Sociology and Space, Vol. 59 No. 219, 2021.
Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.5673/sip.59.0.4
Geographical Patterns and Geo-Economic Reasoning of the Pandemic Consequences: Old Geopolitical “Games” in the Post-COVID Global Order
Marta Zorko
orcid.org/0000-0002-8458-7384
; University of Zagreb, Faculty of Political Science, Croatia
Josip Lučev
; University of Zagreb, Faculty of Political Science, Croatia
Abstract
The research provides a two-type analysis of the consequences of the COVID-19
pandemic on the global world order after 2020. The first dimension of analysis is oriented
towards geopolitical parameters, while the second is based on the geo-economic consequences
of the pandemic crisis. The authors identified and classified three types of geopolitical games in
the international community: the game of non-movement and labeling; the game of vaccine racing
and the game of securitization. Furthermore, the goal is to identify potential consequences for
the economy of certain countries, but also the postulates of international political economy
due to the contemporary geographical, political and economic patterns of behavior in a global
pandemic crisis. The main thesis is aimed at confirming predictable and common patterns
of behavior that are accompanied by tested mechanisms of attempts to exercise power in the
international community (classical geopolitical power games in the new conditions). The aim
of this paper is to develop scenarios of potential changes in power relations at the global level
and to analyse the consequences with regard to the outcomes of the three mentioned games.
Scenario analysis is a common geopolitical qualitative method most commonly used to assess
risk in different spheres of society. Large corporations are using it most often in calculating
financial fluctuations in business processes and decision-making, but it also appears in a
number of projections in industrial-technological processes and in American institutes. The
methodology is similar in the cases of financial scenario analysis, while in other social sciences
(primarily geopolitics and security studies) it is about discovering potential and alternative
worlds. In geopolitics, it serves to project potential developments in the global environment
with regard to the creation of new world orders, and phenomena that can change the predicted
outcomes of reality. While analyses of new world orders can also be attributed to methods of
prediction in international relations; in contrast, scenario analyses are more than forecasts of
developments based on past trends. They primarily include considerations of unpredictable
factors or reversals in international relations, where a global pandemic is certainly one of them.
Keywords
geopolitics; geo-economics; pandemic; COVID-19; global world order
Hrčak ID:
255047
URI
Publication date:
1.4.2021.
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