Twenty Years of Institutional Liberalism


Questioning Institutional Liberalism



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Robert K.-Liberalism (1)

Questioning Institutional Liberalism 

But I write not to celebrate Institutional Liberalism but to question it. Invoking the ideas 

and spirit of E. H. Carr, but focusing on a different form of liberalism, I seek to evaluate 

the last 20 years of liberal dominance in world politics. Only since the collapse of the 

Soviet Union has it been possible to evaluate the impact of liberal institutionalism on 

world politics. 

Before 1991, institution-building by the United States and its allies had a significant 

security justification: to create economic prosperity and patterns of cooperation that 

would reinforce the position of the West in the struggle with the Soviet Union. 

Furthermore, American hegemony was crucial: the international institutions created after 

World War II ‘were constructed on the basis of principles espoused by the United States, 

and American power was essential for their construction and maintenance’.

6

 Cooperation 



persisted longer than most Realists would have expected, but as long as the Soviet Union 

remained a rival and a threat, a Realist emphasis on relative gains was consistent with 

continued cooperation between the United States and other advanced industrialized 

countries. The relative gains that mattered were between the West and the Soviet bloc. In 

other words, an interpretation that explains institutions on the basis of the functions that 

they serve and a Realist one could both explain the patterns of cooperation that emerged 

and persisted. 

The international institutions that operated during this period facilitated mutually ben­

eficial cooperation on issues ranging from security to monetary cooperation to trade. 

Most of these institutions were not highly legalized. Sovereignty was not taken away 

from states, but became a 

bargaining resource

 that states could negotiate away, to some 

extent, in order to obtain other benefits, such as influence over other states’ regulatory 

policies.

7

 Cooperation occurred on the basis of mutual self-interest and reciprocity, with­



out much legalization. 

Yet these patterns of cooperation led to remarkably robust international regimes: sets 

of principles, norms and rules governing the relations among well-defined sets of actors. 



128 

International Relations 26(2) 

Under the international monetary regime that prevailed between 1958 and 1971, for 

instance, membership in fixed exchange rate regimes was well defined and the rules 

were followed, with some relatively minor exceptions. Until the early l970s the interna­

tional oil regime was also quite clear, although the rules were largely set by major inter­

national oil companies, not by states. Finally, the trade regime built around the General 

Agreements on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) became progressively stronger as well, at least 

until the mid-1980s. In the early 1980s both Ruggie and I, despite our different perspec­

tives, anticipated a continuation and gradual strengthening of international institutions 

grounded in domestic politics and achieving substantial cooperation on the basis largely 

of specific reciprocity, as in the GATT trade system.

Since the early 1990s we can observe three developments of note: an increase in 



legalization; increasing legalism and moralism expressed by people leading civil society 

efforts to create and modify international institutions; and a decline in the coherence of 

some international regimes along with a failure to increase the coherence of others. 

Increasing legalism and moralism might have been expected 20 years ago by those of us 

who studied liberalism; but in different ways the increases in legalization and the recent 

apparent decline in the coherence of international regimes seem anomalous. 

In what follows I reassess Institutional Liberalism in the light of the experience of the 

last 20 years. Does Institutional Liberalism contain a formerly hidden logic linking legali­

zation, the upsurge of legalism and moralism, and decreased regime coherence? That is, 

do these apparently contradictory developments all represent manifestations of liberalism

which only became fully evident when it became dominant in world politics? Or do some 

or all of these tendencies not reflect liberalism as such, but the impact of changes in power 

structures in tension with liberalism, or of domestic politics? In this latter view, the 

changes that we see are not direct effects of liberalism but only of the inability of liberal 

values to be realized in a world of fragmented power and pluralist domestic politics. 

Before developing my argument, it is essential that I define what I mean by ‘legaliza­

tion’, ‘international regimes’, ‘legalism’ and ‘moralism’. 

Legalization is a property of 




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