Where will the conference take place?

The conference will be held in Szeged, HUN.

What is the central theme of the conference?

The central theme is 'New multipolar order or global disorder,' exploring the future trajectory of international relations.

8th Conference: New multipolar order or global disorder

Name: 8th Conference: New multipolar order or global disorder
Start: 2026-10-01T00:00:00Z
End: 2026-10-02T00:00:00Z
Location: Szeged

Oct 1–2, 2026Szeged, HungaryIn-person

Registration open

The 8th Conference, titled 'New multipolar order or global disorder,' convenes in Szeged, HUN, to critically examine the evolving landscape of international relations. This event focuses on the fundamental question of whether the world is transitioning towards a stable multipolar system or descending into a state of global disorder. Participants will engage with diverse perspectives on the forces shaping this transformation, including geopolitical shifts, economic realignments, and technological advancements.

Committees & topics

Topics
The European Union and the Visegrád Group in a Changing Global Order · Globalisation, Fragmentation, and Global Value Chains · Industrial Policy and Economic Sovereignty · International Business and Corporate Strategy in a Fragmented World · Country and Regional Perspectives on the Emerging Order · Business Networks, Relations, and Models in a Contested Economy · Sustainability and Global Disorder

Why it matters

The conference addresses a pivotal moment in global affairs, where traditional power structures are being challenged and new centers of influence are emerging. Understanding whether these shifts lead to a more balanced, multipolar order or to increased instability and disorder is crucial for policymakers, academics, and international organizations alike. The outcomes of this global reordering will profoundly impact international cooperation, conflict resolution, and economic development worldwide.

Key discussions will likely revolve around the roles of rising powers such as CHN, IND, and BRA, alongside established powers like the USA and the European Union. The conference provides a platform to analyze the implications of these power dynamics on various regions, including Eastern Europe, where countries like POL, CZE, SVK, and UKR are directly affected by geopolitical tensions. Furthermore, the event will explore how different states are navigating this complex environment, from engagement strategies to efforts at regional integration.

The insights generated from this conference are vital for anticipating future trends and developing effective responses to global challenges. By bringing together experts from various fields, the event aims to foster a comprehensive understanding of the forces at play and to contribute to informed decision-making in an increasingly interconnected and volatile world. The discussions will also shed light on the potential for new forms of cooperation or competition in this evolving international system.

How to prepare

To effectively engage with the themes of the conference, delegates should prepare by thoroughly researching the current state of international power dynamics. A strong understanding of the historical context of multipolarity and unipolarity, as well as the theoretical frameworks used to analyze international systems, will be beneficial. Familiarity with concepts such as 'Engagement Strategies' will be beneficial for dissecting complex international situations and forecasting potential developments.

Delegates should also consider the specific geopolitical interests and foreign policy approaches of key global actors. This includes understanding the strategic motivations of major powers and regional blocs, as well as the perspectives of smaller states that are often caught between competing influences. Analyzing recent international events and their potential impact on the global order will also be crucial for contributing meaningfully to the discussions.

Furthermore, participants should be prepared to articulate their own perspectives on whether the current trajectory points towards a more stable multipolar order or increased global disorder. This involves developing well-reasoned arguments supported by evidence and considering potential scenarios for the future of international relations. Engaging with diverse viewpoints and being open to challenging existing assumptions will enhance the conference experience.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 5 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Hungary

As the host nation, HUN is positioned at a geopolitical crossroads in Central Europe, making the themes of multipolarity and global disorder particularly relevant to its foreign policy and security considerations.

Role in topic

HUN's perspective will likely emphasize regional stability and the impact of great power competition on smaller states within Europe. Its historical and contemporary relationships with both Western and Eastern powers provide a unique lens through which to view the evolving global order.

United States

The USA's stance often centers on maintaining a rules-based international order, while adapting to the rise of new powers and addressing challenges to its global leadership.

Role in topic

The USA plays a central role in discussions about global order, given its historical position as a unipolar power. Its policies and strategic responses to the emergence of other poles, particularly CHN and RUS, are critical to understanding the potential for either a new multipolar order or increased disorder.

China

CHN advocates for a multipolar world, often emphasizing sovereign equality and non-interference, while actively expanding its economic and geopolitical influence.

Role in topic

CHN is a primary driver of the shift towards multipolarity. Its economic growth, military modernization, and increasing diplomatic engagement across various regions, including Africa, Latin America, and Asia, are reshaping the global power balance. Its vision for a new international order will be a key point of discussion.

Russia

RUS actively challenges the existing unipolar order, seeking to reassert its influence and promote a multipolar system where its interests are recognized as a major power.

Role in topic

RUS's actions, particularly in Eastern Europe, underscore its determination to reshape the international system. Its perspective on multipolarity often involves a critique of Western dominance and a call for a more balanced distribution of power, contributing significantly to the debate on global disorder versus a new order.

India

IND generally supports a multipolar world, positioning itself as an independent global player with strategic autonomy, balancing relationships with various major powers.

Role in topic

IND's growing economic and demographic weight makes it a crucial actor in any emerging multipolar order. Its strategic partnerships and non-aligned foreign policy approach contribute to a more diversified global power structure, influencing discussions on international stability and cooperation.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

The European Union and the Visegrád Group in a Changing Global Order

The Visegrád Group (V4) — Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia — was founded in 1991 in the Hungarian town of Visegrád to coordinate the post-communist transition and accession to Euro-Atlantic institutions. All four joined NATO (1999/2004) and the EU in 2004, becoming key beneficiaries of single-market integration, cohesion funds, and supply-chain investment from Western European manufacturers, especially in the automotive sector. For roughly two decades the V4 functioned as a constructive caucus inside the EU, though tensions emerged over the 2015 migration crisis, rule-of-law disputes with the Polish and Hungarian governments, and divergent attitudes toward deeper EU integration. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 fractured V4 cohesion. Poland and Czechia became among Kyiv's most committed military and humanitarian backers and aligned closely with Brussels on sanctions and enlargement, while Hungary under Viktor Orbán maintained working ties with Moscow, blocked or diluted EU aid packages, and championed an 'illiberal' alternative inside the Union. Slovakia's posture shifted with the 2023 return of Robert Fico, moving closer to the Hungarian line. The October 2023 Polish election and the return of a pro-EU government under Donald Tusk further widened the intra-V4 gap. Today the V4 illustrates the broader European dilemma in a multipolar order: how to balance strategic autonomy, transatlantic dependence, exposure to Chinese investment and German industrial cycles, and energy diversification away from Russia. Debates over EU enlargement to Ukraine and the Western Balkans, treaty reform, the next Multiannual Financial Framework, and a common defence industrial policy all run through Central Europe, where the V4 may act less as a bloc and more as a contested arena.

Key players

Globalisation, Fragmentation, and Global Value Chains

From the early 1990s through the 2008 financial crisis, falling tariffs, containerisation, the WTO regime, and China's 2001 accession produced an unprecedented expansion of cross-border production. Global value chains (GVCs) — in which components cross multiple borders before final assembly — came to account for roughly half of world trade, concentrated in electronics, automotive, apparel, and pharmaceuticals. This 'hyperglobalisation' lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty in Asia but also hollowed out manufacturing regions in advanced economies and created acute dependencies on a small number of producers and chokepoints. A series of shocks since 2018 has driven a partial reorganisation rather than outright reversal of globalisation. The US–China tariff war, the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2021 semiconductor shortage, the Russia–Ukraine war's disruption of food and energy flows, and Houthi attacks in the Red Sea exposed the fragility of just-in-time GVCs. Policymakers now speak of 'de-risking,' 'friend-shoring,' and 'nearshoring,' while data show trade growing faster within geopolitical blocs than between them. The IMF and WTO have warned that fragmentation along bloc lines could reduce global output by several percentage points. The contemporary debate is whether the world is moving toward a genuinely bifurcated system organised around the United States and China, or a messier multipolar pattern in which connector economies — Mexico, Vietnam, India, the Gulf, Central Europe — intermediate flows between rival blocs. Critical-minerals supply, export controls on advanced semiconductors, carbon border adjustments, and digital trade rules are emerging as the new front lines of contestation over how, and for whom, value chains are organised.

Key players

Industrial Policy and Economic Sovereignty

After three decades in which industrial policy was largely discredited in Western capitals as market distortion, it has returned as a central instrument of statecraft. The trigger was a combination of China's state-led rise — exemplified by Made in China 2025 and dominance in solar, batteries, and electric vehicles — pandemic-era supply shortages, and the perception that climate transition and defence-industrial readiness cannot be left to markets alone. The 2022 US Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS and Science Act, together committing several hundred billion dollars in subsidies and tax credits, marked an open turn to subsidised reindustrialisation. The European Union responded with the Green Deal Industrial Plan, the Net-Zero Industry Act, the Critical Raw Materials Act, and a relaxation of state-aid rules, while Japan, South Korea, and India have launched their own semiconductor and clean-tech support schemes. These programmes blur the line between climate, security, and competitiveness policy and have generated friction over subsidy races, WTO compatibility, and the risk of crowding out developing-country producers. Smaller economies fear they will neither be able to match subsidies nor secure preferential access to the new green and digital value chains. The debate over 'economic sovereignty' or 'strategic autonomy' now encompasses semiconductors, critical minerals, pharmaceuticals, energy, food, and increasingly artificial intelligence and cloud infrastructure. Core questions include how to define genuinely strategic sectors, how to reconcile open trade with security screening and outbound-investment controls, how to avoid a beggar-thy-neighbour subsidy race, and how to ensure that industrial policy delivers productivity gains rather than entrenched rent-seeking.

Key players

International Business and Corporate Strategy in a Fragmented World

Multinational corporations spent the post-Cold War era optimising for efficiency: lean global production networks, single-source suppliers, and tax structures spanning multiple jurisdictions. The combination of the US–China rivalry, sanctions on Russia, pandemic disruptions, and tightening regulation in areas from data to ESG has forced a strategic rethink. Firms increasingly speak of building resilience and optionality — dual supply chains, regionalised production, 'in China for China' strategies, and explicit political-risk functions at the board level. The sanctions regime imposed on Russia after February 2022 was a watershed: hundreds of Western firms exited or wrote down Russian assets, demonstrating that geopolitical alignment could override commercial logic. Subsequent US outbound-investment screening, EU foreign-subsidies and anti-coercion instruments, and Chinese exit-ban and data-security laws have further raised the compliance burden of operating across blocs. Sectors such as semiconductors, EVs, biotech, and cloud services now face overlapping export-control, subsidy, and screening regimes that effectively segment global markets. Corporate strategy is consequently being reshaped along several axes: where to locate R&D and IP given national-security review; how to structure joint ventures in China amid technology-transfer constraints; how to manage Scope 3 emissions and human-rights due diligence under EU CSDDD and CBAM; and how to position for AI-driven productivity shifts. The committee's task is to consider how international rules — investment treaties, WTO disciplines, OECD tax and AI guidelines — can keep pace with firms operating across an increasingly contested geo-economic landscape.

Key players

Country and Regional Perspectives on the Emerging Order

The post-1945 international order was anchored in US primacy, multilateral institutions built around the UN and Bretton Woods system, and, after 1991, a unipolar moment of liberal economic integration. That order is now visibly contested. China's rise, Russia's revisionist war against Ukraine, the assertive role of middle powers such as India, Brazil, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa, and the expansion of the BRICS+ grouping in 2024 all point toward a more multipolar — or, critics argue, more disorderly — system. The 'Global South' has reasserted itself as a category, frequently refusing to align fully with either Washington or Moscow–Beijing. Regional perspectives diverge sharply. The European Union frames the moment in terms of strategic autonomy and defence of a rules-based order. The United States combines great-power competition with selective re-engagement of allies. China promotes the Global Development, Security, and Civilisation Initiatives as alternatives to Western frameworks. African and Latin American states emphasise debt, climate finance, and reform of UN and IMF governance, while Gulf states leverage energy revenues and diplomatic mediation roles. ASEAN continues to seek centrality without being forced to choose between major powers. The committee's challenge is to translate these competing visions into concrete questions: reform of the UN Security Council and IMF quotas, the future of WTO dispute settlement, the architecture of climate and AI governance, and the rules governing sanctions, sovereign debt, and cross-border data. Whether the emerging order is described as multipolar, polycentric, or fragmented, its rules are being written now through a series of overlapping regional bargains.

Key players

Business Networks, Relations, and Models in a Contested Economy

Cross-border business has long been organised through networks that extend beyond formal corporate hierarchies — keiretsu and chaebol structures in East Asia, German Mittelstand supplier clusters, Italian industrial districts, ethnic-Chinese trading diasporas, and Gulf family conglomerates. These networks have provided trust, financing, and tacit knowledge that formal contracts and markets cannot replicate, and they have been crucial intermediaries in the globalisation of production over the past three decades. The current period of geo-economic stress is reshaping these relationships. Sanctions, export controls, and ESG due-diligence requirements force firms to map their networks of suppliers, distributors, and finance partners in unprecedented detail. Platform-based models — from Amazon and Alibaba to specialised industrial marketplaces — increasingly mediate B2B relationships, while data-driven services and AI-enabled logistics tighten coordination across borders. At the same time, geopolitical alignment is becoming a criterion in partner selection: Western firms reassess Chinese suppliers, Chinese firms build parallel networks across the Global South under the Belt and Road framework, and Gulf sovereign funds anchor new investment corridors. The committee will examine how business models — franchising, joint ventures, contract manufacturing, platform ecosystems, sovereign-fund-backed conglomerates — adapt to a world of higher political risk and regulatory divergence. Key issues include the governance of cross-border data flows, the rise of state-linked champions, the role of standards bodies and trade associations, and how SMEs (which lack the compliance capacity of large MNCs) can remain plugged into global networks.

Key players

Sustainability and Global Disorder

The Paris Agreement (2015), the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and successive COP outcomes — including the 2023 UAE Consensus calling for a transition away from fossil fuels — established an ambitious, if uneven, sustainability architecture. Yet 2023 and 2024 were the hottest years on record, current pledges remain consistent with warming well above 1.5°C, biodiversity loss continues, and the SDGs are seriously off track. The 'polycrisis' framing — overlapping climate, debt, food, energy, and conflict shocks — has gained traction precisely because individual crises now compound one another. Geopolitical disorder is reshaping sustainability politics in contradictory ways. On one hand, the energy shock following Russia's invasion of Ukraine accelerated renewables deployment and triggered massive green-industrial subsidies in the US, EU, China, India, and Japan. On the other, it prompted new fossil-fuel investment, weakened multilateral cooperation, and intensified competition over critical minerals concentrated in a few jurisdictions (DRC for cobalt, Indonesia for nickel, Chile for lithium, China for processing). Climate finance commitments — including the new collective quantified goal agreed at COP29 in Baku — remain contested as insufficient by developing countries. The committee will consider how to sustain climate, biodiversity, and development cooperation in a fragmenting order: the role of carbon border measures such as the EU CBAM, just-transition financing for fossil-fuel-dependent economies, the governance of solar geoengineering research, the integration of nature and ocean finance, and how to prevent green industrial policy from becoming a vehicle for protectionism that excludes the poorest economies from the transition.

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for 8th Conference: New multipolar order or global disorder.

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Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

The Power-Interest Grid

Mapping Relationships

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Policy Brief Writing

Media & Press Relations

Stakeholder Mapping

Advanced Negotiation

Hungary October 2026

By committee

Frequently asked questions

8th Conference: New multipolar order or global disorder

Oct 1–2, 2026Szeged, HungaryIn-person

Registration open

Committees & topics

Topics
The European Union and the Visegrád Group in a Changing Global Order · Globalisation, Fragmentation, and Global Value Chains · Industrial Policy and Economic Sovereignty · International Business and Corporate Strategy in a Fragmented World · Country and Regional Perspectives on the Emerging Order · Business Networks, Relations, and Models in a Contested Economy · Sustainability and Global Disorder

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 5 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Hungary

Role in topic

United States

The USA's stance often centers on maintaining a rules-based international order, while adapting to the rise of new powers and addressing challenges to its global leadership.

Role in topic

China

CHN advocates for a multipolar world, often emphasizing sovereign equality and non-interference, while actively expanding its economic and geopolitical influence.

Role in topic

Russia

RUS actively challenges the existing unipolar order, seeking to reassert its influence and promote a multipolar system where its interests are recognized as a major power.

Role in topic

India

IND generally supports a multipolar world, positioning itself as an independent global player with strategic autonomy, balancing relationships with various major powers.

Role in topic