Power and the Varieties of Order - Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order - page 43

Empire and Liberal Hegemony
It is the mixed character of American dominance that is most striking. The United States has
built international order in the postwar era incorporating all three logics. Under conditions
of Cold War bipolarity, it led a balancing coalition of states against the Soviet Union. The
American-centered hierarchical order that emerged over these decades manifested character-
istics of command and consent. In some realms, American domination was crudely imperial;
in others, it was built around agreed-upon rules and institutions. We can look more closely
at these two ideal types of international order—empire and liberal hegemony. Each offers
a distinct logic of hierarchy. In an imperial order, the dominant state operates unilaterally
and above the rules and institutions. In a liberal hegemonic order, the lead state establishes
agreed-upon rules and institutions and operates—more or less—within them. The lead state
negotiates rather than imposes order. In an imperial order, the lead state rules through com-
mand and, ultimately, coercion. In a liberal hegemonic order, the lead state rules by shaping
the milieu in which states operate. The character of domination and authority varies accord-
ingly. 45
Empire has many different meanings and manifestations, but in essence, it is a hierarchical
order in which a powerful state engages in organized rule over several dispersed weaker
and secondary polities. 46 There are several features to this type of order. First, it is indeed
hierarchical—manifest as a sort of hub-and-spoke organization where control is exercised
from the core. Hence, Alexander Motyl depicts empire as a “hublike structure—a rimless
wheel—within which a core elite and state dominate peripheral elites and societies by serving
as intermediaries for their significant interactions.” 47 The peripheral polities are all connec-
ted to the core but disconnected from each other. All roads lead to and from Rome.
Second, empire entails the direct or indirect control by the dominant state over the external
policies and orientations of the weaker and secondary policies. As Michael Doyle suggests,
“empire . . . is a relationship, formal or informal, in which one state controls the effective
political sovereignty of another political society.” 48 In such an order, de facto (and some-
times de jure) sovereignty resides in the hands of the imperial state. Whether it is established
through authoritative law or coercion, the core state exercises control—and has the final sov-
ereign authority—in the functioning of the imperial order. Whether rule by the imperial state
is direct or indirect, the secondary or peripheral states do not engage in autonomous foreign
relations.
Third, hierarchy is established and control exercised through various sorts of center-peri-
phery elite networks and relationships. As Charles Maier argues, “[e]mpire is a form of polit-
ical organization in which the social elements that rule in the dominant state—the 'mother
country' or the 'metropole'—create a network of allied elites in regions abroad who accept
subordination in international affairs in return for security of their position in their own ad-