Social Unrest, Political Fragmentation, and the Structural Transformation of European Order

A Scenario-Based Strategic Analysis within the Framework of the Theory of Empire Formation in the Twenty-First Century

Dr. Rami-Georg Johann

Political Scientist | Institute for World Order Studies (IWOS), Switzerland

Research Paper / Strategic Scenario Analysis | 2026

ORCID: 0000-0001-9439-4909

Research status: Not peer-reviewed. Scenario paper for scholarly discussion.

Abstract

Keywords

1. Introduction: From Social Protest to a Structural Question
Research Question
Core Hypothesis

2. Methodology and Epistemic Limits

3. The Long Historical Cycle of European and Western Order
3.1 Expansion, Sovereignty and Competition
3.2 The Twentieth-Century Contradiction
3.3 Sykes–Picot and the Problem of Political Double Standards
3.4 The Self-Weakening of the European Imperial System

4. 1945, the Cold War and the Management of Competition

5. Globalisation and the Miscalculation of Interdependence

6. 2001–2026: A Twenty-Five-Year Transitional Phase

7. Political Economy and the Crisis of the European Social Contract
7.1 Growth, Fiscal Pressure and State Capacity
7.2 Capital Mobility and the Geography of Economic Confidence

8. Trump, Putin and Xi: A New Configuration of External Pressure
8.1 The United States and Strategic Renegotiation
8.2 Russia and the Revision of European Security
8.3 China and the Redistribution of Economic Power

9. The Three-Dimensional European Order Stress Model
9.1 External Geopolitical Pressure
9.2 Internal Legitimacy Pressure
9.3 Institutional Cohesion

10. A Temporal Scenario for Europe, 2026–2040
10.1 Phase I – The Revolt of Legitimacy
10.2 Phase II – Political Zonisation
10.3 Phase III – Constitutional Reconfiguration

11. Four Possible End-State Scenarios
Scenario A – Institutional Stabilisation
Scenario B – Differentiated European Order
Scenario C – Fragmentation and Competitive Nationalisation
Scenario D – Democratic Constitutional Integration

12. Theoretical Contribution: The Order Exhaustion Paradox

13. Implications for Democratic Fusion

14. Limitations

15. Conclusion

References

This paper examines whether the contemporary wave of social unrest, political polarisation, economic pressure and geopolitical uncertainty in Europe may represent an early manifestation of a deeper transformation of the European and international order.

It does not predict the collapse of Europe, the dissolution of European states or the inevitable end of the European Union. Instead, it develops a scenario-based analysis of the structural pressures confronting European political order in the period following the first quarter of the twenty-first century.

The analysis places contemporary events within a longer historical perspective extending from the expansion of European power beginning in the late fifteenth century through the development of the sovereign state system, European imperial competition, the two world wars, the Cold War and post-Cold War globalisation.

The central argument is that the European order may be approaching an order-exhaustion threshold in which institutions remain capable of managing individual crises while the cumulative interaction of geopolitical competition, fiscal pressure, economic insecurity, demographic change, declining political trust and institutional fragmentation progressively increases the cost of maintaining the existing configuration of political authority.

The paper identifies 2001 not as the precise chronological end of the previous order, but as a useful analytical threshold marking the beginning of a twenty-five-year transition during which the assumptions of the post-Cold War system became progressively less stable.

A three-dimensional European Order Stress Model is proposed. It examines the interaction between external geopolitical pressure, internal legitimacy pressure and institutional cohesion.

The paper then develops a temporal scenario for 2026–2040 involving three possible stages: a revolt of legitimacy, political zonisation and, under more severe conditions, constitutional reconfiguration.

Four alternative end states are considered: institutional stabilisation, differentiated European order, political fragmentation and deeper democratic constitutional integration.

The analysis is integrated with Johann’s Theory of Empire Formation in the Twenty-First Century, the World Order Manifesto and the 1000-Year Project. Democratic Fusion is introduced not as a prediction of European integration, but as one possible long-horizon institutional response to the growing tension between transnational functional interdependence and territorially fragmented political authority.

Europe; world order; political fragmentation; social unrest; geopolitical competition; European Union; sovereignty; political legitimacy; globalisation; capitalism; interdependence; United States; Russia; China; Trump; Putin; Xi Jinping; Democratic Fusion; Theory of Empire Formation; 1000-Year Project.

Europe is experiencing a period of significant political and societal pressure.

In October 2026, France experienced some of its most serious civil unrest in years. Large demonstrations initially associated with living costs, education and deteriorating public services developed into riots, looting and confrontations with security forces in several cities. Authorities subsequently introduced localised curfews, while further protests and strikes were announced.

At the same time, economic grievances and protest movements have appeared in different forms in Italy, Portugal, Spain, Belgium, Albania and other parts of Europe.

The movements are not politically identical.

They do not share one ideology, organisation or objective.

Some arise primarily from economic grievances.

Others are connected to public services, energy prices, wages, housing, agricultural conditions, political corruption, migration, environmental policy or broader dissatisfaction with established political institutions.

They should therefore not be artificially combined into a single revolutionary movement.

Their significance may lie elsewhere.

The relevant analytical question is whether increasingly different forms of dissatisfaction are beginning to emerge from a common structural environment in which citizens expect governments to maintain prosperity, social security, public services, external security and political stability while the financial and institutional capacity of states to satisfy these expectations becomes progressively constrained.

Under what conditions could the interaction between geopolitical competition, economic pressure, societal dissatisfaction and institutional constraints transform contemporary European unrest from a series of national political crises into a broader crisis of European political order?

The central hypothesis of this paper is:

Political orders become especially vulnerable when external systemic competition and internal crises of legitimacy intensify simultaneously while the institutional capacity for adaptation remains constrained.

The present European crisis should therefore be analysed not only through individual protests, elections or economic indicators, but through the interaction between external and internal structural pressures.

This paper presents a theoretical scenario analysis rather than a deterministic forecast.

It does not calculate the probability that European states will fragment.

It does not predict that the European Union will collapse.

It does not assume that contemporary protests constitute the beginning of revolution.

Nor does it claim that one external actor or group of actors has deliberately engineered European political instability.

Instead, the paper combines historical interpretation, contemporary geopolitical analysis, economic indicators and the theoretical framework of the Theory of Empire Formation in the Twenty-First Century.

The distinction between three analytical levels is essential.

The first level concerns observable developments.

These include protests, elections, demographic trends, fiscal pressures, geopolitical competition, military conflict, trade disputes and capital movements.

The second level concerns theoretical interpretation.

Here the paper asks whether apparently separate developments may share deeper structural relationships.

The third level concerns scenario projection.

Scenarios identify possible future pathways if particular structural pressures intensify.

They do not establish that those outcomes will occur.

The analysis must therefore remain conditional.

3.1 Expansion, Sovereignty and Competition

The contemporary international order cannot be understood exclusively through the institutions created after 1945.

Its historical foundations extend considerably further.

Beginning in the late fifteenth century, European maritime expansion gradually connected previously separated political and economic regions into an increasingly integrated global system.

European powers developed overseas empires, global trading networks and unprecedented capacities for projecting military and economic power.

The political organisation of Europe itself simultaneously evolved toward increasingly consolidated territorial states.

These developments created a system in which politically autonomous centres competed over security, territory, resources, trade and influence.

The institutional forms changed.

The structural principle of competition survived.

From the perspective of the Theory of Empire Formation, political history can therefore be interpreted partly as an evolving relationship between processes of political integration and processes of competitive fragmentation.

Political communities repeatedly create larger institutions.

Those institutions subsequently confront other political centres.

Integration at one political scale can therefore reproduce competition at another.

3.2 The Twentieth-Century Contradiction

By the beginning of the twentieth century, European imperial systems controlled extraordinary portions of the international political and economic environment.

Yet this concentration of global power contained an internal contradiction.

The same states that dominated much of international politics also competed intensely with one another.

The First World War demonstrated the destructive potential of this configuration.

The European imperial system was not primarily destroyed by an external civilisation replacing Europe through direct conquest.

Its greatest weakening originated within Europe itself.

European powers mobilised enormous economic, demographic and military resources against other European powers.

The Second World War intensified this self-destructive process.

By 1945, the European states that had shaped much of the preceding international order were economically exhausted, militarily weakened and increasingly dependent upon two external superpowers.

3.3 Sykes–Picot and the Problem of Political Double Standards

The Sykes–Picot Agreement of 1916 represents one symbolic example of the contradictions of European imperial politics.

It should not be treated as the sole explanation for later Middle Eastern instability.

Such a claim would be historically reductive.

Its analytical significance lies instead in what it illustrates about the relationship between principles and power.

European governments increasingly articulated ideas of national self-determination and political legitimacy while simultaneously negotiating spheres of influence and territorial arrangements according to strategic interests.

The historical record confirms the existence of British and French negotiations concerning the division of influence within former Ottoman territories. Staatliche Geschichtsressourcen

This tension between universal political principles and selective geopolitical application would later affect perceptions of Western legitimacy across multiple regions.

3.4 The Self-Weakening of the European Imperial System

The two world wars fundamentally transformed the global distribution of power.

European states remained influential.

But the centre of military, industrial and financial power shifted progressively toward the United States and the Soviet Union.

Decolonisation accelerated.

The European imperial era entered its final phase.

Paradoxically, the political weakening of European empires created conditions for an extraordinary institutional innovation within Europe itself.

Instead of returning permanently to traditional continental competition, Western European states began constructing institutions of integration.

This development would become one of the most consequential transformations of modern political history.

The international system created after 1945 did not abolish power competition.

It organised it differently.

The United Nations institutionalised principles of sovereign equality while simultaneously recognising great-power asymmetry through the Security Council.

NATO and the Warsaw Pact organised competing security communities.

European integration progressively transformed relations among Western European states.

International economic institutions facilitated trade, reconstruction and economic cooperation.

Within Western Europe, these mechanisms were extraordinarily successful.

The probability of war among states that had repeatedly fought one another declined dramatically.

But globally, competition persisted.

The Cold War organised much of international politics around two major centres of power.

Nuclear deterrence constrained direct superpower confrontation while proxy conflicts continued elsewhere.

The system therefore managed strategic competition without eliminating its structural foundations.

The end of the Cold War generated a powerful expectation.

Growing trade, international institutions, technological connectivity and global capital flows appeared capable of progressively reducing traditional geopolitical rivalry.

This expectation was partly correct.

Interdependence can create strong incentives for cooperation.

It can increase the economic costs of conflict.

It can create constituencies interested in political stability.

It can encourage institutional coordination.

But the central miscalculation was to assume that interdependence possessed an inherently cooperative political direction.

It does not.

Economic networks also create dependencies.

Energy networks can become instruments of leverage.

Technology can become a strategic resource.

Supply chains can be securitised.

Financial infrastructure can become politically consequential.

States can therefore become simultaneously more interconnected and more strategically vulnerable.

This duality represents a central argument of the 1000-Year Project.

International cooperation can deepen without resolving the constitutional fragmentation of political authority.

The year 2001 is treated here as an analytical threshold rather than as a precise chronological rupture.

The attacks of September 11 did not instantly terminate the post-Cold War order.

But the following twenty-five years progressively undermined many assumptions associated with the period of Western strategic predominance.

Afghanistan demonstrated the limits of military transformation.

The Iraq War produced long-term strategic and political consequences.

The global financial crisis damaged confidence in economic governance.

The Arab uprisings destabilised multiple political systems.

The Syrian war internationalised regional competition.

Russia progressively returned to revisionist military power.

China emerged as a systemic industrial, technological and geopolitical competitor.

Brexit challenged the assumption of irreversible European integration.

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed vulnerabilities within supply chains and public institutions.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reintroduced large-scale interstate war into Europe.

Energy insecurity, migration crises and technological competition further increased political pressure.

These developments do not constitute a single causal chain.

Nevertheless, their cumulative significance is considerable.

The period from 2001 to 2026 may ultimately be interpreted less as the consolidation of a new order than as a prolonged interregnum between institutional configurations.

7.1 Growth, Fiscal Pressure and State Capacity

The argument that European capitalism has simply “failed” would exceed the evidence.

European economies continue to generate substantial wealth, technological capacity and institutional stability.

A more precise argument concerns the political relationship between economic performance and democratic legitimacy.

The post-war European social model depended upon a broad relationship between economic growth, productivity, social insurance, public services and political stability.

That relationship is increasingly difficult to maintain.

The International Monetary Fund describes European growth in 2026 as continuing but fragile and identifies weak productivity as a central medium-term constraint.

Separate IMF analysis estimates that ageing, defence, climate and other spending pressures could increase European public expenditure substantially by 2040, while many states already carry elevated debt burdens and higher interest costs. Internationaler Währungsfonds

This produces a fundamental political problem.

Citizens may simultaneously demand:

better public services;

higher social protection;

lower taxes;

greater defence capability;

energy security;

infrastructure investment;

climate adaptation;

and economic competitiveness.

Governments cannot indefinitely maximise every objective simultaneously.

The resulting gap between societal expectations and state capacity may become one of the central political conflicts of the coming decade.

7.2 Capital Mobility and the Geography of Economic Confidence

Capital provides another indicator of changing expectations.

It would be incorrect to claim that European capital is collectively abandoning Europe.

Capital movements are multidirectional and respond to taxation, regulation, investment opportunities, political stability, family considerations and global diversification.

Nevertheless, internationally mobile wealth increasingly treats jurisdictional diversification as a strategic objective.

The United Arab Emirates has emerged as an important global centre for mobile wealth, while Switzerland, Singapore, Italy and other jurisdictions also compete actively for internationally mobile capital.

Henley & Partners identifies growing pressure on the competitiveness of countries including Germany and France while also describing the UAE as a major structural hub for internationally mobile wealth. Henley & Partners

The theoretical significance is not that capital predicts political collapse.

It does not.

The relevant proposition is narrower:

Highly mobile economic actors can react to perceived changes in long-term risk before political institutions themselves undergo visible transformation.

Capital diversification can therefore function as one indicator among many of changing confidence in political-economic environments.

Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping should not be analytically treated as members of a coordinated project to dismantle European order.

There is no evidence supporting such a claim.

Their geopolitical objectives are different and sometimes fundamentally incompatible.

Nevertheless, the policies associated with the United States, Russia and China can produce a combined systemic effect upon Europe.

8.1 The United States and Strategic Renegotiation

Under Donald Trump, traditional assumptions concerning alliance management, trade and burden-sharing have been subjected to renewed political negotiation.

European governments have faced increased uncertainty regarding the long-term degree of American strategic commitment, particularly in relation to NATO, Ukraine and transatlantic economic relations.

This does not necessarily constitute American withdrawal from Europe.

It represents a transformation in the terms under which the relationship is politically understood.

Europe is consequently under increasing pressure to develop greater strategic capacity of its own. Reuters

8.2 Russia and the Revision of European Security

Russia represents a fundamentally different form of pressure.

The war against Ukraine and Moscow’s territorial and security demands challenge core assumptions of the European post-Cold War security architecture.

The conflict also forces European governments to reconsider defence expenditure, strategic resilience, energy security and the future relationship between Russia and European political order.

The Russian challenge is therefore military and territorial, but its consequences extend considerably beyond the battlefield. Reuters

8.3 China and the Redistribution of Economic Power

China represents yet another structural transformation.

The challenge is not primarily territorial within Europe.

It concerns the redistribution of global industrial, technological and economic capacity.

Chinese companies are increasingly competitive in sectors central to European industrial identity, including automobiles, batteries, renewable energy technologies and advanced manufacturing.

EU officials have increasingly focused on trade imbalances and industrial competition with China, while Chinese automotive firms continue expanding within European markets. Reuters

The result is a strategic environment in which Europe faces simultaneously:

security pressure from Russia;

greater uncertainty within its relationship with the United States;

and intensified industrial competition from China.

This combination is historically unusual for the post-war European system.

To conceptualise these interacting pressures, this paper proposes a Three-Dimensional European Order Stress Model.

The model is not a quantitative forecasting instrument.

It does not calculate the probability of European fragmentation.

Its purpose is conceptual.

9.1 Dimension I – External Geopolitical Pressure

The first dimension concerns the external strategic environment.

Pressure increases as security guarantees become less predictable, military confrontation intensifies, trade becomes more politicised, technological dependencies acquire strategic importance and external powers gain greater capacity to influence European choices.

9.2 Dimension II – Internal Legitimacy Pressure

The second dimension concerns the relationship between citizens and political institutions.

Pressure increases when living standards stagnate, public services deteriorate, taxation and expenditure conflicts intensify, political polarisation increases and significant groups conclude that established political institutions cannot represent their interests effectively.

9.3 Dimension III – Institutional Cohesion

The third dimension concerns the capacity of European institutions and states to transform pressure into legitimate collective decisions.

High cohesion allows institutions to absorb shocks.

Low cohesion transforms shocks into political fragmentation.

The most dangerous situation therefore arises not from any single dimension alone.

It emerges when:

external geopolitical pressure rises;

internal political legitimacy declines;

and institutional capacity to produce accepted collective responses weakens simultaneously.

This represents the core mechanism of the European Order Stress Model.

10. A Temporal Scenario for Europe, 2026–2040

10.1 Phase I – The Revolt of Legitimacy

2026–2030

The first potential stage is characterised by recurrent political protest rather than state collapse.

Demonstrations, strikes, electoral volatility and anti-establishment mobilisation become more frequent.

Different groups mobilise for contradictory reasons.

The political right may emphasise migration, sovereignty, energy and national identity.

The political left may emphasise inequality, austerity, public services and economic redistribution.

Students may mobilise around education and future opportunity.

Workers may mobilise around wages and employment.

Regional actors may demand greater autonomy.

These movements do not need to coordinate.

Their cumulative effect can nevertheless weaken the political centre.

The defining characteristic of this stage is therefore not revolution.

It is the fragmentation of legitimacy.

10.2 Phase II – Political Zonisation

2028–2035

If legitimacy pressures persist, political differences may increasingly acquire geographical characteristics.

Large metropolitan areas may develop political preferences substantially different from rural regions.

Economically prosperous areas may resist transfers toward weaker regions.

Deindustrialised territories may reject policies associated with metropolitan political elites.

Eastern and western regions may develop different geopolitical orientations.

Border regions may become more integrated economically with neighbouring states than with distant national centres.

This process can be described as political zonisation.

The state formally survives.

Its political territory becomes internally more heterogeneous.

The juridical map remains stable while the sociopolitical map increasingly fragments.

10.3 Phase III – Constitutional Reconfiguration

2030–2040

In a more severe scenario, prolonged zonisation can generate constitutional pressure.

This does not mean that European borders will necessarily disappear or that old divisions will automatically return.

Germany, for example, is unlikely simply to recreate the institutional East–West division of the twentieth century.

A different development is more plausible.

Historical differences could reappear politically through divergent electoral behaviour, demographic patterns, economic development and geopolitical preferences.

Comparable tensions could occur elsewhere between:

north and south;

urban and rural territories;

industrial and post-industrial regions;

wealthier and fiscally dependent regions;

central governments and autonomy movements.

The resulting constitutional responses could include decentralisation, federal reform, enhanced regional autonomy, differentiated integration or, under extreme conditions, demands for separation.

Scenario A – Institutional Stabilisation

European governments respond successfully to economic and political pressure.

Growth improves.

Energy vulnerability declines.

Fiscal reforms stabilise public finances.

Political institutions adapt.

Protest remains a normal element of democratic politics rather than becoming a mechanism of systemic destabilisation.

Under this scenario, the current unrest is remembered as a difficult but manageable period rather than the beginning of a structural rupture.

Scenario B – Differentiated European Order

European integration continues, but increasingly through differentiated groups.

Some states integrate more deeply in defence, fiscal policy, energy, technology or migration.

Others preserve greater sovereign autonomy.

Europe becomes less uniform but remains institutionally coherent.

This scenario could produce a multi-layered political architecture rather than either full integration or disintegration.

Scenario C – Fragmentation and Competitive Nationalisation

Political legitimacy continues to decline.

Nationalist and anti-system movements strengthen.

States increasingly reassert unilateral control over borders, economic policy, security and strategic resources.

Regional tensions intensify.

European institutions weaken.

Political competition among European states consequently becomes more pronounced.

This represents the scenario closest to a partial return of classical sovereign competition.

It is possible.

It is not inevitable.

Scenario D – Democratic Constitutional Integration

A fourth possibility moves in the opposite direction.

Persistent crises convince a group of democratic European states that existing intergovernmental institutions are insufficient for managing deeply interconnected security, economic, technological and environmental challenges.

Integration subsequently develops beyond coordination toward shared constitutional authority.

Such integration would require more than bureaucratic centralisation.

It would require democratic authorisation, political representation, subsidiarity, constitutional protections and continuing recognition of the autonomy of participating political communities.

Within the 1000-Year Project, this trajectory is conceptualised as one possible form of Democratic Fusion.

The analysis developed here suggests a broader theoretical proposition.

It may be described as the Order Exhaustion Paradox:

The more successfully a mature political order manages successive crises without adapting the structural foundations that reproduce those crises, the longer institutional continuity can be preserved — but the greater the possibility that unresolved pressures accumulate until later adaptation becomes more politically costly.

Successful crisis management can therefore produce two opposite consequences.

It can strengthen political order by demonstrating institutional resilience.

But it can also postpone structural reform.

If every crisis is temporarily contained without addressing underlying tensions, the order may continue functioning while becoming progressively less capable of satisfying changing historical conditions.

Order exhaustion does not mean institutional collapse.

It refers to a growing mismatch between inherited institutions and the environment in which they operate.

The European scenario provides an important test for the broader theory of Democratic Fusion.

The theory does not assume that crises automatically create integration.

History demonstrates that crises can produce opposite outcomes.

They can generate solidarity.

They can also generate fragmentation.

Economic interdependence can encourage cooperation.

It can also create strategic vulnerability.

Shared security threats can encourage integration.

They can also strengthen nationalism.

Political uncertainty can produce democratic reform.

It can also create authoritarian responses.

Democratic Fusion must therefore not be presented as the inevitable destination of European development.

Its theoretical significance lies elsewhere.

It asks whether groups of democratic political communities could gradually create shared constitutional institutions when the scale at which major political problems operate increasingly exceeds the scale at which democratic political authority remains organised.

The European crisis consequently reveals a central tension:

functional integration is already extensive, while constitutional authority remains substantially fragmented.

Whether this tension produces deeper democratic integration, differentiated governance or renewed national competition remains an open empirical question.

This paper does not predict the collapse of Europe or the European Union.

The current French unrest cannot be treated as representative of all European societies.

Protest movements across Europe possess different causes and ideological compositions.

Political polarisation does not automatically produce territorial fragmentation.

Capital mobility cannot be interpreted as a direct measure of political instability.

The strategic policies of the United States, Russia and China should not be interpreted as coordinated actions aimed at dismantling Europe.

The temporal phases proposed for 2026–2040 are scenarios rather than probabilistic forecasts.

Historical analogies to the Middle East, imperial collapse or previous European divisions have limited explanatory value and should not be interpreted literally.

Democratic Fusion remains a theoretical long-term proposition rather than an empirically demonstrated outcome of contemporary European crises.

Future versions of this research should incorporate comparative quantitative measures of political trust, regional electoral divergence, fiscal capacity, protest frequency, wealth migration, institutional resilience and geopolitical dependence.

Europe is not collapsing.

At least, the evidence currently available does not justify such a conclusion.

But the opposite assumption — that the institutional architecture of contemporary Europe will necessarily continue indefinitely in approximately its present form — is equally difficult to defend.

Political orders are historical constructions.

They emerge under particular distributions of power, technology, economic organisation, demography and political legitimacy.

When these conditions change, institutions must either adapt or experience increasing pressure.

The old Western-centred international order developed over several centuries.

Its political foundations emerged through European expansion, sovereign state formation, imperial competition and eventually the institutional reconstruction that followed two catastrophic world wars.

The post-1945 system successfully transformed Europe from the principal theatre of great-power war into one of the most highly institutionalised political regions in human history.

That achievement should not be underestimated.

But institutional success does not eliminate historical change.

The first quarter of the twenty-first century has already transformed the environment within which European institutions operate.

American strategic priorities are changing.

Russia has returned military revisionism to the European security environment.

China has altered the global distribution of industrial power.

Globalisation has revealed both the benefits and vulnerabilities of interdependence.

Europe faces demographic and fiscal pressure.

The political centre is increasingly challenged from multiple directions.

And social dissatisfaction is becoming visible on the streets of several European societies.

These developments do not demonstrate that the end of the European order has arrived.

They suggest that the question can no longer be dismissed.

The coming historical struggle may not be between “Europe” and “non-Europe.”

It may concern the political form Europe itself will assume.

One pathway leads toward renewed sovereign competition.

Another toward differentiated regionalism.

Another toward political fragmentation.

A fourth may lead toward deeper constitutional integration among democratic political communities.

The decisive theoretical question is therefore not whether the old order will disappear tomorrow.

It is whether the institutional architecture inherited from the twentieth century possesses sufficient adaptive capacity to govern the structural conditions of the twenty-first.

From the perspective of the Theory of Empire Formation, this is the critical point.

Political order is never permanent.

It survives by adapting the relationship between power, legitimacy and institutional scale.

The protests visible on European streets may therefore ultimately prove to be temporary political disturbances.

Or future historians may interpret them as early manifestations of a much longer transition.

The evidence is not yet sufficient to know which interpretation will prevail.

But the structural question is already visible:

Is Europe experiencing another crisis within the existing order — or the beginning of a crisis of the order itself?

That distinction will define the next phase of European political history.

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Johann, R.-G. (2026). Europe at the Threshold: The Beginning of the End of the Old World Order? Social Unrest, Political Fragmentation, and the Structural Transformation of European Order. IWOS Research Paper No. 2/2026. Institute for World Order Studies (IWOS), Switzerland.

Series: IWOS Research Paper
Number: No. 2/2026
Title: Europe at the Threshold: The Beginning of the End of the Old World Order?
Subtitle: Social Unrest, Political Fragmentation, and the Structural Transformation of European Order
Author: Dr. Rami-Georg Johann
Institution: Institute for World Order Studies (IWOS), Switzerland
Publication Date: 21 October 2026
Language: English
Research Status: Not peer-reviewed. Scenario paper for scholarly discussion.

Keywords: Europe; World Order; Political Fragmentation; Social Unrest; European Union; Geopolitics; Sovereignty; Political Legitimacy; Globalisation; Interdependence; Democratic Fusion; Theory of Empire Formation.