Twenty Years of Institutional Liberalism

institutions. 

The rules of legalized institutions are precise 

and obligatory, and they provide arrangements for third-party adjudication.

9

 In some 

domains, notably human rights and criminal responsibility, there has been a remarkable 

increase in legalization over the past two decades. In a legalized system, third-party 

adjudication provides a focal point for agreement, reducing the likelihood of protracted 

bargaining-induced conflict over relatively minor issues, and reducing uncertainty about 

both the rules and their enforcement. Substantively, legalization has facilitated the pro­

gressive extension of rights, and legal protection, to oppressed persons and peoples. 

Even in situations when formal legalization is not feasible, an orientation toward legali­

zation can promote the rise of ‘soft law’, which helps reduce uncertainty and facilitate 

rule-implementation. 

Coherence

 is also a property of institutions, but refers more to the relationship among 

institutions than to the properties of any single institution. Coherent institutions or clus­

ters of institutions have clear lines of authority linking them, so that for any given situa­

tion it is clear which rules apply, or at least which adjudicatory institutions are authorized 

to determine which rules apply. To denote an institution or set of institutions as an ‘inter­

national regime’ is to indicate a fairly high degree of coherence, as was the case with 

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Keohane 

129 

international monetary institutions in the years of pegged exchange rates (1958−71) and 

with the World Trade Organization in its first years. As I suggested, I see signs that the 

coherence of international regimes is declining. In several domains regimes or attempted 

regimes are becoming ‘regime complexes’: loosely coupled arrangements of rules, 

norms and institutions marked both by connections between several specific functionally 

related institutions and by the absence of an overall architecture or hierarchy that struc­

tures the whole set.

10 

Finally, there seems to have been a rise in legalism and moralism in the discourse of 

international relations. Legalism and moralism are not properties of institutions but 

rather of the 

human mind

. Legalism is the belief that moral and political progress can be 

made through the extension of law. Moralism is the belief that moral principles provide 

valuable, if not necessarily sufficient, guides to how political actors should behave, and 

that actions by those in power can properly be judged on the basis of their conformity to 

general moral principles developed chiefly to govern the actions of individuals. 

Although many authors, particularly international legal scholars, have celebrated both 

legalism and legalization without distinguishing them, I wish to distinguish them from 

one another in this essay, since I am particularly ambivalent about legalism. I believe 

with E. H. Carr that law, and its efficacy, always rests on structures of power. So legal­

ism, when taken as the description of a causal process, seems misleading to me in an 

ideological sense: that is, it can serve as a veil, hiding the exercise of power. In practice, 

the application of law can become quite uneven under situations of unequal power, lead­

ing to a form of what Stephen Krasner calls ‘organized hypocrisy’.

11 

E. H. Carr was critical of utopian thinking, which is often moralistic; and he was also 

critical of legalism. As he said, ‘Law is a function of political society, is dependent for its 

development on the development of that society, and is conditioned by the political pre­

suppositions which that society shares in common.’

12

 So an appropriate entry-point into 

our inquiry is to start with Carr’s own thinking about morality in world politics and the 

role of law. What would Carr, observing the revival of legalism and moralism in world 

politics, make of their revival? We cannot really answer this question, but in this essay I 

take up some of E. H. Carr’s themes to see what insights, and cautions, they may raise 

about contemporary international liberalism, and the moralistic and legalistic tone that it 

seems increasingly to be taking. 

I begin with the revival of moralism, since it is fundamental – often providing a justi­

fication for legalization and legalism – and it seems to me relatively easy to explain. I 

will then turn to legalization and legalism, seeking to account for their growth as well. 

Finally, I reflect on what appears to be a counter-trend: the growing incoherence of major 

international regimes and the failure of coherent regimes to emerge in other areas, where 

functional arguments might expect them to develop.