From ‘the global’ to ‘the local’: the future of ‘cooperative orders’ in Central Eurasia in times of complexity

Living in times of increasing complexity is hard; it becomes even harder with the realisation of diminishing control. How do we adapt our governance to this complexity to ensure peaceful cohabitation of the established and emergent order regimes? This paper contends that it is important to embrace complexity in full, conceptually and practically, by shifting from ‘the global’ to ‘the local’, to understand the pressure of transformational change and to prepare the ground for the emergence of more resilient and cooperative orders. We apply this complexity-thinking, using a 3P analysis, to Central Eurasia, presently a battleground of three competing order-making regimes—the EU, China and Russia. We argue that for more resilient and cooperative orders to emerge, it is essential to understand and enable ‘the local’ and embrace the region in is diversity, to facilitate a more joined-up and bottom-up governance in managing the complexity of a changing world.