Power and Strategies of Rule - Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order - page 71

When the leading state does in fact circumscribe its behavior, it is giving up some oppor-
tunities to use its power to gain immediate returns on its power—it settles for fewer gains
at the initial moment of rule creation by operating within institutional rules and obligations
than it could otherwise achieve with its brute power. It does this with an eye toward longer-
term gains that are specified above. But weaker states may have reason to gain more sooner
rather than later. The discount rate for future gains is potentially different for the leading and
lesser states, and this makes an institutional bargain potentially more mutually desirable. So
the leading state is faced with a choice: how much institutional limitation on its own policy
autonomy and exercise power is worth how much policy lock-in of weaker states?
But why would weaker states agree to be roped in? After all, they might calculate that
it is better to not lock themselves into an institutional agreement at T 1 and wait until T 2 or
T 3 , when the power asymmetries do not favor the leading state as much. Weaker states have
two potential incentives to buy into the leading state's institutional agreement. First, if the
institutional agreement also puts limits and restraints on the behavior of the leading state, this
would be welcome. In a non-institutionalized relationship, these lesser states are subject to
the unrestrained and unpredictable domination of the leading state. If they believe that cred-
ible limits could be placed on the arbitrary and indiscriminate actions of the leading state, this
might be enough of an attraction to justify an institutional agreement at T 1 .
Rules and institutions become mechanisms by which states can reach a bargain over the
character of international order. The dominant state uses institutions to restrain and commit
its power, establishing an order where weaker states will participate willingly—rather than
resist or balance against the leading power. It accepts some restrictions on how it can use its
power. The rules and institutions that are created serve as an investment in the longer-run pre-
servation of its power advantages. Weaker states agree to the order's rules and institutions,
and in return they are assured that the worst excesses of the leading state—manifesting as ar-
bitrary and indiscriminate abuses of state power—will be avoided, and they gain institutional
opportunities to work and help influence the leading state.
Thus, there are three aspects to the logic of the hegemonic use of rules and institutions.
One aspect has to do with reducing the costs of enforcement of hegemonic rule. If a hegemon
can get other states to buy into a set of rules and institutions, it does not need to spend its
resources constantly to coerce other states into following them. The hegemonic state is by
definition powerful, so it can engage in power struggles with subordinate states, most of
which it is likely to win. It can dominate without the use of rules and institutions. In getting
other states to operate within a system of rules and institutions, however, the hegemon re-
duces the time and energy it must expend to enforce order and get other states to do what it
wants. By locking subordinate states into a rule-based order, it reduces its costs of enforce-
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