Unipolarity and Its Consequences - Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order - page 98

Rule through relationships involves negotiating bilateral agreements and building patron-
client pacts. The attraction of these bilateral relationships is that the leading state can assert
more direct control without incurring the costs associated with making binding rule-based
agreements. As noted in chapter 3 , this is the logic that helps explain America's different
strategies of rule in Europe and East Asia in the postwar era. The United States tended to pur-
sue multilateral strategies with Europe and bilateral strategies with East Asia. With Europe,
the United States had a full agenda: it wanted a great deal of ongoing cooperation with its
Atlantic partners and was willing to make multilateral institutional commitments. With East
Asia, the United States wanted less and dominated these states more, and so it could gain the
political control it wanted through bilateral pacts without losing its freedom of action.
In the shift from Cold War bipolarity to unipolarity, the attraction of this sort of bilateral
strategy of rule would appear to grow. With greater power disparities between itself and vari-
ous other states, the United States will want less from them and therefore will be less inclined
to entangle itself in multilateral rule-based arrangements. The end of the Cold War itself also
contributes to the strength of the rule-through-relationships logic, at least as it relates to se-
curity. Without a common security threat—such as that posed by the Soviet Union—the se-
curity needs of states are more differentiated. Some will seek American security protection
and others will not. The United States also has more differential sorts of security relations
with these states. 30 These considerations appear to make bilateral relations—and rule through
relationships—more attractive to the unipolar state. But there are also crosscutting incentives
that favor multilateral arrangements. I will return to them later in the chapter.
Provision of Public Goods
A second impact of unipolarity is on the provision of public goods. During the era of Cold
War bipolarity, the United States found itself as a provider of public goods in the areas of
security provision, maintenance of economic openness and stability, and support for the rules
and institutions that formed the order. This willingness of the leading state to act in behalf
of the system as a whole—to provide system services to participants within the order—is a
key characteristic of liberal hegemony. The question is whether and in what ways the shift to
unipolarity alters the willingness or ability of the leading state to provide these goods. 31
Public or collective goods may be consumed by multiple actors without the actors neces-
sarily having to pay the full costs of producing them. The classic theoretical insight is that if
enough actors follow their rational self-interest and choose to free ride on the efforts of oth-
ers, public goods will be under-produced or not produced at all. 32 To overcome the free-rider
problem requires cooperation among self-interested actors. 33 The literature on hegemonic
stability theory hypothesizes that cooperation in international relations requires the leader-
ship of the dominant state. 34 Its preponderance of economic and military resources means the