Lessons from the pandemic: Global tragedy of the commons

Abstract

In the text we attempt to answer one of the key questions in the field of studies on global international order - is the COVID-19 pandemic a catalyst for the further decline of the West on the international stage? The article is written from the socio-constructivist perspective, and at the center of our ruminations, we placed the issue of the crisis of confidence in scientific knowledge. We assumed that creation and development, of the unprecedented in the mankind history, system of knowledge production and verification, gave the very advantage of the Western civilization and resulted in its dominant position in the world. Currently, apart from the observable confrontations in the economic and political fields, we can also observe the lack of confidence in knowledge-producing systems. We argue that the "escape from reason" manifests itself in international relations in the global "tragedy of the commons”. Moreover, the Latin civilization is in decline due to the decline of the trust in the viability of the systematically produced knowledge, and systematic knowledge production was fundamental to the position of the West in international relations.