Patterned Chaos in Global Life: Structure and Process in the Two Worlds of World Politics 1

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Abstract
The changing world scene is marked by innumerable developments for which extant paradigms have, at best, strained and insufficient explanations. Here the analysis undertakes a fresh approach to the emergent patterns of global life by tracing a bifurcation in which the state-centric world coexists and interacts with a diffuse multi-centric world consisting of diverse "sovereignty-free" actors who endlessly confront an "autonomy" dilemma that differs significantly from the "security" dilemma of states. An outline of the basic structures and processes of this two-world universe of world politics suggests that its equilibrium may derive from cyclical patterns in which orientations at the micro-level toward authority and legitimacy vary systematically to redress the balance of systems and subsystems at the macro level.

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