EDN: DDQOUG (In Russ.)

Abstract

The author attempts to construct possible scenarios for the development of the international relations system up to the middle of the current century, relying on the features of interaction between the economic and political dimensions of this system. The dynamics of the economic dimension range from the ongoing process of regionalization of international economic life, including, in the most radical version, the complete collapse of the once unified world economy, to the renewal, in full or even expanded form, of global integration processes characteristic of the international system at the end of the last century and the beginning of the current one. Political dynamics reflect the level of mutual understanding and the presence or absence of agreements on common rules of the game among the players in world politics – from complete political disconnect and an inability to agree even on the most important issues of security and development to the formation of a stable universal consensus on the key issues of the emerging world order. Combining the economic and political dimensions of the international system allows us to identify four basic scenarios, which can be described as a 1) a ‘game without rules,’ or the ‘winter’ of the international system (the continuation of regionalization, transitioning into the ‘atomization’ of the global economy, in the absence of even minimal political agreement among players), 2) ‘multiple world orders,’ or ‘spring’ (resumption of integration in the absence of agreement among players), 3) ‘world government,’ or ‘summer’ (resumption of intensive processes of global economic integration with a high level of political agreement among key players), and 4) ‘mature multipolarity,’ or ‘autumn’ (the continuation of economic regionalization with a high level of political agreement among players). In the first of the two articles, the author analyzes the ‘winter’ and ‘spring’ of the incoming world order, i.e., scenarios that assume a lack of agreement among the main players on fundamental issues of political world organization.

Keywords

integration, regionalization, polycentrism, multilateralism, world order, global issues, conflicts.

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