Power and Strategies of Rule - Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order - page 58

mately enforced through coercive uses of power. Imperial rule is manifest through coercive
domination. At the extreme, this is rule in which the dominant state directly occupies and
commands the subordinate state—and indeed the subordinate state is no longer truly a state
as such. Sovereign authority is effectively in the hands of the dominant state. The occupied or
dominated polity has no independent foreign policy or direct diplomatic relations with other
states. This form of rule is most clearly seen in postwar occupations and colonial-style im-
perialism.
In a liberal hegemonic order, rules are negotiated and compliance is ultimately based on
consent. Liberal hegemonic rule is based on bargained and rule-based relations. Weaker and
secondary states have voice opportunities, and their agreement to operate within the order is
based on the willingness of the dominant state to restrain and commit its power and lead in
the provision of public goods. In its most developed form, a liberal hegemonic order is based
on the rule of law. Both the dominant and subordinate states operate within a multilateral
set of rules that effectively eliminate coercive rule. This is the closest an international order
might come to “constitutional” rule—governance through the rule of law rather than the rule
of power. 1 No state is above the law. Hierarchy may still exist to the extent to which the rules
and institutions provide special rights and exemptions to the leading state. Nonetheless, polit-
ical authority within the order flows from its legal-constitutional foundation rather than from
power capabilities. 2 In this situation, hegemony is manifest essentially as rule-based leader-
ship.
Imperial and hegemonic orders in the real world tend to exist well within these two ex-
tremes. Imperial orders are rarely based entirely on coercive domination, and liberal hege-
monic rule—at least as it is manifest in America's postwar order—is only partially built
around multilateral rules and institutions. Imperial and liberal hegemonic states pursue a mix
of rulership strategies, and the orders they create also display a mixture of hierarchical gov-
ernance arrangements and power relations. We can describe the two most basic strategies of
rule as rule through rules and rule through relationships.
Rule through rules is the dominant governance strategy of liberal hegemony. Power is ex-
ercised through sponsorship of rules and institutions. Rule-based relations are built around
multilateral rules and institutions that set out the terms on which relations among a group
of states are to operate. Thus, there are several aspects to rule-based relations. One is that
it entails the coordination of relations among a group of states, and as such it can be con-
trasted with bilateral, hub-and-spoke, and imperial arrangements. Second, the terms of a
given relationship are defined by agreed-upon rules and principles—and sometimes institu-
tions—so rule-based relations can be contrasted with interaction based on ad hoc bargaining
or straightforward power politics. Third, rule-based relations entail some reduction in policy
autonomy, since the choices and actions of the participating states are—at least to some de-
gree—constrained by the agreed-upon rules and principles. 3