Power and Strategies of Rule - Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order - page 69

that could entrap the United States in an unwanted larger war.” 36 Also contributing to the
difference in the level and form of institutionalization in the two regions was the charac-
ter of the political regimes. While postwar Western Europe was organized around advanced
democracies, East Asia was a heterogeneous mix of regime types. Consequently, it was easier
for the United States to engage in complex and far-reaching multilateral agreements with its
Western partners. As Stewart Patrick argues, the “existence of democracy in these [Western
European] states reinforced the U.S. predilection for a consensual style of hegemony and the
egalitarianism of postwar multilateral institutions.” 37
Hegemonic Uses of Rules and Institutions
Why would dominant states want to build international order around multilateral rules and
institutions? When a state is sufficiently powerful to shape the organization of international
relations, rules and institutions can serve quite useful purposes, becoming tools for managing
international hierarchy. In the broadest sense, rules and institutions provide the leading state
with instruments of political control. They are useful in shaping and entrenching a favorable
international environment. Rules and institutions are both tools of hegemonic power and con-
straints on the exercise of that power. But, importantly, it is precisely because of the con-
straining impacts of rules and institutions—on both the leading state and others—that they
are so useful as instruments of political control. Again, however, costs, benefits, and trade-
offs infuse the calculations of the hegemonic state.
Dominant states should find rules and institutions useful in several ways. First, the leading
state has an incentive to use institutions to reduce uncertainty and facilitate cooperation and
market exchange. If the leading state has the most advanced productive economy, it has very
strong incentives to create a stable open order—and rules and institutions can be useful for
managing economic openness. Likewise, as global economic independence grows, so do in-
centives for the multilateral coordination of policies. The more economically interconnected
states become, the more dependent they are on the actions of other states for the realization
of objectives. “As interdependence rises,” Robert Keohane argues, “the opportunity costs of
not co-ordinating policy increase compared with the costs of sacrificing autonomy as a con-
sequence of making binding agreements.” 38 Thus, a hegemonic state has a double functional
incentive for rules and institutions. It wants them as a tool to create economic openness, and
it needs them as a tool to managing growing economic interdependence. 39
International rules and institutions provide a contractual environment within which states
can more easily pursue joint gains. As the density of interactions between states increases, so
too will the demand for rules and institutions that facilitate these interactions and cope with
their consequences. In this sense, multilateralism is self-reinforcing. A well-functioning con-