Power and the Varieties of Order - Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order - page 36

in how the great powers have operated within a multipolar balance-of-power system. The
source of order remained rooted in a decentralized states system in which major states com-
pete with and balance each other. But the practices and principles of competition and balance
have evolved to incorporate strategic notions of restraint and accommodation.
Taken together, the realist theory of anarchy and the balance of power provides a major
statement of the character and functioning of international order. It draws attention to the
evolution of great-power relations within the Westphalian system and the long-term shifts
in how major states have used and adapted the balance-of-power mechanism in the building
and rebuilding of international order. As I will argue later, these innovations in great-power
restraint and accommodation have been essential breakthroughs in the twentieth-century con-
struction of liberal international order.
Nonetheless, there are also severe limits on the ability of the anarchy/ balance problematic
to explain American-led liberal international order. As noted earlier, the relations among
states in this order are not imbued with the balancing and security competition that neorealist
theory expects. Complex and institutionalized forms of cooperation bind the liberal demo-
cracies together. The stability of this American-led order is all the more striking in the dec-
ades after the end of the bipolar Cold War struggle. In these decades, the order has remained
relatively coherent and expanded outward to integrate states from beyond its Western core.
Despite the troubles that currently beset this American-led order, states have not responded
to unipolarity by seeking to balance against the United States. The balancing dynamic is not
as straightforward or automatic as is implied in neorealist theory. The balance of power is
actually not as pervasive across historical eras and regional systems as the neorealist logic
suggests. 24 Perhaps most importantly, the contemporary American-led international order is
organized as a loosely hierarchical system. To understand the existing order, we need to ask
questions about how great powers become poles and organize hierarchical relations with sec-
ondary and weaker states.
Hierarchy and Command
International order can also be organized around the domination of a powerful state. This is
order based on command. In these instances, a state rises up and uses its leading position to
create and enforce order. International order takes the shape of a hierarchy. Superordinate
and subordinate relations are established between the leading state and weaker and secondary
political entities that are arrayed around it. Command-based systems have varied widely in
terms of the degree to which order is maintained through direct coercion or infused with more
bargained and agreed-upon ordering arrangements.