Crisis of the Old Order - Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order - page 15

But is the American political formation—in the postwar decades or more recently—really
an empire? The term “empire” refers to the political control by a dominant state of the do-
mestic and foreign policies of weaker peoples or polities. The European colonial empires of
the late nineteenth century were the most direct, formal kind. The Soviet “sphere of influen-
ce” in Eastern Europe entailed an equally coercive but less direct form of control. The British
Empire included both direct colonial rule and informal empire. If empire is defined loosely,
as a hierarchical system of political relationships in which the most powerful state exercises
decisive influence, then the American-led order indeed qualifies.
What the American postwar political formation shares with empires is that it is an order
organized, at least loosely, around hierarchical relations of domination and subordination.
But the American postwar order is multifaceted. The most salient aspect of American dom-
ination in the postwar era is its mixed character. The United States built hierarchical rela-
tions but also mutually agreed-upon rules and institutions. There are both command-based
and consent-based logics embedded in the postwar American-led order. The more general
point is that hierarchical systems of domination and subordination can vary widely in their
logic and character. Hierarchical political orders can have imperial characteristics, or they
can have liberal characteristics—or they can be a mix. 31 Thus, it is useful to think of hier-
archical political orders as existing on a continuum between imperial and liberal hegemonic
ideal types. 32
Empires are hierarchical political systems in which the dominant state exercises direct
or indirect sovereign control over the decisions of subordinate states. “Empire,” as Napole-
on's foreign minister, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, said, is “the art of putting men in their
place.” Political control is extensive. The imperial state asserts control over both the internal
and external policies of subordinate states—or at least it maintains the right to do so. At the
same time, the imperial state imposes the rules of hierarchical order but is itself not bound by
those rules. In an empire, the dominating state has the final say over the terms of the relation-
ship—its control may be disguised and obscured, but it has ultimate and sovereign control
over the subordinate units within the order. Historically, imperial systems have been mani-
fest in a wide variety of ways, ranging from direct colonial rule to looser types of informal
empire. 33 In contrast, liberal hegemony is hierarchical order built around political bargains,
diffuse reciprocity, provision of public goods, and mutually agreeable institutions and work-
ing relationships. The liberal hegemonic state asserts more limited control over subordinate
states, primarily directed at shaping the terms of their external policies. The liberal hegemon-
ic state dominates the order by establishing and maintaining its rules and institutions—but in
doing so, it operates to a greater or lesser extent within those rules and institutions. The liber-
al hegemonic state establishes its rule within the order by shaping the milieu in which other
states operate.