A PIIRS’ Research Community Seeks Universal Principles to Stabilize World Order

In 1787, with the nascent United States of America in danger of financial ruin and possible dissolution, a group of delegates met in Philadelphia to revise the young country’s governing document, the Articles of Confederation. The resulting Constitutional Convention produced an entirely new system of governance with markedly increased power at the federal level. 

Almost 240 years later, a group of international scholars and public intellectuals, deeply concerned by the state of the world, convened at Princeton for a kind of latter-day constitutional convention. This effort aimed at fostering unity on a global level. Inspired by challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and strained relations between the United States and China, are among the matters that inspired the initiative.

The 2023 meeting, titled “Reconnecting the World,” produced the “Princeton Principles” — a document outlining “minimum conditions for rebuilding the international, rules-based order.” 

The Princeton Principles consist of 10 tenets that propose rules for diplomatic engagement, economic development and competition, humanitarian law, nuclear weaponry, dispute settlement, and matters of sovereignty. 

“The idea was to bring a group of leading thinkers together and see if they could identify a set of shared principles,” said G. John Ikenberry, the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs, who co-organized the gathering. “It’s a fairly ambitious effort to see what countries might agree upon, despite their deep differences, and to use those foundational principles and norms to rebuild what is widely seen as a troubled, even crisis-ridden, international system.” 

The Princeton Principles is an initiative of the Reimagining World Order (RWO) research community, directed by Ikenberry and housed within the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS). The conference was co-hosted by Harold James, the Claude and Lore Kelly Professor in European Studies and a professor of history and international affairs at Princeton, and Oliver Letwin, a former member of Parliament in the United Kingdom. 

Since that initial meeting, Ikenberry has hosted a series of meetings to continue to revise the Princeton Principles. In spring 2024, RWO’s fourth annual conference explored the Global South’s role in shaping world order, bringing together leading scholars from across the globe. In April 2025, scholars will consider the topic, “China and the U.S.: A Struggle for Power or a Struggle for Modernity?” These meetings will culminate in a larger international conference — a sort of simulated global constitutional convention — in the spring of 2026. 

“There’s a lot of scholarly activity these days focused on the sources and future of international rule-based order,” Ikenberry said. “But this initiative tries to look for deeper principles that might be able to help guide and illuminate more specific efforts.”