Published in Noema, Sudan as a mirror for today’s world examines Sudan’s war and political fragmentation as part of a wider unravelling of the liberal international order. Written by Alden Young and Muez Ali, the essay uses Sudan to explore what happens when established political orders lose their authority and competing centres of power emerge. Looking beyond conventional assumptions of the centralised nation-state, it considers how alternative forms of political and economic organisation can take shape amid fragmentation, and what Sudan’s experience might reveal about a world in which state authority and the international order are increasingly contested
This article is part of the Historical and contemporary centres of power in Sudan project.