Power and Strategies of Rule - Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order - page 57

Fourth, I explore the incentives and trade-offs relating to various tools of hegemonic rule.
The incentives that powerful states have to build and operate within a rule-based order are
not absolute. Such states also have opportunities to shape their environment without making
international or rule-based commitments. They can avoid and work around rules and insti-
tutions. They can act unilaterally outside of institutionalized relationships or strike bargains
directly with individual states. Critical to a hegemonic state's choice between these alternat-
ives is the value it attaches to the efficiency and legitimacy of its “rule” over the international
order—and its assessment of its future power position.
Overall, this perspective allows us to appreciate the logic of variations in the type of order
that a leading state seeks to build. The United States has used a variety of strategies of rule
during the postwar era. Relations with Western Europe were based in important ways on rule-
based, multilateral agreements, while in East Asia the United States relied primarily on bilat-
eral, clientelistic relationships. In Latin America and the Middle East, the United States was
more willing to fall back on traditional imperial tools of control. The logic of when a leading
state resorts to one type or another of these strategies is tied to its incentives to exchange re-
ductions in its own policy autonomy for institutional forms of cooperation. The United States
wanted a great deal from Europe in the postwar decades, and it was willing to tie itself to
these states through a variety of multilateral economic and security agreements. In East Asia,
the United States wanted less from its partners and was less willing to restrict its own policy
independence. The character of hierarchical order follows from how states—leading and sec-
ondary—respond to these incentives and tradeoffs associated with rule through rules and rule
through relationships.
Order Building and Strategies of Rule
Only rarely are states in a position to shape the basic terms of international order. Great
powers typically find themselves operating within an established international order. But on
occasion, moments arrive when a leading state finds itself with sufficient power and oppor-
tunity to decisively shape the terms of global order. When such moments arrive, these leading
states face choices about how to organize the rules and institutions of the system. Either alone
or with other states, either through imposition or negotiation—such states are in a position to
establish the governing arrangements of the international system. In doing so, they engage in
international order building. But what sorts of order might these states seek to build?
In chapter 2 , we distinguished between two ideal types of hierarchical order—imperial
and liberal hegemonic. These types of order differ in terms of the ways that superordinate
power is exercised and authority is established. Each ideal-typical order is organized around
a mode of rule or governance. In imperial order, rules are imposed and compliance is ulti-