Unipolarity and Its Consequences - Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order - page 97

As I argued in chapter 3 , the leading state makes institutional commitments—and in doing
so, restricts its policy autonomy—to gain agreements from other states that shape and con-
strain their policies. The leading state wants to shape and constrain the policies of other states
in its efforts to organize a predictable and congenial environment in which it can pursue its
interests. It makes commitments to restrict its own policy autonomy so as to gain political
control over other states and the wider international system. When power disparities shift in
favor of the leading state, it has opportunities to adjust its commitments and strategies to get
political control at, in effect, a cheaper price. This should be reflected in the renegotiation of
specific institutional bargains and in its choice of governance strategies.
The leading state could use its increased power advantages to make a variety of institu-
tional adjustments that give it the level of international political control it seeks with the least
amount of lost autonomy. Building on the discussion in chapter 3 , there are several differ-
ent ways that the leading state can do this. One involves introducing greater differential rules
and obligations into agreements. Veto rights, voting shares, and other decision-making rules
can be adjusted to give greater rights and authority to the leading state—thereby reducing the
constraints that rules and institutions have on its power and policy. A related step involves re-
ducing the strength of the rules and institutions themselves by making the institutional agree-
ments less binding, as manifest in weaker rules concerning monitoring, compliance, and en-
forcement. Another step is to introduce less formal forms of institutional commitments. The
leading state can offer process commitments that involve giving weaker and secondary states
voice opportunities rather than formal and substantive rule-based commitments. Finally, the
leading state can use its heightened power position to shift toward the more unilateral pro-
vision of rules. It attempts to externalize its domestic rules into the international system. In
doing so, the leading state is using its power position—manifest in, for example, the cent-
rality and size of its domestic market—to force other countries to adjust to its standards and
practices. In each of these ways, the rise of unipolarity does not lead to the abrogation of
rule-based order but to an adjustment in its terms and conditions. Rules and institutions are
renegotiated—in one way or another—to reflect changes in the hierarchy of power.
In addition to renegotiating institutional bargains, the leading state might also make
changes in its more basic strategies of rule, which I have described as rule through rules
and rule through relationships. During the period of Cold War bipolarity, the United States
built order around both these strategies. Each has its attractions as a mechanism to assert
political control. Rule through rules involves the negotiation of multilateral agreements that,
if successful, can provide a wide-open space of predictable and efficient cooperative rela-
tions—and they can help foster a shared sense of legitimacy in the overall international order.
The cost to the leading state—depending on how strong and undifferentiated the rules in fact
are—is in lost autonomy and the ability to directly manipulate specific states.