Power and Strategies of Rule - Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order - page 74

ized agreements are a tool that the leading state can use to gain greater control over its inter-
national environment. The leading state has huge incentives to encourage the establishment
of an international order built around widely agreed-upon rules and institutions. But such an
order is built on a variety of specific rules and institutional agreements—and in each case,
the leading state will seek to gain as much institutional control with as little loss of its own
policy autonomy as possible.
Second, the leading state will also attempt to make institutional commitments that grant
it disproportionate influence or decision-making power. The leading state will look for op-
portunities to introduce differential rules and obligations into agreements. As the dominant
state, it will want—ideally, at least—agreements that enable it to retain a privileged position
of authority in the institution and greater discretion in its compliance with rules. In effect, it
will want the overall hierarchy of power to be reflected in differential rights and obligations
within the rule-based order. The leading state will want its unique role and responsibility in
upholding the rules and institutions of the international order to translate into special rights
and authority.
These differential rights and authority are a basic characteristic of all the major postwar
multilateral institutions championed by the United States. The IMF and World Bank give the
United States and the other leading shareholder states weighted voting rights in their opera-
tion and governance. America's commitment to NATO carries with it the power of supreme
command over the combined alliance forces—and within the organization, the United States
is “first among equals.” The U.N. Security Council also gives the United States and the other
postwar great powers rights of membership and veto. In these various ways, the multilateral
institutions specify the rights and circumscribe the obligations of the hegemon—thereby en-
suring that the rules and institutions reflect as much as constrain hegemonic power. 50
Third, regardless of any differential rights and obligations, the leading state will look for
ways to limit the strength of its commitments to rules and institutions. These different types
or degrees of commitment run along a continuum from strong to weak in terms of their leg-
ally binding character. Strong commitments are manifest when the leading state agrees to
adhere to specific and explicit substantive rules or policy obligations. Weaker commitments
take the form of less specific rules or policies—in which monitoring, compliance, and en-
forcement is less certain. 51 In particular, when the leading state is in fact making commit-
ments to rules and institution, it will seek “loose multilateralism,” that is, rules and institu-
tions that provide safeguards, veto rights, and opt-out clauses. How loose would, again, hinge
on specific calculations that the leading state would make about its gains from binding other
states to rules and agreements and the costs of lost autonomy that it would incur along the
way.
Fourth, the leading state can also offer “process commitments” rather than, or in addition
to, substantive rule-based commitments. It can agree to formal processes of multilateral con-