Towards a post-COVID world order: A critical analysis

The aim of this chapter is to provide a critical analysis of contemporary global connectedness, framed within the context of global development and aid. This forms the foundation for pitching the existing (neo)liberal world order against the emerging, post COVID-19 world order. In adopting this approach, the chapter addresses the question of ‘order’ by contrasting unipolar, bipolar, and multipolar power relations governing the formation and maintenance of the ‘order’. The idea of an emerging world order provides the context within which the implications of COVID-19’s disruption of the foreign aid and development system draw upon and contribute to discourse around evolving bilateral and multilateral aid and development relationships. The chapter critically unpacks key themes that frame the discourse, namely the locus and impact of foreign aid in international development, and mutual obligations and global cooperation required to address the contemporary health, economic, and social crises that are likely to further marginalise countries and peoples already marginalised. Discourses of global cooperation are addressed from a political economy vantage point drawing relevant context from notions of world order, and the evolving positioning of the multilateral development system, including WHO and the COVAX facility. The chapter frames the following chapters by providing analysis of key themes developed throughout the collection, principally how governments around the world are confronting a range of interconnected crises.
These include the COVID-19 health crisis, an economic crisis, political and governance crises, institutional legitimacy crises, and geopolitical rivalry, and refers inter alia to strengthening of nationalism, illiberalism and populism, and weakening of the existing world order, with (de)globalisation a consistent, if not uncontested theme. The chapter critically positions, from an ideology critique vantage point, overarching themes of political analysis and soft power, disruption and re-making, and public health, poverty and inequality in foreign aid.