The Liberal International Ordering of crisis

Abstract

This article analyses and critically reflects on how the concept of ‘crisis’ has tended to feature within prominent debates on ‘Crisis of the Liberal International Order’. Within such scholarship, the article argues, the concept of crisis most often functions as a technology of crisis management in itself: rather than disrupting narratives and assumptions of liberal progress and order, invocations of crisis within Liberal International Order scholarship tend to recapitulate those same narratives and assumptions. To make this case, the article undertakes an immanent critique of how crisis has been understood within debates on the Liberal International Order, drawing on wider critical and social theoretic reflections on ‘crisis talk’ as the basis for a more critical engagement. Doing so, it seeks to highlight the ways in which Crisis of the Liberal International Order debates constitute a particular way of understanding the relationship between crisis, liberalism and modernity.

The EU and the future reform of global governance: risks and scenarios after COVID-19

“…Since the late 2000s, there has been a widespread perception of a shift from a unipolar world -dominated by the United States-towards a multipolar world, in which power and influence are more horizontally distributed. On the one hand, this shift is connected to the crisis of the liberal international order, which was affected by the 2008/2009 financial crisis that led to the relative decline of U.S. and EU economic power and influence in global affairs (Ikenberry 2020;Peoples 2022). This crisis has also been closely associated with a crisis of leadership, in which the United States and Europe cannot lead or refrain from leading, and a crisis of multilateralism and cooperation, along with the worldwide erosion of democratic institutions and values (Flockhart 2020).…”

The Russian War Against Ukraine and Its Implications for the Future of Liberal Interventionism

“…In the past years, the "crisis" discourse about the end of the LIO in IR has been widespread (Peoples, 2022).…”

Los órdenes internacionales de las potencias modernitarias y los Estados liberales

“…estas reglas, están siendo renegociados, incluso por la fuerza. Más aún, la palabra crisis, ampliamente utilizada en la literatura de relaciones internacionales, ha sido instrumentalizada desde Occidente para buscar soluciones dentro del mismo orden internacional liberal (Peoples, 2022).…”