International records / OpenAlex research

Diplomacy as the Engine of Stability: An Assessment of its Utility in a Fragmented Global Order

The post-Cold-War promise of a liberal, rules-based international system has given way to a hyper fragmented order in which great-power rivalry, transactional unilateralism, sub-state actors and trans-border shocks (pandemics, climate) overlap. This paper examines diplomacy—not as ceremonial protocol but as the primary social technology for managing that fragmentation. Using a historical-institutionalist lens complemented by role theory, the study interrogates 30 years of multilateral, mini-lateral and Track-1.5 experiments (1994-2024) using qualitative sources of data. The paper adopts the us…