The Rise of the American System - Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order - page 145

a political system—with its transparency, diffusion of power, and multiple points of access
to policy making—helped create a shared decision-making system that opens up the process.
An active press and competitive party system also provides a service to outside states by gen-
erating information about American policy and determining the seriousness of its purpose.
Second, this open and decentralized political process also reduced the worries about
American power by creating voice opportunities—opportunities to allies and partners to gain
political access and, with it, the potential to speak to and influence the way Washington's
power is exercised. 99 Foreign governments do not have elected officials in Washington but
they do have representatives. By providing other states opportunities to play in the policy-
making process in Washington, the United States draws them into active, ongoing partner-
ships that serve its long-term strategic interests.
The third element that facilitated the political bargain was the array of international institu-
tions. These institutions, as noted earlier, provide mechanisms for the United States to estab-
lish restraint and commitment, bind states together, and provide channels of access and com-
munication. The multilateral institutions and security pacts are not simply functional mech-
anisms that generate collective action. They are also elements of political architecture that for
states within the order to do business with each other. The political, economic, and security
institutions that link the hegemonic order support networks of government officials and oth-
er elites, creating channels and mechanisms for ongoing processes of voice and consensual
decision making. In effect, the political architecture gave the postwar order its distinctive lib-
eral hegemonic character—networks and political relationships made American power more
far-reaching and durable but also more predicable and malleable. 100 In championing these
postwar institutions and in agreeing to operate within them, the United States was, in effect,
agreeing to open itself up to an ongoing political process with other democratic states.
America's postwar system of military alliances—as mechanisms of security bind-
ing—provided important sites of this ongoing political process. The alliances, along with the
network of bases and forward military deployments, provided mechanisms for communica-
tion and the management of political relations. “Following World War II,” Kent Calder ar-
gues, “bases took on new political-economic functions, stabilizing national ties across both
the Atlantic and the Pacific in political-military alliance relations.” 101 The sprawling alliance
system provided institutional architecture for political consultation and bargaining.
The basic bargain that informed the NATO alliance was emblematic of the more general
and implicit political bargain within the American hegemonic order. The multilateral insti-
tutions that formed the order bound the democratic states together and provided voice and
access to hegemonic decision making. 102 Mastanduno notes: “Multilateral decision making
procedures may be less efficient, and powerful states are often tempted to act unilaterally. But
multilateral procedures help to reassure other states that they are not simply being coerced or
directed to follow the dictates of the dominant state.” 103 The political bargain gave the Un-