Trine Flockhart
Biographic Data
| ID | 3780986 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Trine Flockhart |
| GIVEN NAMES | Trine |
| FAMILY NAME | Flockhart |
| SIGNATURE | FLOCKHART T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Southern Denmark |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3709-2493 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 216 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
The arrival of the multi-order world—reflections on the state of play
This article revisits Flockhart’s Citation2016 article which outlined a coming global ordering architecture with several international orders—a multi-order world. It considers how geopolitical developments over the past decade have vindicated the argument and made adaptation of policy to the reality of the multi-order world an urgent matter, but also how new and unexpected developments have rendered the prospects for a cooperative multi-order wor…
“Taking down the sign”—narrating the liberal international order without American leadership
Published online: 28 May 2026
Order as Resilience-Governance of Sameness and Diversity
One of the problems with the problem of world order is that what makes for order within societies is often precisely what makes for disorderly relations between them. I argue in this short essay that many of the problems with the problem of world order arise from assumptions that are widely shared within a discipline where the language of power and interest dominates and where a view of states as “like units” permeates. With more emphasis on valu…
Nato in the multi-order world
NATO has for 75 years been a remarkably resilient organization because it has been able to change when the world changed. NATO's longevity is in large part due to a dual structure, which has enabled the alliance to oscillate between a role as a military alliance and as a community of value. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and global geopolitical shifts such as the rise of China prompted NATO to prioritize its role as a military alliance and to ad…
Rebooting Global International Society
War in Ukraine
The global rules-based order has been in transformation for more than a decade, whilst the liberal international order has been in crisis and new international orders are emerging. Within this context, the Russian invasion of Ukraine marks what the Germans have called a Zeitenwende because the multi-order world is now a reality. The article outlines the main characteristics and implications of a multi-order world and outlines four categories of o…
Rebooting Global International Society
From ‘Westlessness’ to renewal of the liberal international order
The concept ‘Westlessness’ suggests that the liberal international order (LIO) is in crisis because there is today ‘less West’ in the world, and the West is itself becoming less Western. The article asks if, and if so how, the LIO can remain resilient and salient in the face of growing ‘Westlessness’ and contestations against the liberal order’s values and institutions. It suggests that the big challenges will be for the LIO to adapt to give the …
Resilience in EU and International Institutions
Resilience in EU and international institutions
The article introduces the special issue by exploring the full potential of “resilience” as a governing regime of the European Union and other international institutions. Developing a more comprehensive understanding of the concept is important for three reasons. One, it gives an opportunity to see resilience not only as a quality of a system, but also as a way of thinking, and a process inherent to “the local” that cannot be externally engineere…
Is this the end? Resilience, ontological security, and the crisis of the liberal international order
The liberal international order is widely believed to be resilient because it has always had a remarkable ability to adapt in response to crisis and adversity. Today, the liberal order is clearly in crisis, and yet decisive action to adapt it is not taking place. Using insights from the resilience-thinking literature supplemented with insights from the literature on ontological security, the article seeks to understand why agents often fail to ta…
The Liberal International Order and Peaceful Change
As part of the roundtable “International Institutions and Peaceful Change,” this essay focuses on the role of institutions as agents of peaceful change from a perspective that emphasizes the importance of a wide spectrum of human emotions to better understand the less quantifiable but nevertheless important conditions for being able to sustain initiatives for peaceful change. It aims to throw light on the often overlooked psychological and emotio…
Resilience in Eu and International Institutions
The coming multi-order world
The article shows that the current international system is changing towards a completely new form of international system, conceptualized as a multi-order system. The suggestion for a multi-order world stands in contrast to three current narratives about the future global order expressed through a multipolar narrative; a multi-partner narrative and a multi-culture narrative. The article demonstrates that although each narrative points to a plausi…
The problem of change in constructivist theory
Constructivism has a problem in accounting for agent-led change and for what motivates agents to make up their minds about how to put their agency to use. I show that constructivism’s problem of change is related to tensions between constructivism’s own key assumptions about the mutually constitutive relationship between structure and agency, understanding of change and to an essentialist conception of identity. I argue that agency is constituted…
Liberal World Orders
Why Europe Confounds IR Theory
Balancing and bandwagoning are concepts that realists return to again and again – yet neither concept is well suited for explaining the complex issue of Europe's growing role as a security and defence actor. Europe will confound realism as long as realism is based on assumptions of anarchy as conflictual and as long as non-systemic factors remain under-developed. Moreover, I suggest that Europe confounds all mainstream IR theories, because neithe…
Towards a strong Nato narrative
Europeanization or EU‐ization? The Transfer of European Norms across Time and Space
What is the content of Europeanization? Which causal relationships should be explained? Which theory should be used? In answering these questions, the article forwards a conceptualization of Europeanization based on Historical Sociology and Social Constructivism, which implies a departure from the practice in the current Europeanization literature to concentrate on the contemporary with a narrow focus (EU‐ization) at the expense of the historical…
Similar and Yet So Different
Complex Socialization
The article presents a model for the study of norms transfer through state socialization, which combines a Social Constructivist body of theory for ideational change with Social Identity Theory (SIT) for identity formation. The model privileges self- and other categorization processes which according to SIT takes place between all social groups, as the main determinant for the outcome of state socialization. By also reconceptualizing domestic str…
Critical Junctures and Social Identity Theory
By applying a combination of a social constructivist perspective on ideational change with theories of social learning and social identity, the article explains the gap in the Danish discourse on Europe between mass and elite. The Danish population is conceptualized as two differently constructed ‘social groups’ consisting of a nation people and a state-elite group. Each ‘social group’ has experienced different processes of ideational change and …
Masters and Novices
This article explores the process of identity constructions in Central and Eastern Europe through democracy promotion in NATO-PA. Utilizing social group theory and social identity theory, the article is concerned with the processes of socialization and social learning taking place at the agent level, which seem to explain how in-groups and outgroups are formed, and whyagents want to belong to the in-group. It is assumed that the complex process o…
Ideas - The Key to Comparing `Apples and Oranges
From Vision to Reality
From Vision to Reality takes the reader past the fixation with political decision-making by focusing on the process of implementation that follows important policy decisions. The book identifies the intentions behind a collection of key policy decisions for establishing Europe's new security order and investigates whether the implementation of those and subsequent decisions has resulted in the intended policy outcome
The coming multi-order world
The article shows that the current international system is changing towards a completely new form of international system, conceptualized as a multi-order system. The suggestion for a multi-order world stands in contrast to three current narratives about the future global order expressed through a multipolar narrative; a multi-partner narrative and a multi-culture narrative. The article demonstrates that although each narrative points to a plausi…
Resilience in EU and international institutions
The article introduces the special issue by exploring the full potential of “resilience” as a governing regime of the European Union and other international institutions. Developing a more comprehensive understanding of the concept is important for three reasons. One, it gives an opportunity to see resilience not only as a quality of a system, but also as a way of thinking, and a process inherent to “the local” that cannot be externally engineere…
Complex Socialization
The article presents a model for the study of norms transfer through state socialization, which combines a Social Constructivist body of theory for ideational change with Social Identity Theory (SIT) for identity formation. The model privileges self- and other categorization processes which according to SIT takes place between all social groups, as the main determinant for the outcome of state socialization. By also reconceptualizing domestic str…
War in Ukraine
The global rules-based order has been in transformation for more than a decade, whilst the liberal international order has been in crisis and new international orders are emerging. Within this context, the Russian invasion of Ukraine marks what the Germans have called a Zeitenwende because the multi-order world is now a reality. The article outlines the main characteristics and implications of a multi-order world and outlines four categories of o…
Europeanization or EU‐ization? The Transfer of European Norms across Time and Space
What is the content of Europeanization? Which causal relationships should be explained? Which theory should be used? In answering these questions, the article forwards a conceptualization of Europeanization based on Historical Sociology and Social Constructivism, which implies a departure from the practice in the current Europeanization literature to concentrate on the contemporary with a narrow focus (EU‐ization) at the expense of the historical…
Is this the end? Resilience, ontological security, and the crisis of the liberal international order
The liberal international order is widely believed to be resilient because it has always had a remarkable ability to adapt in response to crisis and adversity. Today, the liberal order is clearly in crisis, and yet decisive action to adapt it is not taking place. Using insights from the resilience-thinking literature supplemented with insights from the literature on ontological security, the article seeks to understand why agents often fail to ta…
Masters and Novices
This article explores the process of identity constructions in Central and Eastern Europe through democracy promotion in NATO-PA. Utilizing social group theory and social identity theory, the article is concerned with the processes of socialization and social learning taking place at the agent level, which seem to explain how in-groups and outgroups are formed, and whyagents want to belong to the in-group. It is assumed that the complex process o…
The problem of change in constructivist theory
Constructivism has a problem in accounting for agent-led change and for what motivates agents to make up their minds about how to put their agency to use. I show that constructivism’s problem of change is related to tensions between constructivism’s own key assumptions about the mutually constitutive relationship between structure and agency, understanding of change and to an essentialist conception of identity. I argue that agency is constituted…
Critical Junctures and Social Identity Theory
By applying a combination of a social constructivist perspective on ideational change with theories of social learning and social identity, the article explains the gap in the Danish discourse on Europe between mass and elite. The Danish population is conceptualized as two differently constructed ‘social groups’ consisting of a nation people and a state-elite group. Each ‘social group’ has experienced different processes of ideational change and …
From ‘Westlessness’ to renewal of the liberal international order
The concept ‘Westlessness’ suggests that the liberal international order (LIO) is in crisis because there is today ‘less West’ in the world, and the West is itself becoming less Western. The article asks if, and if so how, the LIO can remain resilient and salient in the face of growing ‘Westlessness’ and contestations against the liberal order’s values and institutions. It suggests that the big challenges will be for the LIO to adapt to give the …
Towards a strong Nato narrative
Nato in the multi-order world
NATO has for 75 years been a remarkably resilient organization because it has been able to change when the world changed. NATO's longevity is in large part due to a dual structure, which has enabled the alliance to oscillate between a role as a military alliance and as a community of value. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and global geopolitical shifts such as the rise of China prompted NATO to prioritize its role as a military alliance and to ad…
Similar and Yet So Different
Order as Resilience-Governance of Sameness and Diversity
One of the problems with the problem of world order is that what makes for order within societies is often precisely what makes for disorderly relations between them. I argue in this short essay that many of the problems with the problem of world order arise from assumptions that are widely shared within a discipline where the language of power and interest dominates and where a view of states as “like units” permeates. With more emphasis on valu…
The Liberal International Order and Peaceful Change
As part of the roundtable “International Institutions and Peaceful Change,” this essay focuses on the role of institutions as agents of peaceful change from a perspective that emphasizes the importance of a wide spectrum of human emotions to better understand the less quantifiable but nevertheless important conditions for being able to sustain initiatives for peaceful change. It aims to throw light on the often overlooked psychological and emotio…
Why Europe Confounds IR Theory
Balancing and bandwagoning are concepts that realists return to again and again – yet neither concept is well suited for explaining the complex issue of Europe's growing role as a security and defence actor. Europe will confound realism as long as realism is based on assumptions of anarchy as conflictual and as long as non-systemic factors remain under-developed. Moreover, I suggest that Europe confounds all mainstream IR theories, because neithe…
Ideas - The Key to Comparing `Apples and Oranges
From Vision to Reality
From Vision to Reality takes the reader past the fixation with political decision-making by focusing on the process of implementation that follows important policy decisions. The book identifies the intentions behind a collection of key policy decisions for establishing Europe's new security order and investigates whether the implementation of those and subsequent decisions has resulted in the intended policy outcome
Ideas - The Key to Comparing `Apples and Oranges
Masters and Novices
This article explores the process of identity constructions in Central and Eastern Europe through democracy promotion in NATO-PA. Utilizing social group theory and social identity theory, the article is concerned with the processes of socialization and social learning taking place at the agent level, which seem to explain how in-groups and outgroups are formed, and whyagents want to belong to the in-group. It is assumed that the complex process o…
Critical Junctures and Social Identity Theory
By applying a combination of a social constructivist perspective on ideational change with theories of social learning and social identity, the article explains the gap in the Danish discourse on Europe between mass and elite. The Danish population is conceptualized as two differently constructed ‘social groups’ consisting of a nation people and a state-elite group. Each ‘social group’ has experienced different processes of ideational change and …
Similar and Yet So Different
Complex Socialization
The article presents a model for the study of norms transfer through state socialization, which combines a Social Constructivist body of theory for ideational change with Social Identity Theory (SIT) for identity formation. The model privileges self- and other categorization processes which according to SIT takes place between all social groups, as the main determinant for the outcome of state socialization. By also reconceptualizing domestic str…
Europeanization or EU‐ization? The Transfer of European Norms across Time and Space
What is the content of Europeanization? Which causal relationships should be explained? Which theory should be used? In answering these questions, the article forwards a conceptualization of Europeanization based on Historical Sociology and Social Constructivism, which implies a departure from the practice in the current Europeanization literature to concentrate on the contemporary with a narrow focus (EU‐ization) at the expense of the historical…
Towards a strong Nato narrative
Liberal World Orders
Why Europe Confounds IR Theory
Balancing and bandwagoning are concepts that realists return to again and again – yet neither concept is well suited for explaining the complex issue of Europe's growing role as a security and defence actor. Europe will confound realism as long as realism is based on assumptions of anarchy as conflictual and as long as non-systemic factors remain under-developed. Moreover, I suggest that Europe confounds all mainstream IR theories, because neithe…
The coming multi-order world
The article shows that the current international system is changing towards a completely new form of international system, conceptualized as a multi-order system. The suggestion for a multi-order world stands in contrast to three current narratives about the future global order expressed through a multipolar narrative; a multi-partner narrative and a multi-culture narrative. The article demonstrates that although each narrative points to a plausi…
The problem of change in constructivist theory
Constructivism has a problem in accounting for agent-led change and for what motivates agents to make up their minds about how to put their agency to use. I show that constructivism’s problem of change is related to tensions between constructivism’s own key assumptions about the mutually constitutive relationship between structure and agency, understanding of change and to an essentialist conception of identity. I argue that agency is constituted…
Resilience in EU and International Institutions
Resilience in EU and international institutions
The article introduces the special issue by exploring the full potential of “resilience” as a governing regime of the European Union and other international institutions. Developing a more comprehensive understanding of the concept is important for three reasons. One, it gives an opportunity to see resilience not only as a quality of a system, but also as a way of thinking, and a process inherent to “the local” that cannot be externally engineere…
Is this the end? Resilience, ontological security, and the crisis of the liberal international order
The liberal international order is widely believed to be resilient because it has always had a remarkable ability to adapt in response to crisis and adversity. Today, the liberal order is clearly in crisis, and yet decisive action to adapt it is not taking place. Using insights from the resilience-thinking literature supplemented with insights from the literature on ontological security, the article seeks to understand why agents often fail to ta…
The Liberal International Order and Peaceful Change
As part of the roundtable “International Institutions and Peaceful Change,” this essay focuses on the role of institutions as agents of peaceful change from a perspective that emphasizes the importance of a wide spectrum of human emotions to better understand the less quantifiable but nevertheless important conditions for being able to sustain initiatives for peaceful change. It aims to throw light on the often overlooked psychological and emotio…
Resilience in Eu and International Institutions
From ‘Westlessness’ to renewal of the liberal international order
The concept ‘Westlessness’ suggests that the liberal international order (LIO) is in crisis because there is today ‘less West’ in the world, and the West is itself becoming less Western. The article asks if, and if so how, the LIO can remain resilient and salient in the face of growing ‘Westlessness’ and contestations against the liberal order’s values and institutions. It suggests that the big challenges will be for the LIO to adapt to give the …
Rebooting Global International Society
War in Ukraine
The global rules-based order has been in transformation for more than a decade, whilst the liberal international order has been in crisis and new international orders are emerging. Within this context, the Russian invasion of Ukraine marks what the Germans have called a Zeitenwende because the multi-order world is now a reality. The article outlines the main characteristics and implications of a multi-order world and outlines four categories of o…
Rebooting Global International Society
Order as Resilience-Governance of Sameness and Diversity
One of the problems with the problem of world order is that what makes for order within societies is often precisely what makes for disorderly relations between them. I argue in this short essay that many of the problems with the problem of world order arise from assumptions that are widely shared within a discipline where the language of power and interest dominates and where a view of states as “like units” permeates. With more emphasis on valu…
Nato in the multi-order world
NATO has for 75 years been a remarkably resilient organization because it has been able to change when the world changed. NATO's longevity is in large part due to a dual structure, which has enabled the alliance to oscillate between a role as a military alliance and as a community of value. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and global geopolitical shifts such as the rise of China prompted NATO to prioritize its role as a military alliance and to ad…
The arrival of the multi-order world—reflections on the state of play
This article revisits Flockhart’s Citation2016 article which outlined a coming global ordering architecture with several international orders—a multi-order world. It considers how geopolitical developments over the past decade have vindicated the argument and made adaptation of policy to the reality of the multi-order world an urgent matter, but also how new and unexpected developments have rendered the prospects for a cooperative multi-order wor…
“Taking down the sign”—narrating the liberal international order without American leadership
Published online: 28 May 2026
Political science (21 works) · Law (14 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Law (12 works) · Politics (12 works) · International relations (11 works) · Economics (10 works) · Epistemology (10 works) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (9 works) · Political economy (9 works)