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’.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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