A Liberal World Order in Crisis: Choosing between Imposition and Restraint

6. Institutions and Liberal World Order

141 Chapter 6 Institutions and Liberal World Order Institutions, international as well as domestic, play a significant role in any liberal order. Institutions were defined in chapter 2 as sets of rules, formal and informal, that states and other actors play by. According to liberals, a rule-based order is much to be preferred to the alternative,an order without rules. That is because even powerful actors such as great powers would face very high costs if they were to use only force in order to influence events (Keohane 1998). Furthermore, a purely powerbased order is thin and shaky because it lacks legitimacy, the lawfulness that follows from being authorized by institutional consent. Institutions enhance transparency, predictability, and credible compliance; they provide information and opportunities to negotiate and thus reduce the costs of making and reinforcing agreements. For these reasons liberals support a rule-based order, and as was briefly mentioned in chapter 2, there has indeed been a sharp quantitative rise in the number of IGOs and INGOs, especially during the latter half of the twentieth century. Increasing numbers of organizations are, of course, only part of the story;international agreements have also grown thicker and more complex. The NAFTA agreement runs some 26,000 pages; the acquis communitaire , which new EU members must accept, totals more than 85,000 pages. Furthermore, rules are increasingly about behind-the-border issues, that is, they are less about regulating barriers to entry and exit and more 142 CHAPTER 6 about positive regulation related to citizens’behavior in a variety of different areas (Hurrell 2006: 60). We have seen that liberal theories of IR generally emphasize mutually beneficial cooperation and progress. Institutions fundamentally improve the ability of states and other actors to cooperate. It would appear that the general developments since World War II have confirmed liberal expectations about stronger cooperation and increase of institutionalization. At the same time,beneath the optimistic surface of these changes are tensions concerning power, legitimacy, and, eventually, the concrete substance of liberal values. They point to a somewhat more problematic role for international institutions in the liberal view of world order,and they ultimately call into question whether there are appropriate conditions for such an order in the present international system. The central liberal dilemma when it comes to international institutions was identified in chapter 2. Liberal states support a pluralist approach to international institutions;a universal community of liberal as well as nonliberal countries is the appropriate framework for global cooperation and the promotion of liberal values. But liberal states also favor a nonpluralist approach to international institutions: only a strong concert of liberal democracies can take the lead and create a better, that is, more liberal, world order. The universal,pluralist approach is the Liberalism of Restraint attitude toward international institutions. The nonpluralist,selective approach is the Liberalism of Imposition, which wants to put liberal states in the driver’s seat in order to define rules and principles for others; if necessary the hegemonic liberal power can go it alone with the support of a “coalition of the willing.” The unique conditions after the end of World War II led to the establishment of a universal Restraint order centered on the UN system combined with a distinct liberal order centered on West-West cooperation within the framework of NATO and other transatlantic institutions. Universal cooperation succeeded in containing the confrontation between East and West so that it remained a cold rather than a hot war. Within that framework liberal cooperation across the Atlantic successfully intensified. The European liberal states welcomed U.S. leadership because it provided both security and economic benefits; it was an “empire by invitation” (Lundestad 1986). The preconditions for that order were removed with the end of the Cold War. The United States was now a unipolar power, but it was also more concerned with its own economic and security priorities. The United States sought to create a Liberal Imposition order with universal reach,where it defined the rules for others. It was a bid for dominance that other great powers would not agree to, and it quickly became clear that unilateral Imposition INSTITUTIONS AND LIBERAL WORLD ORDER 143 could not be the basis for a transformed liberal order. But there is no road back to the earlier Restraint order because the preconditions are now different . The road forward to a stable and effective order confronts obstacles of leadership...