Amitav Acharya (born 1962) is a scholar and author, who is Distinguished Professor of International Relations at American University, Washington, D.C., where he holds the UNESCO Chair in Transnational Challenges and Governance at the School of International Service, and serves as the chair of the ASEAN Studies Initiative.

[8] In 2012–13, he was appointed to the Nelson Mandela Visiting Professorship in International Relations at Rhodes University, South Africa.

[9] In 2016, he was appointed to be the Inaugural Boeing Company Chair in International Relations in the Schwarzman Scholars Program at Tsinghua University.

Constructivism has traditionally accorded more importance to the role of ideas and norms in international politics compared to realism and liberalism.

Acharya challenges this story of unidirectional norm diffusion by showing how "local" beliefs and practices also matter.

Using case studies from ASEAN, Acharya highlights how Southeast Asian leaders did not just accept transnational norms as is.

In so doing, the leaders at Bandung not only rejected the central position of the United States in regional security arrangements, but also created a new norm of collective defence that accorded importance to all treaty members.

[18][19] A number of IR scholars have built on, engaged with, and challenged Acharya's work on norms, including Antje Wiener, Lisbeth Zimmerman, and Kathryn Sikkink.

His work has attempted to bridge the gap between scholarship in IR and area studies by encouraging conversation between "regionally oriented disciplinarists" and "discipline-oriented regionalists".

Global IR revolves around six main dimensions: Acharya's concept of the "multiplex world order" captures his understanding of the ongoing changes and future directions in the landscape of international relations.

While not arguing that the United States is in decline per se, Acharya contends that the "American world order", whereby the United States played a hegemonic role in shaping the international system—or the "liberal world order"—to its own benefit through its dominant role in international institutions and its interventionalist foreign policy, is coming to an end.

[33] In this respect, Acharya disagrees with John Ikenberry, who highlights America's important role in designing, spearheading, and maintaining postwar "constitutional orders".

[34][35] In contrast to Ikenberry, Acharya finds evidence of an emerging "multiplex" world order, where there is an array of plots (ideas), directors (power), and action (leadership) under one roof (the international system) to choose from.

Speaking for the motion were Sir Malcolm Rifkind, former British Foreign Secretary, Jane Harman, former member of the US House of Representative from California and former President of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, James Cleverly, former co-chair of the British Conservative Party and currently Minister of State (Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Department for International Development), and Dr Laura Smith of Oxford.