Moral World Order and Its Empirical Foundations: Ibn Khaldun’s Multiplex Political Theory

This project proposes a political theory monograph that reconstructs Ibn Khaldun’s political thought as a systematic framework for addressing two major crises in contemporary theory. First, it tackles a methodological divide over political theory’s proper aim: describing political realities versus prescribing normative ideals. Drawing on Laura Valentini’s analysis, it clarifies how “ideal vs non-ideal theory” debates conflate questions of compliance assumptions, feasibility constraints, and whether theory should define ideal end-states or guide action under non-ideal conditions—disputes shaped by Rawlsian ideal theory and critiques by thinkers such as G. A. Cohen and David Estlund. Second, the project addresses a theoretical gap in political theory and international relations: dominant accounts explain how political orders are built and maintained through power and institutions, but struggle to explain political decline and internal decay, often treating injustice and moral exhaustion as secondary. Ibn Khaldun is presented as an interlocutor who can link moral failure to political collapse in a non-utopian, empirically grounded way, strengthening HBKU’s contribution to global ethics and policy debates.

Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU)