Suchergebnisse

"The lack of a general consensus on the major characteristics of world order has led to a considerable amount of confusion among scholars as well as among policymakers. What kind of order is emerging now? Is it the 'liberal moment'; a renewed balance of power competition; a 'clash of civilizations', 'Jihad vs. McWorld'; or something else entirely? These analyses make valid points but they are misleading as versions of world order, because they fail to capture what is the most decisive characteristic of the present order. The core issue of world order has to do with tensions in liberalism. Progress towards a genuinely liberal world order has proven much more complicated than expected when the Cold War ended. Liberals agree on the major principles of world order but they are vastly unsure about the real substance of order, including what it should offer to people and states." (author's abstract)

In an age of demagogues, hostile great powers and trade wars, foreign policy traditionalists dream of restoring liberal international order. This order, they claim, ushered in seventy years of peace and prosperity and saw post-war America domesticate the world to its values. The False Promise of Liberal Order exposes the flaws in this nostalgic vision. The world shaped by America came about as a result of coercion and, sometimes brutal, compromise. Liberal projects - to spread capitalist democracy - led inadvertently to illiberal results. To make peace, America made bargains with authoritarian forces. Even in the Pax Americana, the gentlest order yet, ordering was rough work. As its power grew, Washington came to believe that its order was exceptional and even permanent - a mentality that has led to spiralling deficits, permanent war and Trump. Romanticizing the liberal order makes it harder to adjust to today's global disorder. Only by confronting the false promise of liberal order and adapting to current realities can the United States survive as a constitutional republic in a plural world.

AbstractThe 1990s saw a systemic shift from the liberal post–World War II international order of liberal multilateralism (LIO I) to a post–Cold War international order of postnational liberalism (LIO II). LIO II has not been only rule-based but has openly pursued a liberal social purpose with a significant amount of authority beyond the nation-state. While postnational liberal institutions helped increase overall well-being globally, they were criticized for using double standards and institutionalizing state inequality. We argue that these institutional features of the postnational LIO II led to legitimation problems, which explain both the current wave of contestations and the strategies chosen by different contestants. We develop our argument first by mapping the growing liberal intrusiveness of international institutions. Second, we demonstrate the increased level and variety of contestations in international security and international refugee law. We show that increased liberal intrusiveness has led to a variety of contestation strategies, the choice of which is affected by the preference of a contestant regarding postnational liberalism and its power within the contested institution.

This article reassesses whether, and if so how and why, China contests the WTO's liberal trade order. Our framework on 'varieties of contestation' goes beyond the mainstream view of a monolithic Chinese trade policy that either challenges or supports the liberal trade order. We propose a two-step approach that allows for a more differentiated assessment. First, a constructivist analysis captures the extent to which China embraces liberal trade norms. China may contest the validity of the liberal compromise that underpins WTO rules (frame contestation) or merely express disapproval regarding their application (claim contestation). Second, a political-economic analysis of sector-specific preferences allows us to explain why China engages in contestation in some cases, but not in others. Empirically, we examine three sectors that have played a crucial role in recent WTO discussions: steel, agriculture, and information technology. We find that contestation is more prevalent in steel and agriculture compared to IT. It is only with respect to the steel sector, which is state-permeated and where behind-the-border regulation is at stake, that China contests the validity of the prevailing liberal compromise. This pattern of selective contestation suggests that China will neither entirely abandon the WTO nor proactively revive it.

Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Preface -- Contents -- Figures -- Tables -- Summary -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Chapter One: Introduction -- The Order and Its Health -- Challenges with Measurement -- Methodology -- Structure of the Report -- Chapter Two: Participation in Formal Regional and International Institutions -- Steady Institutional Participation -- Integrating International Order into Domestic Institutions -- Increasingly Diverse and Informal Institutions -- Building New Institutions -- Regional Institutions -- Chapter Three: Economic Liberalization and Interdependence -- Trade and Financial Integration -- Capital Markets and Foreign Direct Investment -- Response to Crises -- Development Assistance -- Chapter Four: International Conflict and Peace -- Treaties of Pacific Settlement -- Territorial Changes Resulting from Conflict -- Status of Controls on Weapons of Mass Destruction -- Levels of Conflict -- Ability to Constrain Major War -- Chapter Five: Adherence to Liberal Norms and Values -- Democracy and Liberal Systems -- Human Rights -- Corruption and the Rule of Law -- Economic Growth and Democratic Stability -- Chapter Six: Major-Power Signaling and Policies Toward Order -- Russia -- China -- India -- Brazil -- Conclusion -- Chapter Seven: Public Attitudes Toward Elements of the Order -- Support for the Order's Rules and Institutions -- Support for Trade -- Support for Liberal Norms and Values -- Support for Internationalism -- The Rise of Nationalism -- Chapter Eight: Foundations of Order: Geopolitics and Ideology -- Geopolitical Trends -- Ideological Trends -- Conclusion: Causes for Worry -- Chapter Nine: Summing Up: The State of the Order -- The Importance of Ideas and Beliefs -- Recognizing Danger Signs -- Implications for Policy -- References

[W]hat Trump has done so far represents an intensification and deepening of existing patterns of US behavior in the trading system rather than a fundamental change.

AbstractThe growing irregular immigration and asylum pressure polarizes and paralyzes the political ecosystems in the USA and Europe. It empowers the new nationalists that seek to dismantle or withdraw from the liberal international institutions (EU, NATO, United Nations), which they perceive as undermining their capacity to assert national sovereignty. To save 'liberal order,' therefore, the established governments and political parties on both sides of the Atlantic need to bring back a perception of internal control over external events. They need a more explicit acknowledgment of their national interests that cannot always accommodate migrants' interest in settling in more prosperous and safer countries. The article argues that migration management must be integrated into a notion of Western grand strategy focused on the preservation of internal cohesion and sovereignty, which preconditions consensus on maintaining 'liberal order' in the first place.