PYQ Vault · Paper 2 · Changing International Political Order
Critically examine the decline of the United States of America as a hegemon and its implications for the changing international political order.
How the answer moves
The flow snapshot — the routes in, the body, the counter-view and the routes out.
Flow snapshot — how the answer moves
Intro routes
BODY FLOW primacy built: containment / critical technologies / military reach / dollar's reserve status — brief peak 1989-2007-09 — Gilpin: fragile pillars = dollar + MNCs + nuclear weapons — markers of decline: 9/11 — 2008 crisis (neoliberalism's limits) — Afghanistan 2021 — Russia—Ukraine — erosion deepest at the consent pillar — de-dollarisation (China, Russia, India, Iran, Saudi Arabia) — AIIB / NDB rival Bretton Woods — China across UN agencies
Body flow
COUNTER-VIEW capability is another matter — Strange: structural power (military, international credit, services, dollar, education) — Zakaria: still unrivalled in many spheres — adaptation, not collapse, decides the future
Counter-view
CONCLUSION ROUTES R1 no handover: West — Asia, unipolarity → multipolarity, no successor hegemon — Allison's "Thucydides Trap" — order open to rivalry and economic shocks — Keohane: an order can outlive its hegemon R2 Behuria: “Multipolarity is what the states make of it" — widened strategic autonomy for India — but room for strong powers to bend norms
Model answer
Handwritten, in the form it would be written in the examination hall.
