Power and Strategies of Rule - Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order - page 67

Variable Implication

Domination/abandonment potential of the
leading state

Weaker states more willing to make concessions to gain
restraint

Leading state has enhanced institutional bargaining ad-
vantage

Restraint/commitment potential of the lead-
ing state

Weaker states more willing to make concessions
Leading state has enhanced institutional bargaining ad-
vantage

Lock-in importance to leading state Leading state has greater incentive to offer restraint and

commitment

Lock-in potential of weaker states Leading state has greater incentive to offer restraint and

commitment

Seen in this way, the ability of the leading state to credibly restrain and commit its power
is, ironically, a type of power. 29 It wants to lock other states into specific types of institutional
commitments. It could use its power to coerce them, but to do so is costly and eliminates any
chance of building a legitimate order. If the leading state can bind itself and institutionalize
the exercise of power, at least to some credible extent, offering to do so becomes a bargain-
ing chip it can play as a way to obtain the institutional cooperation of other states. 30 But it
is only a bargaining chip when the power disparities make limits and restraints desirable to
other states and when the leading state can in fact establish such limits and constraints. It is
variations in these diverse enabling circumstances that explain why the United States some-
times seeks to build multilateral institutions and bind itself to other states and sometimes it
does not.
These considerations are helpful in understanding America's embrace of multilateral in-
stitution building after World War II. The United States emerged as the preeminent global
power after the war. It cared greatly about the fates of Western Europe and East Asia, which
both hung in the economic and geopolitical balance. It was willing to tie itself to these regions
through various sorts of institutional agreements—to give up policy autonomy—so as to gain
some leverage on their policy orientation and trajectory of political development. At the same
time, countries in these regions worried about American domination and abandonment, and
so they too were willing to enter into institutional agreements that entailed long-term com-