Liberal Democracy’s Impact on World Order

Abstract

In recent years, liberal democracies around the world have weakened and lost ground to autocratic and authoritarian states. This essay asks the question: what precisely has been the impact of liberal democracy on the global system? How did the rise and spread of liberal democracy alter and shape international relations? If liberal democracy continues to weaken and disappear, how will the world be different? In identifying the impacts that liberal democracy has had over the last two centuries on the logic and character of international order, I focus on three levels. First, I show the connections between the rise in power of liberal states and the spread of democracy across the global system. Second, I look at the impact of the rise of liberal democracy on the system-structure of international order as it evolved across the 19SUPth/SUP and 20SUPth/SUP century through its entanglements with the other great transitions and movements of the modern era–nationalism, empire, and Anglo-American hegemony. Third, I look at the “problems” that liberal democracies have grappled with over the centuries and how they have responded. These are the problems of anarchy, hierarchy, interdependence, liberal openness, and geopolitical vulnerability.