Ideology of Empire: China’s Ideational Binding Practices in Global Governance

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Matthew Stephen
• Subject Area: Political Science
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 550231771

Empires promote imperial ideologies to justify and sustain their rule, binding subordinates to their order. If China is emerging as a novel empire, how is this reflected in imperial practices of ideational binding? This project investigates this question by examining the evolution, promotion, and reception of China’s attempts to shape ideas about global governance. As China has emerged as a global power, it has learned to promote its discourse power and reshape its ideational environment. This project focuses on practices of ideational binding, understood as the primary means empires use to shape their ideational environment and facilitate further imperial practices. Ideational binding tends to rely on the dissemination of ideological justifications for an imperial order, presenting it as offering a more efficient, just, and secure future. When successful, this legitimates practices that cultivate hierarchical relations in world politics. For example, the spread of Chinese ideology abroad might lead to ideational dependence when it grants China the authority to define the meaning of international norms or the international status of actors. By addressing China’s outward ideational binding and reception in world politics, the project contributes to a better understanding of imperial ideas in an increasingly inter-imperial 21st century. Specifically, the project examines how China learns to employ ideational binding at three different levels of global governance. In line with the analytical focus of empire studies, the project incorporates both an international and an intersocietal perspective, covering intergovernmental organizations, transnational forums, and domestic societies. The project will use a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods and build on collaboration among scholars with different comparative advantages. The empirical focus of this research will be on the dissemination of China’s flagship ideas about global governance, such as the "community with a shared future for mankind" and the three "Global Initiatives" (i.e. the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative, and the Global Civilization Initiative). It will also consider the spread of underlying ideas about justice, security and efficiency. Bringing these elements together, the project will evaluate the extent to which China’s ideational binding practices amount to an imperial ideology.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 5913: Learning Empire. Autonomy, Dependence, and China’s Emerging Imperial Practices
• Co-Investigator: Dr. Steven Langendonk