Power and the Varieties of Order - Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order - page 46

fect, a framework of transactions and cooperation that all states can draw upon in building
relationships and pursuing their interests across the international order. At the same time, the
coercive character of the dominant state is reduced.
Second, in a hegemonic order, the lead state provides some array of public goods, offered
in exchange for the cooperation of other states. These sorts of public goods include the pro-
vision of security and the support for an open trade regime. Because of its dominant position
in the system, the hegemonic state has incentives to organize the international environment
within which states operate. This is the observation made in the literature on hegemonic sta-
bility: if a state is sufficiently large, it could very well identify its own individual interests
with the interests of the larger world economic and security system. Even if it is unable to
“tax” other states, the hegemonic state will still be better off over the long term by provid-
ing the public goods. The hegemonic order may also be built around various “private” deals
between the hegemon and weaker and secondary states. But to the extent that the leading state
also supports and upholds the general stability and openness of the order, the order becomes
less imperial in character.
Third, the hegemonic order provides channels and networks for reciprocal communication
and influence. These liberal “voice opportunities” are manifest as informal access to the poli-
cymaking process of the hegemonic state and the intergovernmental institutions that make up
the international system. These possibilities for reciprocal interaction and influence further
mute the coercive features of hierarchical order. The opportunities for voice are provided in
the multiple and many-layered institutional channels that connect states within the hegemonic
order. The alliances offer one mechanism for communication and the multilateral institutions
provide another. What these architectural features of the order do is provide a multifaceted
arena for ongoing “pulling and hauling” between leading and secondary states. Even if form-
al decision making is not shared, the institutional connections between states provide access
points for diffuse forms of collective decision making. 55
Taken together, these organizational features of liberal hegemony are distinct from those
of empire. 56 It is not simply that the rules and institutions within a liberal hegemonic order
are more elaborated and consensual. It is also that the leading state itself operates within
them. In an imperial order, the core state operates above the law—outside the hierarchical
structures that shape and constrain weaker and peripheral units. As Steve Rosen notes: “The
organizing principle of empire . . . rests on the existence of an overarching power that creates
and enforces the principles of hierarchy, but is not itself bound by such rules.” 57 What ulti-
mately gives a hegemonic order its liberal character is the fact that all parties are more or less
situated inside a system of rules and institutions.
Imperial and liberal hegemonic orders exhibit differences in the character of authority and
rule. In an empire, the rule of the imperial center is established and maintained through co-
ercion, at least in the last instance. Rule is enforced—indirectly where possible and directly