Power and Strategies of Rule - Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order - page 70

tractual environment facilitates the promulgation of additional multilateral rules and institu-
tions.
This argument helps explain why a powerful state might support multilateral agreements,
particularly in trade and other economic policy areas. To return to the cost-benefit logic of
rules and institutions discussed earlier, the leading state has a major interest in inducing smal-
ler states to open their economies and participate in an integrated world economy. As the
world's leading economy, it has an interest in establishing not just an open system but also
a predictable one—that is to say, it will want rule-based economic order. What the dominant
state wants from other states grows along with its economic size and degree of interdepend-
ence. But to get weaker states to commit themselves to an open and increasingly elaborate
rule-based regime, it must establish its own reliability. It must be willing to commit itself
credibly to the same rules and institutions. It will be necessary for the dominant state to re-
duce its policy autonomy—and do so in a way that other states find credible.
Second, the hegemonic state has a more general incentive to use rules and institutions
to preserve its power and create a stable and legitimate international order. This logic of
institutional restraint and commitment is particularly evident at major historical turning
points—such as 1919, 1945, and after the Cold War—when the United States has faced
choices about how to use power and organize interstate relations. The support for rules and
institutions is a way to signal restraint and commitment to other states, thereby encouraging
the acquiescence and cooperation of weaker states. By binding itself to other states within a
system of rules and institutions, the leading state makes its power more acceptable to other
states, creating incentives for support rather than opposition. 40
This theoretical perspective begins by looking at the choices that dominant states face
when they are in a position to shape the fundamental character of the international order. 41 A
state that wins a war or through some other turn of events finds itself in a dominant global po-
sition faces a choice: it can use its power to bargain and coerce other states in struggles over
the distribution of gains or, knowing its power position will someday decline and that there
are costs to enforcing its way within the order, it can move toward a more rule-based, in-
stitutionalized order in exchange for the acquiescence and compliant participation of weaker
states. In seeking a more rule-based order, the leading state is agreeing to engage in strategic
restraint. It is acknowledging that there will be limits on the way in which it can exercise its
power. Such an order, in effect, has “constitutional” characteristics. Limits are set on what a
state within the order can do with its power advantages. Just as in constitutional polities, the
implications of winning in politics are reduced. Weaker states realize that the implications of
their inferior position are limited and perhaps temporary. To operate within the order despite
their disadvantages is not to risk everything, nor will it give the dominant state a permanent
advantage. Both the powerful and weak states agree to operate within the same order despite
radical asymmetries in the distribution of power.