With the appearance of China as a global economic power since 1978, the political bipolarity of the world between the US and Russia is broken and has collapsed. The new developments are characterized by unusual political and economic alliances, in part conditioned as replacements for dissolved alliances. Very strict economic tariff replaces open world trade, which is the dominant economic power in the last 50 years.
In comparative politics and macrosociology, there have been very little convincing reactions to these dramatic developments. This panel will try to bring together papers which will focus on potential explanations or explanatory sketches. They have to address the issues of security, economic growth, democratic stability, regime stability and geopolitical stability, and globalization. Elements from the theory of the democratic peace are relevant, of the effects of various forms of political alliances on stability or the opposite, from parity research between hegemon's, old and new ones, will be in the center of the analysis. Presented papers should focus on likely key variables in these respective areas and be comparative.