Liberal international order
In international relations, the liberal international order, also known as the rules-based order, consists of a set of global, rule-based, structured relationships based on political liberalism, economic liberalism and liberal internationalism since the late 1940s. More specifically, it entails international cooperation through multilateral institutions and is constituted by human equality, open markets, security cooperation, promotion of liberal democracy, and monetary cooperation. The order was established in the aftermath of World War II, led in large part by the United States.
The nature of the LIO, as well as its very existence, has been debated by scholars. The LIO has been credited with expanding free trade, increasing capital mobility, spreading democracy, promoting human rights, and collectively defending the Western world from the Soviet Union. The LIO facilitated unprecedented cooperation among the states of North America, Western Europe and Japan. Over time, the LIO facilitated the spread of economic liberalism to the rest of the world, as well as helped consolidate democracy in formerly fascist or communist countries.
Origins of the LIO have commonly been identified as the 1940s, usually starting in 1945, with some scholars pointing to earlier agreements between the WWII-era Allies such as the Atlantic Charter in 1941. John Mearsheimer has dissented with this view, arguing that the LIO only arose after the end of the Cold War. Core founding members of the LIO include the states of North America, Western Europe and Japan; these states form a security community. The characteristics of the LIO have varied over time. Some scholars refer to a Cold War variation of the LIO largely limited to the West, and a post-Cold War variation having a more widespread scope and giving international institutions more powers.
Aspects of the LIO are challenged within liberal states by populism, protectionism and nativism, as well as growing hostility by conservatives to the LIO. Scholars have argued that embedded liberalism are key to maintaining public support for the planks of the LIO; some scholars have raised questions whether aspects of embedded liberalism have been undermined, thus leading to a backlash against the LIO.
Externally, the LIO is challenged by authoritarian states, illiberal states, and states that are discontented with their roles in world politics. China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and the United States have been characterized as prominent challengers to the LIO. Some scholars have argued that the LIO contains self-undermining aspects that could trigger backlash or collapse.
Definition
Minimalist definitions of the LIO characterize it as "open and rules-based international order" while maximalist definitions include liberal social purpose, economic and political rights, and democratic decision-making procedures.David Lake, Lisa Martin and Thomas Risse define "order" as "patterned or structured relationships among units". Interactions in the LIO are structured by rules, norms and decision-making procedures. They note that the LIO is not synonymous with a "rule-based international order", as non-liberal rule-based orders may exist. Others refer to the LIO as the rules-based international order, or the rules-based order.
Lake, Martin and Risse define "liberal" as a belief in the universal equality of individuals, as well as individual and collective freedoms. Political liberalism entails the rule of law, and the sovereign equality of states, as well as protections for human rights, political rights and civil liberties. Economic liberalism entails free market-oriented policies. Liberal internationalism entails principled multilateralism and global governance.
Michael Barnett defines an international order as "patterns of relating and acting" derived from and maintained by rules, institutions, law and norms. International orders have both a material and social component. Legitimacy is essential to political orders. George Lawson has defined an international order as "regularized practices of exchange among discrete political units that recognize each other to be independent." John Mearsheimer defines an international order as "an organized group of international institutions that help govern the interactions among the member states."
In After Victory, John Ikenberry defines a political order as "the governing arrangements among a group of states, including its fundamental rules, principles and institutions." Political orders are established when the basic organizing arrangements are set up, and they break down when the basic organizing arrangements are overturned, contested or in disarray. He defines a constitutional international order as a political order "organized around agreed-upon legal and political institutions that operate to allocate rights and limit the exercise of power." There are four main core elements of constitutional orders:
- Shared agreement about the rules of the game within the order
- Rules and institutions that bind and limit the exercise of power
- Institutional autonomy from special interests
- The entrenchment of these rules and institutions with a broader, immutable political system.
multilayered, multifaceted, and not simply a political formation imposed by the leading state. International order is not “one thing” that states either join or resist. It is an aggregation of various sorts of ordering rules and institutions. There are the deep rules and norms of sovereignty... There is a sprawling array of international institutions, regimes, treaties, agreements, protocols, and so forth. These governing arrangements cut across diverse realms, including security and arms control, the world economy, the environment and global commons, human rights, and political relations. Some of these domains of governance may have rules and institutions that narrowly reflect the interests of the hegemonic state, but most reflect negotiated outcomes based on a much broader set of interests.Charles Glaser has disputed the analytical value of the concept of the LIO, arguing that the concept is so broad and vague that "almost any international situation qualifies as an international order, so long as its members accept the sovereignty norm." Some critics of the LIO, such as John Mearsheimer, have argued that liberal democracy promotion and hyper-globalization are elements of the LIO.
Jeff Colgan has characterized the liberal international order as the theme that unites multiple subsystems in the international system. These subsystems can experience drastic change without fundamentally changing the liberal international order.
Debates
The debate about liberal international order has grown especially prominent in International Relations. Daniel Deudney and John Ikenberry list five components of this international order: security co-binding, in which great powers demonstrate restraint; the open nature of US hegemony and the dominance of reciprocal transnational relations; the presence of self-limiting powers like Germany and Japan; the availability of mutual gains due to "the political foundations of economic openness"; and the role of Western "civil identity." According to Charles Glaser, there are five key mechanisms in the LIO: "democracy, hierarchy built on legitimate authority, institutional binding, economic interdependence, and political convergence."The more supportive views of scholars such as Ikenberry have drawn criticism from scholars who have examined the imperial and colonial legacies of liberal international institutions. The contributions of non-Western actors to the formation of the liberal international order have also recently gained attention from scholars advancing global International Relations theory. In the case of Latin America, for example, "From as far back as the 1860s, Latin American jurists have made prominent contributions to international jurisprudence, the ‘mortar’ that binds international order. However, in other ways, historically the LIO has been—and remains—superficial in its reach in Latin America." According to Abrahamsen, Andersen, and Sending, the contemporary liberal international order includes the legacy of "southern actors" in Africa and Asia advocating the process of decolonization.
International organizations play a central role in the liberal order. The World Trade Organization, for example, creates and implements free trade agreements, while the World Bank provides aid to developing countries. The order is also premised on the notion that liberal trade and free markets will contribute to global prosperity and peace. Critics argue that free trade has sometimes led to social problems such as inequality and environmental degradation.
Post-Cold War, some consider international agreements on issues such as climate change, nuclear nonproliferation, and upholding initiatives in maritime law to constitute elements of the LIO. The European Union is often considered a major example of the liberal international order put into effect in terms of international agreements between the constituent countries.
Others argue that weak states played a central role in shaping the liberal international order. Marcos Tourinho argues that weak states used the three strategies of "resistance", "community" and "norms" to push back on U.S. dominance during the construction of the liberal international order, thus ensuring that the order did not just reflect U.S. interests. Martha Finnemore argues that unipolarity does not just entail a material superiority by the unipole, but also a social structure whereby the unipole maintains its status through legitimation, and institutionalization. In trying to obtain legitimacy from the other actors in the international system, the unipole necessarily gives those actors a degree of power. The unipole also obtains legitimacy and wards off challenges to its power through the creation of institutions, but these institutions also entail a diffusion of power away from the unipole. David Lake has argued along similar lines that legitimacy and authority are key components of international order. Abrahamsen suggested that middle powers also benefit from liberal internationalism. By investing in the maintenance of multilateral institutions, moderate powers can collectively advocate for their self-interest, counterbalancing great power politics. Supporting liberal internationalism is thus a form of realpolitik for middle powers.
Realist critics of the LIO include John Mearsheimer, Patrick Porter and Charles Glaser. Mearsheimer has argued that the LIO is bound to fail due to the pushback it faces internally within liberal states and externally by non-liberal states. Porter has argued that the LIO was actually a coercive order and that it was not liberal. Glaser has argued that the balance of power theory, bargaining theory and neo-institutional theories better explain NATO than mechanisms associated with the LIO.
Aaron McKeil of the London School of Economics finds realist criticism of liberal order insufficient. He argues that the alternative foreign policies offered by realists as "restraint" and "offshore balancing" would be more generative of proxy wars and would fail to offer the level of institutions required for managing great power competition and international challenges.
Inderjeet Parmar has argued that the LIO is "imperialism by another name" and that it promotes a class-based, white elitist and racist hegemony over the rest of the world. According to Amitav Acharya, the LIO is often perceived outside of the West as a narrow ideological, economic, and strategic system that promotes the interests and culture of Western nations at the expense of their own local cultural languages, identities, and religions. Gellwitzki and Moulton complement these critiques by arguing that the LIO endures through institutionalized political myths, such as liberal values, sovereignty, and Western leadership. These confer legitimacy and guide state behavior, but while influential in the West, they have lost significance elsewhere.
John Dugard of the Leiden Law School has argued that the concept of the rules-based international order operates in tension with international law and has often been used to advance Western interests. Dugard argues that RBO rests on tacit agreements between only a handful of Western states which other states have not endorsed and that its amorphous nature makes it easier for Western countries, particularly the United States, to justify special treatment for their actions when they violate international law. According to Jeremy Garlick of the Prague University of Business and Economics, in the eyes of developing countries, the United States practices double standards when it argues for a rules-based international order while simultaneously failing to sign on to international agreements such as the UN Convention of the Law of the Seas.