Dilemmas and Pathways of Liberal International Order - Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order - page 210

and legitimate authority to intervene in weak and troubled states. 23 It is going to need mon-
itoring, surveillance, and inspection capacities to ensure that increasingly lethal technologies
of violence do not get into the hands of dangerous groups. These developments suggest that
the liberal international order will find itself more and more concerned with the internal gov-
ernance of states. Unless globalization and the advancement and diffusion of technology are
reversed, it is almost inevitable that the erosion of Westphalian sovereignty will continue.
Nonetheless, finding consensus on the norms of intervention in a post-Westphalian world is
deeply problematic—yet short of establishing such legitimate authority, the international or-
der will continue to be troubled and contested. 24
A third issue relates to liberal democracy and the international rule of law. Here the ques-
tion is, how do you build up authority and capacity at the international level—in international
bodies and agreements—without jeopardizing popular rule and accountability built into liber-
al democratic states? Can the authority and capacity of the international community to act be
strengthened without sacrificing constitutional democracy at home? As we noted above, this
is an unresolved problem in the liberal international project. Liberals anticipate a growing
role for the international community in the functioning of the global system. The postwar era
itself has seen a radical increase in the norms and cooperative efforts launched on behalf of
the international community. The human rights revolution and the rise of international norms
of deviance carry with them expectations that the outside world will act when governments
fail to act properly. 25
Out of these tensions and dilemmas, the next phase of liberal international order will be
shaped. There are at least three pathways away from the American-led liberal hegemonic or-
der. Each pathway involves a different mix in the way sovereignty, rules, institutions, and
authority are arrayed.
Post-Hegemonic Liberal International Order
The first possibility is a post-hegemonic liberal international order. This would be a far-
reaching reworking of the American postwar system. This would be an order in which the
United States exercised less command and control of the rules and institutions. America's
special rights and privileges would contract as other states gained more weight and authority
at the high table of global governance. The “private” governance that the United States
provided through NATO and its dominance of multilateral institutions would give way to
more “public” rules and institutions of governance. At the same time, the intrusiveness and
reach of liberal order would also continue to expand, placing demands on governance insti-
tutions to forge consensual and legitimate forms of collective action.
In this post-American liberal order, authority would move toward universal institu-
tions—or at least to international bodies that included wider global membership. These in-