From Primacy to Fragmented Multipolarity: Systemic Change through Power-Conversion Channels

Abstract

This article develops a mechanism-first account of systemic change from post–Cold War unipolarity toward a more diversified configuration amid China’s ascendancy and the United States’ relative retrenchment. Polarity is treated as a joint property of capabilities and the conversion channels that render those capabilities effective; alliances and alignment architectures, technology and standards regimes, and monetary–financial infrastructures. Using a descriptive–analytical approach, the study specifies domain-level indicators (multi-year capability convergence; patterns of balancing, binding, and hedging; standards bifurcation and supply-chain rewiring; reserve/invoicing diversification and alternative payment rails) and proposes conservative thresholds for inferring system-level change via cross-domain reinforcement. The analysis finds uneven but cumulative movement away from a simple unipolar pattern: alignment and technology exhibit the clearest shifts, with minilateral security–industrial arrangements and rival standards ecosystems institutionalizing alternative pathways for influence. Monetary change is slower yet increasingly constrains the reach of financial coercion at the margin. The resulting picture is asynchronous and issue-specific; pockets of multipolar or club-based authority coexist with domains that retain unipolar or dyadic features. The article clarifies adjudication among persistent unipolarity, hard bipolarity, and diversified multipolarity, and outlines operational criteria that can be implemented in subsequent empirical work.