Multi-Polarity or the Multi-Polar World, as understood by Infrared, refers to the system of global power emerging amidst the collapse of American hegemony.
While some take 'multi-polarity' to imply the coexistence of large powers, and therefore identifying the late 19th century as 'multipolar,' Infrared interprets multi-polarity to refer to a new particularization and regionalization of global hegemony. Drawing from Alexander Kojeve's notion of the 'universal and homogeneous state,' Infrared interprets multi-polarity in the Hegelian sense of the rise of'determinate universalism,' as opposed to the 'abstract universalism' characteristic of American super-imperialism. Multi-polarity represents the sublation of the global American system into regional forms, that render it superfluous.
Hence in the age of multi-polarity, American hegemony begins to assume the form of naked and brute political domination, characterized by the extraordinary use of military force to preserve a state of affairs outmoded by history. This is in contrast to the nascent American super-imperialism (Hudson) of the postwar Bretton-Woods period, which was characterized by the emergence of a unique global economic system based on strategic application of economic developmentalism to select regions in order mitigate the effects of capitalist crisis.