Liberal Order Research Articles

From unipolarity to G-Zero and beyond: Political economy of the world without superpowers

The erosion of the unipolar system of international relations, accelerated as a result of the turbulent events of 2022, is returning experts in the field of international relations to discuss the phenomenon of the balance of power and its embodiment in various models. During the thirty-year period, following the end of the Cold War (1991–2021), the system of interstate relations went through periods when unipolar, bipolar and multipolar models were considered optimal. This article, based on the author’s address at the plenary session of the First Saint-Petersburg Congress of International Studies, proposes a political and economic interpretation of the consequences that the member states of the world community will face at a new stage in the transformation of the modern architecture of international relations in the 21st century through the mechanism of the balance of power. The trend of reducing state power in comparison with the growing economic power of market institutions and business structures in the modern era has been replaced by a reverse trend. It is characterized by the “return of the state” against the backdrop of a global system in crisis. The absence of a hegemonic state in the new system leads to the destruction of the foundations of the international liberal order, the formation of a decentralized system of alliances of states, an increase in the number and scale of economic conflicts, expressed both in the formation of regional trade blocks and in the expansion of the practice of applying economic sanctions as a substitute for armed conflicts of the past. A new era in the political and economic development of the planet, in which new actors will replace the superpowers of the past, should be characterized as a period of competitive interdependence. The coming years will show what will prevail — competition, extolled by representatives of the realistic school of the theory of international relations, i. e. inter-country/inter-bloc rivalry, or interdependence raised to the shield by the liberals.

India and order transition in the Indo-Pacific: resisting the Quad as a ‘security community’

Managing order transition in the Indo-Pacific is as much about negotiating the character of regional order as it is about mounting balance of power challenges or establishing countervailing institutional arrangements. For this reason, members of the Quad have expressed ambitions to deliver shared security on the basis of collective identity and values—though at times more in discourse than in practice. This article argues that India is actively contesting and, in some ways reconfiguring, the legitimating narratives of the Quad as an Indo-Pacific ‘security community’. Under the leadership of Narendra Modi, India has approached the socialising imperative of liberal identity cues selectively and ambivalently. More widely, India has declined to pursue an overt, collective strategy of Chinese containment and has propounded distinctive visions of regional security provision. India’s vision for liberal order in the Indo-Pacific stands apart from the ‘security community’ that the other Quad partners have enunciated in their foreign policy discourse, with consequences for the future of order transition in the Indo-Pacific.

TURKISH MILITARY TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENTS AND MILITARY INDUSTRY CAPABILITIES OF FORCE PROJECTION IN THE LIGHT OF GEOPOLITICAL GOALS

The study examines a specific segment of the Turkish military industry capabilities in the light of the country’s geopolitical aims. In the transformation of the international system, we can simultaneously see the change in the distribution of military capabilities. While U.S. hegemony and the Western liberal order are increasingly challenged, superpowers’ realism based on politicization of interests is gaining ground on the international political arena. As for Ankara’s place in the international system, Turkey is not a global power in terms of its relative power, but more like one of the regional powers while it wants to become a global player in the future. However, Turkey can be described as a major military producer and exporter in the international arena. Turkish-made military equipment, such as drones, is already being used in many parts of the world, which supports Ankara’s geopolitical interests and force projection capabilities.

The China Factor in Africa’s Path to Liberal Democracy

Abstract This article explores whether China’s political and economic relations with African countries constitute a factor in undermining Africa’s path to liberal democracy or not. It addresses the question of why democratic values like human rights could not be sustained in some African countries. Along this line, could China’s economic influence harm the democratisation of the African continent? The argument of this article is that differing perceptions of democracy coupled with China’s entry in Africa as an alternative to the West have provided a context for several African countries to elude the liberal democratic path. The article concludes that, in providing them with economic support, China has introduced concepts of an alternative model of government to several African countries that had initially embraced liberal democracy. China’s close relations with Africa thus have been a game-changer for the post-Cold War liberal order.

Manage migration to save liberal order

The 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.

Takfiri Currents and International Order: Perceptions and Acts

The contemporary international order is understandable from the perspective of the concepts, interpretations and experiences of the modern time. This order, which is also interpreted as a liberal order, reflects the interaction and relations established between its actors, at the center of which is the nation-state. This order and this main actor in the 21st century were challenged by a new and emerging existence on the world stage; ISIL. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has clearly challenged the international order and its central idea; the nation-state. The paper hypothesizes that takfiri movements consider the hegemonic international order specifically as their main problem. The paper explains the attitude of takfiri radicalism towards the international order. Explain this claim through description the place of the idea of the nation-state in the contemporary international order, Analysis of the perception and understanding of takfiri movements from it and a description of how they act will get done.

Strengthening multilevel governance of public goods through democratic and republican constitutionalism*

Russia’s invasions of Ukraine confirm the historical experience that governance of public goods (PGs) demanded by citizens (such as human rights, democratic peace, and the sustainable development goals (SDGs) as universally confirmed by the United Nations General Assembly) depends on defending principles of democratic constitutionalism (such as citizenship, democratic governance, ‘mixed government’, and courts of justice), republican constitutionalism (such as separation of power, the rule of law, and jus gentium since ancient Rome), and common law constitutionalism (such as parliamentary and judicial protection of fundamental rights and property rights) against abuses of power. The United Nations (UN) and its 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda recommend these constitutional principles also for multilevel governance protecting the SDGs and related PGs. Yet constitutionalism depends on multilevel legislative, administrative and judicial implementing measures transforming the SDGs into concrete duties of governments and corresponding rights and remedies of citizens. The global health, environmental, energy, security, economic and human rights crises reveal the systemic ‘market failures’, ‘governance failures’, and ‘constitutional implementation deficits’ undermining UN and World Trade Organization governance of PGs. Liberal order can only survive as ‘militant constitutional demoi-cracy’ if citizens defend freedom against tyranny at home and abroad, notably in authoritarian States which, notwithstanding their formal constitutions, suppress democratic constitutionalism.

What Happened to Civility: The Promise and Failure of Montaigne's Modern Project by Ann Hartle

Reviewed by: What Happened to Civility: The Promise and Failure of Montaigne's Modern Project by Ann Hartle Vicente Raga Rosaleny HARTLE, Ann. What Happened to Civility: The Promise and Failure of Montaigne's Modern Project. Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press, 2022. ix + 178 pp. Cloth, $100.00; paper, $30.00 Why are we witnessing increasing social polarization in Western societies? What has happened to make our liberal democracies so ideologically charged? Professor Ann Hartle's book tries to answer these and other questions in line with the concept of civility that, according to her thesis, Michel de Montaigne created in early modernity and that is about to disappear in our day. Not in vain is Montaigne the protagonist of this book, given that Professor Hartle is a world-renowned specialist on the author of the Essays, although in this case she is interested in the transformations that gave rise to modernity in order to understand our present day. She reads Montaigne for a better interpretation of some central problems of our time, such as the difficulty to speak freely that is experienced on university campuses and, in general, the increasing politicization of our civil societies. Thus, in the first place, Professor Hartle's work interrogates the origins of civility, the social bond created in modernity. To this end, she exposes what happened in the time of Montaigne, when societies, based on the classical and Christian tradition, were plunged into a general crisis. This is what the French essayist detected, and it led him to propose a new type of bond. For this, it is necessary to free oneself from tradition, which had legitimized the division between masters and slaves, the source of all conflicts. Montaigne's movement is philosophical in character: It consists of a split carried out in his Essays between the natural human being and the philosophical observer, which leads to a break with traditional moral standards, identified with Nature. The new human being, thus unfolded, can choose his own hierarchy of values and address the good he chooses with his own will (although this will be a will purified of particularisms, without excessive self-esteem). Such self-awareness, achieved by Montaigne as an accidental philosopher, is concretized in the predominance of the concept of judgment, in the ability to freely choose our possibilities (and not ends dictated by Nature). The new world thus created, Hartle explains, gave rise to the liberal order. It is true that Montaigne was not a theorist, but in his work it is possible to find the rupture of the traditional hierarchy between masters [End Page 351] and slaves, now considered as equals before the law, which is above all, and which is the fruit of reason. In this civil society, human beings no longer dominate each other, and each peacefully pursues his purposes. It is the state, as the embodiment of the law, that regulates everything, except the space of freedom gained with the emergence of the modern public sphere. In this context, the concept of authenticity makes sense, which, according to Professor Hartle, is the best reflection of the breakdown of the traditional order and the disappearance of its moral community. Now each individual pursues his purposes and is no longer to fulfill the ends of a universal human nature. That is why the bond of civility, in which the absolute autonomy of the subject is recognized, as well as his equality before the law, replaces the moral ties of the traditional community and its hierarchies. It is the French thinker who best exemplifies this transit, by showing himself openly in his Essays as a common subject who pursues his purposes and who relates to others as equals, no longer as someone superior, capable of disputing merit, and dominating others. However, this new society and its civil bonds are in crisis; civility fades, or that is Professor Hartle's pessimistic conclusion. Today we are witnessing an ideologization of previously depoliticized areas, such as the university, with the demand for the use of politically correct language and the fear of expressing oneself freely, especially when one's own opinions do not align with the current political trends. The failure...

Bucovina - metamorfozele unei provincii

"Central and Western European empiresʼ territorial expansions to the continentʼs south and east were accompanied by policies to modernize the economy and society of the annexed regions. Although locals bore the majority of the costs of the transition from the traditional to the liberal order, imperial authorities contributed to establishing adequate codes of law, creating a stimulating framework for social relations, and the improvement of relations between the state/monarchy and the subjects. The study reveals how placing a territory under multiple administrations causes changes not only in legal and economic terms but also in the ethno-demographic structure. In the situation of Bukovina, substantial colonization and immigration from within the empire, particularly from Galicia, had an impact on the province's ethnic composition. More significantly, the decrease in Romanians in the general population was the outcome of a policy of quantitative balancing of ethnic groups and the avoidance of such a situation in which one nationality numerically dominates the others and has political and electoral benefits. As a result, the picture of Bukovina society in 1918 was very different from that of 1775, and the twentieth-century extremism and world wars changed the character of Bukovina even more deeply. "

Ordoliberal ideas on Europe: two paradigms of European economic integration

ABSTRACT Ordoliberalism is often recognized as a powerful ideational source during the Euro crisis; however, there is no pure ordoliberal vision of European integration, and ordoliberal ideas have been used to support both Eurosceptical and Europeanist positions during the crisis. This article reconstructs the ordoliberal theoretical and political debate on European integration and argues that there exist two ordoliberal paradigms of European integration: one bottom-up, whereby the commitment to liberal economic policies at the national level is the precondition for a liberal international order; the other top-down, whereby a liberal international order can help the establishment of a liberal order at the national level. The article compares two ordoliberal visions of the international order: Wilhelm Röpke’s ‘liberalism from below’ (which follows the bottom-up logic) and Viktor Vanberg’s ‘competitive federalism’ (which follows the top-down logic). Then, it explores the ordoliberal political debate on two episodes of the European integration process – the Maastricht Treaty and the Euro crisis – to argue that the bottom-up and the top-down logics underpinned, respectively, Eurosceptical and Europeanist arguments.

The Ruling Group Survival: Why Pakistan and Hungary Move Away from the US-led Order?

AbstractWhy do some smaller states signal to move away from the US-led liberal order? We look at the ruling group survival in smaller allies to answer this pressing puzzle. Despite accepting the merit of systemic explanations, we simply argue that the ruling groups in smaller states engage with revisionist powers in the international system to sustain and enhance their privileged positions in the domestic policy setting. Hungary, a NATO member, and Pakistan, a traditional ally of the United States, have long been showing signs of shifting toward the China/Russia axis. We explain the behavior of Hungary and Pakistan during the 2010s by focusing on the survival strategies of key ruling groups in those countries. We simply argue that relations of competing great powers with the ruling group in smaller states determine the fate of asymmetric alliance.

‘Nationalists of All Countries, Unite!’: Hans Keller and Nazi Internationalism in the 1930s

This paper presents a case study of German ‘Nazi internationalism’ as part of a broader, transnational counter-reaction to liberal and communist internationalism in the 1930s. It offers an analysis of the activities and main ideas of the Nationalist International (Internationale Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Nationalisten; IAdN), headed by the German jurist Hans Keller and active from 1934 to 1941. The IAdN promoted concepts such as Volk nationalism and a Third Europe as a solution to the European crisis, and attempted to establish an alternative law of nations to replace the post-1919 liberal order. The IAdN illustrates an early attempt to reconcile völkisch ideas with international cooperation, thus foreshadowing ‘ethno-pluralist’ concepts of the New Right in the post-war period.

The Rise of Islamic Liberalism: A Qualitative Study

The contemporary world order from public to private, academic to politics and society is largely based on liberal values and ideals. This global hegemony of the liberal order has also become a catalyst for the liberalization of Islam. This article details the emerging trends of Liberal Islam in Muslim societies and focuses on the post 9/11 period. The wave of fundamentalism has not only caused a strange response among the modernized classes of the Muslim population, but also among traditionalists and the fundamentalists. This response is the emergence of a cosmopolitan liberalism in Muslim societies. In this article, various aspects and factors of Islamic liberalism will be discussed. The process of liberalization in the traditional circles of Pakistan and the liberalization of the Islamist political organizations are discussed as representative cases. The article would be concluded by suggesting the future of liberal Islam, the challenges it faces and how it will dominate the major interpreted versions of Islam.  

Mimesis and status-seeking in the global order. BRICS summit diplomacy and performative practices

ABSTRACT An increasing strand of literature has been studying the dynamics of contestation of the liberal order. Holding that order emergence commences with rhetoric and narratives, this article takes stock of the BRICS summit diplomacy and contestation practices. It pursues a two-level argument. Applying BRICS as a historical case study, the article first reveals how BRICS engages in mimetic performances, re-producing parts of the global order, while simultaneously seeking a re-configuration of the current international system. Second, our analysis shows that through thin and aspiring thick recognition, BRICS countries move toward an enhanced role and status, striving for a better position in the global order. Empirically, to unpack our argument, we analyze BRICS summit diplomacy and rhetoric by unfolding the outcome declarations in the period 2009–2020, as well as BRICS performative practices.

Western populism and liberal order: a reflection on ‘structural liberalism’ and the resilience of Western liberal order

The rise of populism in Western democracies creates presumed threats on liberal international order. Although a number of scholarly works are dedicated to the populist challenge on liberal democracy, the analysis of populism’s implications on the liberal order is limited. This paper deliberates on a concise review of the consequences of populism on the Western liberal order. In order to delineate the study, the article is devoted to the Western populism and its implications on liberal order. The paper, while analyzing the components of liberal international order by drawing on the analytical framework of structural liberalism, intends to claim that populism has adverse consequences on certain elements of the order than others. However, the implication is not an inflection point for the Western liberal order. Furthermore, this paper also provides some explanations behind the limitations of the populist threats to the Western liberal order. The main argument to highlight is that populism is detrimental more to liberal democracy than to the liberal order itself, and the Western liberal order has the capacity to withstand the tide of populism.

The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue: The West's Response to China in the Indo-Pacific

As China’s actions have become increasingly aggressive in the Indo-Pacific, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue’s (Quad) growing interconnectedness reveals the West’s desire to preserve the liberal order. The Quad-- composed of the United States, Australia, India, and Japan-- was revived in 2017 amidst China’s encroachment on the sovereignty of Indo-Pacific nations and international waters. Through increased activity in infrastructure development, military interoperability, and key resource networks, the Quad’s renewal marks an acceleration of Western efforts to counter China’s growing threats to Western hegemony. By distilling the Quad’s activity into these three areas of cooperation, this paper examines the grouping’s actions and their implications for Western-China relations. In the area of infrastructure development, the Quad has emphasized a diversification of funding and high-quality practices to reduce reliance on China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and has promoted democratic priorities through the formation of the Blue Dot Network (BDN). Within military interoperability, the expansion of Exercise Malabar to include all Quad nations and the decision to host the exercise in the Bay of Bengal reveals the Quad’s increased challenge to China’s encroachment on Indo-Pacific oceans. The Quad’s desire to reduce Indo-Pacific nations’ reliance on China is evident in its efforts to exert influence over key resource networks such as undersea communication cables, Covid-19 vaccines, and global supply chains. The Quad’s increased activity within these three sectors represents the grouping’s elevation to an increasingly concrete alliance, emerging as one of the West’s primary measures to counter China’s growing influence in the Indo-Pacific and beyond.

Contending Weltanschauungen and the Shrinking of Democratic Spaces An Appraisals of Nigeria Democratic Practices-2015-2022

Ivan Krastev said “we are all living in Vladimir Putin’s world now”, where sheer force tramples over democratic rights. However, the travails of the liberal order is not only Putin’s Russia, China waits on the wings….Even the bastions of democracy like United States of America (USA) and United Kingdom (UK) are not left out. In them have arisen Rightwings populist in the guise of ‘America First’, which cumulated to the January 6, 2021 ‘insurrection’ in Washington and the Brexit brouhaha in UK. Nigeria being a member of the comity of nations is not antipathetic to this trend. Of the twelve largest democratic decline in the world, seven are in Sub-Saharan Africa and Nigeria is number five. It had been noted that Democratic practise in Nigeria is a hybrid: civil rule, militarism, and ethnic jingoism. In a recent poll by Statista, 77.2% of Nigerians agree that Nigeria democracy is flawed. This paper interrogates the democratic reversal in Nigeria using the Realist Balance of Power (BoP) Framework in the midst of contending Weltanschauungen. The paper argues that Russia and China’s contrary worldview to democratic norms has given countries democratic trade-offs, which have engendered democratic reversal worldwide, Nigeria inclusive. The paper recommends continuous vigilance by Nigerian’s civil societies and others, to insist that democratic tenets are upheld always, as exemplified by their insistence for the signing of the 2022 Electoral Law. Data were collated through documentary methods; these qualitative data were transcribed, interpreted, and analysed through systematic logical deductions.

Globalisation, Divided Societies and Nation-Centred Economic Policies in America and Britain

Abstract A stronger emphasis on domestic politics and national sovereignty has recently shaped international economic relations, for instance, in the United Kingdom and the United States. This trend weakened the liberal international economic order (lio) with its promotion of globalisation and multilateralism. Why have the UK and the US, which formerly spearheaded the liberal order, embraced nation-centred foreign economic policies (ncp) under the Trump and Johnson governments? I argue that domestic forces predominantly drove this shift, since a political de facto alignment of value-based societal ideas and material interests increasingly favoured national self-determination and the privileging of domestic groups. The negative consequences of the lio such as rising income inequality, job losses and a perceived heteronomy had strengthened societal ideas and interests that converged in support of ncp. I examine these arguments by applying the societal approach to governmental preference formation in case studies on Johnson’s Brexit policy and Trump’s trade policy towards China.

The Social Philosophy of Gerald Gaus: Moral Relations Amid Control, Contestation, and Complexity

AbstractGerald Gaus was one of the leading liberal theorists of the early twenty-first century. He defended liberal order based on its unique capacity to handle deep disagreement and pressed liberals toward a principled openness to pluralism and diversity. Yet, almost everything written about Gaus's work is evaluative: determining whether his arguments succeed or fail. This essay breaks from the pack by outlining underlying themes in his work. I argue that Gaus explored how to sustain moral relations between persons in light of the institutional threats of social control, evaluative pluralism, and institutional complexity, and the psychological threat of acting solely from what I shall call themere first-personal point of view. The idea of public justification is the key to sustaining moral relations in the face of such challenges. When a society's moral and political rules are justified to each person, moral relations survive the threats they face.

Illiberal Reactions to Higher Education

Higher education has expanded at astonishing rates around the world. We seek to understand the oppositions that periodically arise, which may produce enrollment declines and/or imposition of political controls. The post-1945 growth of higher education was – to a greater extent than is often recognized – propelled by the liberal, and later neoliberal, international order. Oppositions arise from illiberal alternatives, which also may organize globally. The recent weakening of the global liberal order, associated with growing populism and nationalism, creates conditions for a new wave of oppositions. We hypothesize that attacks on higher education emerge in countries less integrated into world society and in countries linked to international structures that support illiberal alternatives. We examine cross-national data on higher education over the period 1960–2017. Enrollments and funding are higher in societies more tightly linked to world society and lower in countries tied to illiberal international organizations. Analyses of enrollments in various fields, constraints on academic freedom, and terrorist attacks on education institutions show similar pattern. Finally, we observe heterogeneity in the forms of illiberal opposition: countries that suppress academic freedom generally are less likely to restrict enrollments.