Highlights
- Relationship between peace and multilateralism must be approached through plural, relational perspectives rather than universal liberal assumptions.
- Agonism and Confucian relationalism provide two distinct relational ontologies that explain how peace emerges through building relations among adversaries, not enforcing uniformity.
- BRICS, China, and ARF exemplify how relational practices—agonistic or Confucian—embed peace in multilateral governance despite heterogeneity and potential conflict, but also how it is important to ask what it meant by peace.
ABSTRACT
To address the pluralising dynamics of global governance, this study engages with a plurality of perspectives. A plurality of perspectives can be engaged in knowledge production on two levels. First, multiple perspectives in international relations studies are applied to transcend the narrow ontological, epistemological, and normative underpinnings of one’s own go-to-perspectives. And second, different perspectives of political actors are chosen as one’s objects of study in their own right. Using qualitative (partly AI-assisted) content analysis and the relational perspectives of Agonism and Confucian relationalism, this study empirically analyses Chinese, BRICS, and ASEAN Regional Forum visions for multilateral global governance. These cases serve as examples of engaging with a plurality of perspectives and contributions to international relations debates on pluralism. They enable us to examine how, from relational perspectives, peace is embedded in multilateral global governance, thus also contributing to discussions on relationalism, peace, and multilateralism.
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Global Change, Peace and Security. June 2026
https://doi.org/10.1080/14781158.2026.2667927