Essay

New Perspectives
1–12
(No) Exit from liberalism? ª The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/2336825X20934974
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Alexander Cooley
Barnard College and Columbia University, USA

Daniel H Nexon
Georgetown University, USA

Abstract
Post-Cold War expansion of liberal order rested on three legs: the implosion of major alternative
ordering projects, the enjoyment by liberal democracies of a ‘‘patronage monopoly,’’ and the
dominance of liberalizing transitional activist networks and movements. By 2019, all three of those
legs have been turned upside down. China and Russia, among others, offer new ordering projects,
countries enjoy ‘‘exit options’’ in the form of alternative patronage, and illiberal activist networks
are in the ascendant. A closer look at the ‘‘why’’ and ‘‘how’’ makes clear that illiberal forces have
appropriated and repurposed the toolkit used to expand liberal order, which suggests an apparent
paradox. While some forms of liberal order—primarily on the political side—are in retreat, other
forms of liberal order—especially in terms of institutional and multilateral arrangements—are
being reinforced. We are, therefore, looking not at the end of liberal order, but at a third great
transformation in it.

Keywords
Hegemony, liberal international order, liberalism, Trump, un-cancelling the future, United States

Even before the 2016 election, a number of international affairs specialists sounded the alarm
about Trump and the future of liberal order (see Wright, 2016). Now, as we enter the final year of
Trump’s first term, his record has done little to alleviate their concerns. Trump continues to show
an active distaste for multilateralism in favor of transactional bilateralism, regularly makes clear
his preference for autocratic rulers over democratic leaders, and continues to berate allies and
demand that they pay for American security commitments (see Kagan, 2018; Lissner and Rapp-
Hooper, 2018a; Patrick, 2019; Schake, 2018; Stokes, 2018; Wolf, 2018).
Some believe that a Trump second term will irreversibly damage the system that Washington
developed since 1945 to manage world politics (Tompson, 2019). Others argue that Trump can

Corresponding author:
Daniel H Nexon, Mortara Center for International Studies, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057, USA.
Email: dhn2@georgetown.edu
2 New Perspectives XX(X)

temporarily damage, but not destroy, liberal order (see Hirsh, 2019). Critics of both the theory and
practice of ‘‘liberal international order’’ argue that its demise should not overly concern us; inter-
national politics was never either terribly ordered or particularly liberal (see Allison, 2018; Mear-
sheimer, 2019; Porter, 2018; Staniland, 2018).
In this essay, we examine a number of aspects of this debate. In its first section, we ask if there is
such a thing as ‘‘the liberal international order’’? We argue that the question itself leads us astray,
because there are multiple international orders and different configurations of liberalism. Never-
theless, we see significant liberal characteristics across a variety of regions and in a number of
policy domains. In the second section, we identify major challenges to liberal ordering rooted in
power-transition dynamics, including great-power alternative-order building, the more general rise
of exit options, and increasing transnational and subnational illiberalism. We conclude that these
challenges are independent of Trump and that they threaten not so much the end of liberal order,
but a mutation in the terms of liberal ordering.

Liberal international order

Is there a ‘‘liberal international order’’ or is the phrase simply a way of justifying American
hegemony and informal empire? Certainly, there’s no way to discuss contemporary international
order without reference to how the United States has actively shaped the norms, institutions, and
practices of world politics. Those most worried about the fate of liberal order view American
leadership as crucial to its construction and maintenance. Those most dismissive of the concept
tend to focus on myriad examples of coercive and illiberal foreign policy. Daniel Bessner (2020)
argues that, even

if one believed that the United States acted as a force for good and stability during the Cold War—
which is doubtful, especially when one considers the disastrous effects of US intervention in Iran, Gua-
temala, Vietnam, Chile, and elsewhere—it is abundantly clear from the last two decades of meddling in
the Middle East that the world can’t afford to be dominated by Americans.

Patrick Porter (2018: 2) writes that

the United States did not bind itself with the rules of the system. It upended, stretched, or broke liberal
rules to shape a putatively liberal order. Appeals to the myth of a liberal Camelot flow from a deeper
myth, of power politics without coercion and empire without imperialism.

The problem with this line of argument is not so much that it is wrong, but that it conflates Amer-
ican foreign policy with liberal international order. As Rohan Mukherjee (2019) puts is,

when we speak of the liberal order, we are speaking of the system of relations with less powerful
states—embodied in international institutions, norms, principles, and procedures—established by the
U.S. in 1945 that persists to this day despite various changes in the intervening decades. This order
is related to but clearly distinct from U.S. foreign policy, as evidenced by the fact that many aspects
of the order have challenged U.S. interests or constrained its freedom of action.

Moreover, the question of whether—and to what degree—liberal international order exists is dif-
ferent from whether we should celebrate or condemn it.
Cooley and Nexon 3

Moreover, we need to be careful when we talk about ‘‘the liberal international order.’’ It is
certainly possible to think in terms of an overarching ‘‘order of orders’’ that encompasses all of
global politics. But, in practice, most of the discussion of ‘‘international liberal order’’ (and,
indeed, ‘‘international order’’ more broadly) refers to more limited and specific patterns of rela-
tions and practices (Goddard, 2018; Ikenberry and Nexon, 2019; Koivisto and Dunne, 2010;
Sorensen, 2011). For example, we see significant variation in international ordering across regions
and between policy spaces. Order looks different in Europe than it does in East Asia and Latin
America (see Butt, 2013; Cha, 2010; Hemmer and Katzenstein, 2002; Katzenstein, 2015; Long,
2015; Staniland, 2018); the rules and norms, as well as the ordering infrastructure, in the inter-
national digital domain are different from that associated with the use of force or the protection of
human rights (see Farrell and Newman, 2019; Finnemore, 2004; Guilhot, 2005; Sikkink, 1999).
Orders often overlap; where one order ends and other begins can be difficult to pin down. Orders
also interact. Even during the Cold War, when Europe was marked by starkly different orders to its
east and west, the American- and Soviet-led orders developed rules, norms, and institutions that
managed and channeled interactions between ‘‘West’’ and ‘‘East’’ (see Cooley, 2019; Goddard,
2018; Ikenberry, 2004, 2011; Ikenberry and Nexon, 2019; Lissner and Rapp-Hooper, 2018b;
Westad, 2007).
Reference to ‘‘the liberal international order’’ also creates the impression that we are referring
to a static entity, rather than mutating and shifting ways of ordering different regions and domains
of world politics. Setting aside the degree that such orders can contain both liberal and illiberal
elements, there are also different kinds of liberalism, and different dimensions along which order
can be more or less liberal. For example, the ‘‘liberal order’’ embodied by the Bretton Woods
System looks quite different than the current, more ‘‘neoliberal’’ economic order. The former
tended toward fixed exchange rates, extensive capital controls, a broader range of acceptable
restrictions on trade, and mixed economies. The latter tends toward floating exchange rates,
capital mobility, much more open trade, and deregulation (see Blyth, 2002; Bordo, 2017; Norrlof,
2010).
Thus, we find it useful to disaggregate international liberalism into three main components.
Kori Schake (2018) proves a good reference point for what advocates generally mean when they talk
about liberal international order:

Beginning in the wreckage of World War II, America established a set of global norms that solidified
its position atop a rules-based international system. These included promoting democracy, making
enduring commitments to countries that share its values, protecting allies, advancing free trade and
building institutions and patterns of behavior that legitimize American power by giving less powerful
countries a say.

These elements aren’t arbitrary; they have a deep history in the liberal tradition. They point back to
Immanuel Kant’s Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch—a foundational text for contemporary
liberal internationalism; one that supplied much of the intellectual architecture for Woodrow Wil-
son’s vision of how to achieve lasting peace after World War I, including the idea of a ‘‘League of
Nations’’ (see Doyle, 1983a, 1983b; Kant, 1991: 93–130). In brief, Kant argued that ‘‘perpetual
peace’’ required a world of constitutional republics, which he saw as disposed to resolve disputes
through the rule of law; a robust middle class linked cross-nationally by economic exchange; and
an international body (his ‘‘league of nations’’ or ‘‘league of peace’’) that would regulate their rela-
tions to preclude war.
4 New Perspectives XX(X)

In terms of more contemporary theory (see Musgrave and Nexon, 2013), these translate into
three different categories of liberalism:

 Political liberalism, which holds that governments have some basic obligations to their cit-
izens in terms of physical integrity, civil, and political rights. The most robust form requires
that states be fully liberal and democratic.
 Economic liberalism, which translates into some baseline level of commitment to open trade
and market economies. But, as noted above, this can take a variety of different forms,
including embedded and neoliberal liberalism.
 Intergovernmental liberalism, which refers to the processes and principles by which states
cooperate and pursue disagreements. Intergovernmental liberalism has two related compo-
nents. One is a commitment to sovereign equality: that differences in military or economic
power should not translate into de facto or de jure interstate hierarchy. The other is a pre-
ference for specific kinds of ordering infrastructure: ‘‘multilateral treaties and agreements,
international organizations, and institutions that make rules and norms, monitor compliance
with those rules and norms, resolve disputes, and provide for public, private, and club
goods’’ (Cooley and Nexon, 2020: 22–23).

These dimensions need not go together. Empires can force open markets in ways that violate
principles of political and intergovernmental liberalism. Structural adjustment programs, carried
out via liberal intergovernmentalist infrastructure, can sideline democratic decision-making in
domestic politics. The argument about the European Union’s (EU) ‘‘democratic deficit’’ highlights
how even the pursuit of some dimensions of political liberalism, such as human rights, can come at
the expense of others, such as self-government (Follesdale and Hix, 2006).
It seems pretty clear that significant slices of contemporary international order—in various
regions and policy domains—reflect at least some politically liberal principles, norms, and
arrangements. World politics is ‘‘dense with treaties, agreements, [and] covenants . . . that bakes in
politically liberal principles.’’ These include a range of arrangements from the Geneva Conven-
tions to the United Nations Charter, to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to the Inter-
national Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Cooley and Nexon, 2020: 21). Lynchpin regional
organizations, such as the Organization of American States and the EU, affirm commitments to
democratic principles and liberal rights. This does not mean that such agreements and organiza-
tions are always or even usually effective. The point is that they are ubiquitous and, when it comes
to rhetorically shared principles, often taken for granted (see, e.g. Hafner-Burton, 2013; Helfer and
Voeten, 2014; Keith, 1999; Krook and True, 2012; Simmons, 2009; von Stein, 2016).
The same is true when it comes to international trade and other commitments of economic
liberalism, which receive support from treaty obligations and international institutions (see
Abdelal, 2007; Rodrik, 2012). And since World War II we have seen significant growth—in scope
and number—of intergovernmental liberalism in the form of multilateral forums, institutions, and
organizations. Again, the degree of multilateralization varies by region and issue area, while some
instances of multilateralism make little substantive difference to the conduct of international
relations (see Alter and Meunier, 2009; Hafner-Burton and Montgomery, 2006). But the number of
such arrangements decreases markedly as we travel back before World War II and World War I
and on into the 19th century (see Goddard, 2018; Goddard et al., 2019; Reus-Smit, 1997).
Compared to idealized understanding of liberal order, contemporary international relations
everywhere fall short. This is inevitable. First, we cannot banish power-political interests from
Cooley and Nexon 5

world politics; these will frequently override liberal principles. Second, many regimes—including
in democratic states—will, at one point or another, find compliance with liberal norms incom-
patible with their domestic political interests, including survival (Cooley, 2019; Mukherjee, 2019).
Third, different dimensions of liberalism often work at cross purposes. For instance, inter-
governmentalism can create ‘‘barriers to the spread of political and economic liberalism.’’ When
‘‘it privileges sovereign equality, it makes it difficult to pressure illiberal states to reform’’ and
‘‘restricts the ability of states to impose liberal governance unilaterally, including through force’’
(Cooley and Nexon, 2020: 51).
But those who dismiss the significance of liberalism to contemporary international ordering
tend to use the wrong baseline: They focus on how actual practice falls short of, or contradicts,
idealized liberal principles—and often with reference to very specific dimensions of liberalism.
Instead, we should be comparing contemporary regional and policy orders to historical ones. If we
contrast them to those associated with, say, the Roman Empire, early modern Europe, Ming and
Qing hegemony, then a lot of modern international order looks very liberal indeed.
Moreover, that ‘‘liberalness’’ generally increased after end of the Cold War. The United States
dialed back on support for right-wing authoritarian regimes and insurgencies—even before 1989,
Washington had reversed course and facilitated democratization in the Philippines (1986) and
South Korea (1987). Between 1989 and 1991, the collapse of the Soviet-led order left large swaths
of post-communist space open to liberal ordering efforts. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)
fanned out with the aim of building liberal civil societies. Western European nations established
the EU and the expanded it eastwards into the erstwhile Soviet bloc. The North Atlantic Treaty
Organization also increased its ordering activities, first through partnership programs and then
through accession. The World Trade Organization helped usher in a period of more aggressive (and
more ‘‘neoliberal’’) liberal economic ordering. China became firmly integrated into the global
trading system (see Cooley, 2019; Cooley and Nexon, 2020: Ch. 1; Ikenberry, 2011; Lissner and
Rapp-Hooper, 2018b).
This expansion had much to do with American hegemony, and particularly cooperation among
the United States, France, Germany, Japan, and other advanced industrial democracies. This
cooperation created a ‘‘Western’’ patronage monopoly. The Soviet Union no longer existed,
meaning no great power offered an alternative way of doing international order—along with the
military and security goods necessary to underwrite it (compare Bueno de Mesquita and Smith,
2016). This not only left international liberalism as the sole major option for weaker states, but
meant they could not leverage great-power competition to insulate themselves from pressures to
liberalize. To be sure, this did not mean that no state could successfully resist liberal ordering, or
that the great powers pressured every state to engage in political and economic liberalization.1 But
evidence suggests that the lack of exit options both led Western democracies to impose more
stringent conditions on recipients of their assistance and also made those conditions more effective
(see, e.g. Dunning, 2004)

Contemporary challenges
The root of contemporary challenges to liberal ordering is tied to shifts in relative economic and
military power over the last 20 years. The most visible of these involve the rise of China, with an
adjusted domestic economy now larger than that of the United States and the EU, and the ree-
mergence of Russia among the ranks of the great powers. Ongoing changes in the distribution of
global wealth and power, especially with respect to Chinese economic growth, have created
6 New Perspectives XX(X)

alternative sources of development and military assistance, as well as provided weaker states with
new trading partners (Cooley et al., 2019: 703–707). Not surprisingly, the availability of exit
options from ‘‘Western’’ conditions—formal and informal—and alternative goods providers has
started to reorder aspects of world politics (see Woods, 2008). Studies suggest that it has made
states less likely to support the United States in international organizations (see Flores-Macias and
Kreps, 2013).
Sometimes these changes in patterns of patronage have been dramatic, such as in the Middle
East, where Russian intervention in the Syrian civil war likely saved the incumbent regime and
turned Moscow into an important player in the Middle East (Dannreuther, 2019). Or in the rise of a
whole host of new institutions, cooperative forums, and bilateral arrangements centered on
China—and to a lesser extent Russia. These include the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the
New Development Bank, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) (Corre, 2015; Flores-
Macias and Kreps, 2013; Hameiri and Jones, 2018; Ren, 2016). Indeed, China has made ample use
of such organizations and settings to build influence.
Consider the SCO a diplomatic initiative that dates back to the mid-1990s and one of the most
venerable of these efforts. The SCO is a good example of alternative-order building (Barma et al.,
2009), designed to be ‘‘the embodiment of a new set of values and norms governing the future
development of Central Asia’’ (Ambrosio, 2008: 1322). The SCO grew to provide a number of
international goods, such as counterterrorism coordination, in the absence of pressures for political
liberalism argues the ‘‘adoption of illiberal counternorms appears to be the glue that binds the
Eurasian superpowers’ commitment to the organization’’ and ‘‘the Central Asian states now seem
to have converged with Russia and China rather than aligned with the liberal values of the OSCE’’
(Cooley, 2019: 608).
China is also engaging in extensive foreign lending and investment (often under the auspices of
the ‘‘Belt and Road Initiative’’), but absent many of the rules and conditions associated with
Western assistance. Chinese aid has reduced pressure on recipients for domestic political liber-
alization and give China leverage to secure favorable outcomes in international institutions, such
as support for it in the face of condemnations of its human-rights record (Benabdallah, 2019;
Cavanna, 2019; Hernandez, 2017).2 Indeed, China—and Russia—have not only engaged in efforts
to build alternatives to ‘‘Western’’-dominated mechanisms for international governance and
ordering, but have sought to contest liberal ordering within more traditional sites and organizations
(see, e.g. Piccone, 2018).
Over the last two decades or so, a number of authoritarian and semi-authoritarian states have
developed methods to inoculate themselves against liberalizing NGOs and push back against
liberal transnational civil society. These include outright bans on liberal NGOs, the creation of
government-organized NGOs, funding ‘‘zombie’’ civil-society organizations to compete or sup-
plant more organic counterparts, and a variety of techniques for the disruption and interdiction of
social mobilization that might challenge the regime. In turn, some states—most notably Russia—
have turned some of these techniques outward, using them in election meddling in ‘‘core’’ liberal
powers such as the United Kingdom and the United States (see Kerr, 2018). Moscow has also
sought to support right-wing parties, culturally conservative movements, and other groups that
pose challenges to political liberalism (see Cooley, 2015; Klapsis, 2015; Laruelle, 2015; Walker,
2018; Walker and Ludwig, 2017).
These processes tend to intertwine and support one another; they amount to a significant shift in
international pressure against the liberal ordering that took place in the 1990s and early 2000s. But
not all liberal ordering. Note that much alternative-order building follows the template of liberal
Cooley and Nexon 7

intergovernmentalism—the formation of development banks, multilateral governance, and so

forth—while much order contestation happens within older multilateral institutions. So far, the
underlying challenges to ‘‘Western’’ versions of liberal ordering focus mostly on political liber-
alism and have an ambiguous relationship to economic liberalism.
This isn’t terribly surprising. Those great-powers and regional powers that remained on the
margins of post-Cold War political liberalization have incentives to emphasize liberal inter-
governmentalism, but with a greater emphasis on sovereignty and a reduced emphasis on civil,
human, and political rights. After all, it is political liberalism, not multilateral governance per se, that
threatens their regimes. And to the extent that the loss of a Western monopoly on goods provision—
in conjunction with the existence of alternatives to political liberal ordering—has enhanced the
leverage of weaker states, many of those states have used the opportunity to engage in democratic
backsliding (see, e.g. Beauchamp, 2018; Cianetti et al., 2018; Diamond et al., 2016; Kelemen, 2017).
All of these developments preceded the election of Donald Trump, and none of them depend on
the consolidation of an ‘‘America First’’ foreign policy in the United States. They reflect well-
rehearsed ways that states and non-state actors struggle over, and contest, international order.
Shifts in international power exacerbate these dynamics. They create new and apparently suc-
cessful political models. They also increase the leverage of both rising powers and weaker states
over the contours of international order.
Nonetheless, Trump’s policies may be accelerating these dynamics. By raising doubts about
America’s willingness to provide economic and military goods, he makes alternative providers
more attractive (for this general dynamic, see Tessman and Wolfe, 2011). By reducing liberal
ordering pressure—and leverage—within existing institutions, he makes them more attractive for
states who would like to denudate them of politically liberal values. Indeed, Trumpism itself is part
of the more general stew of contemporary counterorder movements and parties that are generally
on the upswing in the advanced industrial democracies—suggesting that Trump and Trumpism are
also symptoms of the same processes driving changes in liberal ordering.

Authors’ note
A version of this essay was delivered by Daniel Nexon as Keynote Address 2B at the Hamburg
(Insecurity) Sessions, 21 November 2019. This essay is based on a talk given at the Hamburg (Inse-
curity) Sessions, a conference conceived and organized by Benjamin Tallis (who edits New Per-
spectives) for the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg
(IFSH). Specifically, the conference was supported by the project on Arms Control and Emerging
Technologies funded by the German Federal Foreign Office. This essay draws heavily, even when
it is not directly cited, from our new book, Exit from Hegemony: The Unravelling of the American
Global Order.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/
or publication of this article: This essay was supported by a grant from the Norwegian Research
Council under the project ‘Undermining Hegemony’, project no. 240647.
8 New Perspectives XX(X)

Notes
1. Indeed, after September 11 many authoritarian regimes found counterterrorism a useful prop to secure sup-
port from the United States (Jourde, 2007).
2. For an overview of relevant studies and evidence, see Cooley and Nexon (2020: Chs. 4–5).

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Author biographies
Alexander Cooley is the Claire Tow Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia
University and the Director of Columbia’s Harriman Institute for the Study of Russia, Eurasia, and
12 New Perspectives XX(X)

Eastern Europe. Professor Cooley’s research examines how external actors have influenced the
development, governance, and sovereignty of the former Soviet states, with a focus on Central Asia
and the Caucasus. Cooley’s books include Dictators without Borders: Power and Money In Cen-
tral Asia (Yale University Press, 2017), co-authored with John Heathershaw, Ranking the World:
Grading States as a Tool of Global Governance (Cambridge 2015), co-edited with Jack Snyder,
and Great Games, Local Rules: The New Great Power Contest in Central Asia (Oxford University
Press, 2012).

Daniel H Nexon is an associate professor in the Department of Government and the School of For-
eign Service at Georgetown University. From 2009 to 2010, he was a Council on Foreign Relations
International Affairs Fellow in the US Department of Defense. In 2016, he helped coordinate the
unofficial foreign-policy group for the Bernie Sanders campaign, and he remains active in efforts
to forge progressive foreign policy principles. He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early
Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (2009) and co-
author of Exit from Hegemony: the Unravelling of the American Global Order (2020). He founded
and used to blog at The Duck of Minerva. He currently blogs at Lawyers, Guns, and Money.