CIVILIZATION AN INSTRUMENT OF WORLD ORDER? THE ROLE OF THE CIVILIZATIONAL PARADIGM IN THE ABSENCE OF BALANCE OF POWER

Abstract

"Civilization" has become a buzzword in contemporary discourse about global affairs. What is called "international order" - a system of power-centered interaction between states - has always invited the creation of "legitimating tools" by those who had an interest in the preservation of a given distribution of power. The very stability of world order is, inter alia, a function of its legitimation. While in an earlier era - in particular that of the "Holy Alliance" - religion was the determining factor in the discourse of legitimation, it has been gradually succeeded - as far as the dominant Western civilization is concerned - by secularized ideologies and, more recently, the paradigm of "civilization."