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This book is the result of a close collaboration between researchers from the three leading Leibniz institutes doing research on world politics: the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA), the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF), and the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. The research project started on the basis of a grant from the Leibniz Association awarded in 2012 (SAW-2012-WZB-3). Our deep thanks go to the Leibniz Association, and to the leadership of the three institutes who provided crucial institutional support. They supported the proposal and the project from day one. This project and the studies in this collection also benefited from the support provided by other people at these institutes. In particular, we wish to thank Editha von Colberg, Barçın Uluışık, Wolfgang Hein, and Reinhild Wagner who contributed in important ways to this project’s realization. We also thank Felix Große-Kreul, Damla Keşkekci, Alexander Maier, Aviv Melamud, Pavel Šatra, and Rhianna Vonk for excellent research assistance.
Equally importantly, many colleagues commented on earlier versions of the framework of this collection as well as the individual chapters. We want to thank especially Paulo Estevez, Monica Hirst, Andrew Hurrell, Miles Kahler, Dries Lesage, Siddharth Mallavarapu, Paul Mertenskötter, Amrita Narlikar, Georg Nolte, and Thomas Streinz. We learned a lot from their comments and criticisms.
Without this enormous support this book would have not been possible. What looks at first sight like an edited volume is actually a collaborative effort on a theme and an approach that could be made operational only by a team as wonderful as this one. We want to express our deep gratitude.
Matthew D. Stephen and Michael ZürnPascal Abb, Senior Researcher, Austrian Study Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution
Martin Binder, Associate Professor in International Relations, University of Reading
Melanie Coni-Zimmer, Senior Research Fellow, Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF)
Sophie Eisentraut, Senior Policy Advisor, Munich Security Conference
Anne Flohr, Project Coordinator, TMG Research gGmbH
Kristina Hahn, formerly Research Fellow, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies Hamburg
Anja Jetschke, Professor of International Relations, Institute of Political Science, University of Goettingen
Malte Lellmann, formerly Research Assistant, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Harald Müller, Associate Fellow, Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF)
Autumn Lockwood Payton, Lecturer, University of Dayton
Dirk Peters, Senior Research Fellow, Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF)
Miriam Prys-Hansen, Lead Research Fellow, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies Hamburg
Milan Röseler, formerly Research Assistant, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Matthew D. Stephen, Senior Research Fellow, Global Governance, WZB Berlin Social Science Center
Alexandros Tokhi, Senior Research Fellow, Global Governance, WZB Berlin Social Science Center
Klaus Dieter Wolf, Associate Fellow, Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF)
Michael Zürn, Director, Global Governance, WZB Berlin Social Science Center
World order1 appears to be increasingly contested. Rising powers such as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, Indian China, and South Africa) have changed the international distribution of power and are posing new demands on existing international institutions. Having entered strong growth paths a few decades ago, China and India have emerged as the second and third largest economies in the world, while countries like Brazil and Russia are also striving for the status of major powers.2 A changing distribution of international power has traditionally been associated with fundamental contests over international hierarchies and leadership in the international system. But compared to the past, international politics today has become highly institutionalized. As a result, demands for change are not only directed towards other states, as in earlier instances of power transitions in international orders, but are increasingly directed towards international institutions in a global order.
A multilayered system of overlapping and differentiated institutions and actors has emerged that goes beyond the traditional world of governments and interstate diplomacy. ‘Global governance’ is often used as a concept to incorporate these new features of international politics into the persistence of the traditional state system. While contested in prescriptive terms,3 as a term of description global governance implies a departure from the idea of an ‘international system’ as the unmediated interaction of self-interested states in anarchy (Biersteker and Hall 2002; Hurrell 2005). International and transnational organizations are by now premier venues by which decisions are made and agreements enforced. Public authority is thus exercised by different actors on the international and transnational levels, and not only by nation states (Hurd 2007; Lake 2010). It is not least these complex authority relationships which have become contested in the contemporary world order (Zürn 2018).
It is also not only states who contest the contemporary world order. International politics is no longer the exclusive preserve of grand statesmen and intergovermental
agreements. Transnationally organized non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have emerged as important players in many issue areas, and are actively engaged in shaping the activities of international organizations (IOs) (Meyer et al. 1997; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Reimann 2006; Tallberg and Jönsson 2010). The rise of NGOs has often been seen in an enchanted light as the dawn of a less power-driven and more moral force in international politics (e.g. Florini 2000). But NGOs are so diverse as to belie easy generalizations. Some NGOs claim to represent normative principles and the general interest independently of the material interests of their members (such as Amnesty International, for instance), and seek to influence global governance in ways that appeal mainly to ideas of the common good, while other NGOs can be understood as transnationally organized interest groups such as business associations, consumer advocacy groups, and labour unions. While interest groups almost always present their goals in terms of serving the common good, they also lobby for their members’ interests.
Both types of NGO have taken on a direct role in providing new ‘governance’ mechanisms as well as in providing new sources of criticism and change in global governance (Avant, Finnemore, and Sell 2010; Tarrow 2001). Widespread economic and societal globalization has not only generated increased functional demand for coordination and cooperation between states (Mitrany 1948; Murphy 1994), but has also led to a greater role for NGOs as advocates towards public institutions (Tallberg et al. 2013), and even as sites of governance and authority (Büthe and Mattli 2011; Cutler, Haufler, and Porter 1999; Price 2003).4 So as rising powers seek changes to the international order, they not only encounter the outlooks, preferences, and strategies of established incumbent states; they also encounter a plethora of NGOs who have their own ideas of how to improve international affairs.
We contend that there is much to gain by analysing these three developments— rising powers, the rise of international authority, and NGOs as new actors—in an integrated framework, instead of in separate branches of the literature. Many demands for change by both rising powers and NGOs are directed at the same target—international institutions. And because they share the same political arena, the demands of rising powers and NGOs are comparable, and can be studied in relation to each other. While the implications of the rise of new major powers have provoked enormous interest, to our knowledge there are no studies which have positioned them in relation to transnational NGOs against the background of an increasingly institutionalized system. In part, this is no doubt due to the varying theoretical views of International Relations (IR) scholars, whose basic ontologies of world politics emphasize different actors and different forms of power. Power-based and state-centric theories naturally incline towards a focus on power transitions amongst major states, while attention to the growing role and influence of NGOs has come largely from scholars working within societal and norm-based approaches. Global Governance studies, in turn, has been the
focus of institutionalist theorizing and is only lately taking traditional questions of international power shifts into account. Consequently, the existing literatures on great and rising powers, that on civil society and transnational NGOs, and that on Global Governance, have developed largely in parallel and rarely in intersection. The tendency to study rising powers and NGOs as if they act in different worlds obscures the reality that both type of actors often put forward their demands and ideas to the same addressee: international institutions as the core sites of global governance.
Against this backdrop, in this volume we take an institutionalist perspective on the rise of new powers and NGOs (see also Kahler 2013; Zangl et al. 2016). We base our analysis on the assumption that international institutions are consequential for international outcomes (Krasner 1982), and that this has increased as they have gained in political and epistemic authority (Hooghe et al. 2017; Zürn et al. 2015). At the same time, we assume that international institutions are sensitive to the implications of rapid shifts in international power, leading to new challenges to institutional business-as-usual. The empirical studies included in this volume aim to shed light on the nature and extent of these challenges.
Theoretically speaking, we attempt to shift focus from a preoccupation with the structure of the international power distribution, as in power transition theory (Organski and Kugler 1981; Tammen and Kugler 2006), and highlight instead the demands for international institutional adaptations and the ways in which institutions respond to them. Our framework for the analysis of rising power and NGO demands first focuses on three prominent features of contemporary international institutions. These are (i) the variable degree of liberalism inscribed into international and transnational rules, (ii) the variable extent of international or transnational authority, and (iii) the distributive implications that international institutions produce. In a second step, these demands can be compared with the institutional status quo, revealing whether they have a more or less ‘revisionist’ character. Third, they can be compared with each other, revealing how the demands of different actors overlap or diverge, and indicating what explanatory factors may account for the different positions the actors adopt. Finally, the constellation of demands can be compared across issue areas, indicating whether a political cleavage between BRICS and the established powers characterizes the international system or whether issue-area specific features structure the conflicts differently from issue area to issue area, resulting in criss-crossing rather than cross-cutting conflict lines.
In these ways, we aim at contributing to core debates in contemporary international politics: What kind of challenge to world order do rising powers represent? Do they spell the end of the ‘liberal international order’ cultivated by the primarily ‘Western’ states since the Second World War? Do they constitute a coherent group in international politics? Do their demands have a systemic nature, or do we observe variance over different policy fields and forms of
international institutions? Do rising powers’ and transnational NGOs’ demands intersect or diverge? The answers to these questions are interesting not only because they are revealing towards key debates in IR, but also because they may help us to understand the degree and types of changes that world order is currently undergoing.
There is little doubt that the rise of new powers is one of the most important developments for world order in recent decades. However, at the same time, the institutionalization of world politics, and the closely related proliferation of NGOs, indicate that there is more to world order than the strategic interactions of unitary states under anarchy.
The time since the Second World War, and especially the last two to three decades, has brought changes that have undermined Westphalian sovereignty (see, e.g., Grande and Pauly 2005). While major powers have never fully respected sovereignty in practice (Krasner 1999), the norm of sovereignty emphasizes the principle of non-intervention in domestic affairs and, closely related to this, the consensus principle (that state parties are not subject to any law to which they do not consent). From the perspective of Westphalian sovereignty, international institutions are considered to be instruments of the territorial state.
Today, many international institutions have developed procedures that contradict the consensus principle and the principle of non-intervention. Some international norms and rules compel national governments to take measures even when they have not agreed to do so. In some cases, decisions made by international institutions even affect individuals directly, like those taken by the United Nations Security Council Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee. Both types of activities— those that bind states, thus affecting private actors only indirectly, and those that affect individuals directly—are indications that international institutions have public authority (Bogdandy, Dann, and Goldmann 2010; Lake 2010). In general, international institutions have authority when the addressees of their policies recognize that these institutions can make competent judgments and binding decisions (Zürn, Binder, and Ecker-Ehrhardt 2012; Cooper et al. 2008).
A dense network of international and transnational institutions has developed in recent decades. Many of these new institutions are far more intrusive than conventional international institutions. They can circumvent the resistance of most governments via majoritarian decision-making (e.g. UNSC) and dispute
settlement procedures (e.g. DSB in the WTO), through the interaction of monitoring agencies with transnational society (e.g. IAEA), and by dominating the process of knowledge interpretation in some fields (e.g. OECD). With the— most often consensual—decision to install international institutions with such features, state parties have become subject to a law other than their own, which they have either not agreed to (mission creep) or do not agree with anymore (costly exit option). At least in some issue areas, the global level has achieved a significant degree of authority and has thus partially replaced the consensus principle of the traditional international system. This development has been especially accentuated in the 1990s and the early 2000s, leading to unprecendented levels of international authority (Hooghe et al. 2017; Zürn et al. 2015).From this perspective, problems of legitimation and growing resistance can be seen as a reaction to the increased authority and distributional significance of international institutions. This understanding has found a place in a variety of theoretical perspectives, all of which attach a significant role to the trend for the exercise of authority beyond the national context to become increasingly contested (See, inter alia, Amoore 2000; Armstrong, Farrell, and Maiguashca 2003; Cochrane, Duffy, and Selby 2004; Daase and Deitelhoff 2015). Especially in the 1990s, during the height of American power and the expansion of liberal economic globalization, much of this contestation was associated with transnational protest activism and the so-called anti-globalization movements. The agents of contestation were associated with domestic and transnational social mobilization, often conceived as part of the emergence of a ‘global’ civil society resisting a neo-liberal world order (Walgrave and Rucht 2010; Stephen 2009, 2011; Zürn 2004). At the same time, NGOs became more prominent and gained much greater access to IOs (Tallberg et al. 2013).
Two implications of this view are important. First, it is not only states but also NGOs and other non-state actors who participate in challenging the current world order. Second, both states and NGOs are not necessarily against international institutions per se. Whereas especially right-wing populist parties challenge the authority of international institutions as such, NGOs often ask for more or different forms of global governance, for instance, by calling for drastic intensification of climate policy measures at the international level. Similarly, there have been numerous recent demands for much stronger interventions by the IMF and multilateral development banks as a response to the financial crisis, both by rising powers and by NGOs. We therefore also expect a growing utilization of international institutions to the extent that they exercise authority.
In short, the rise of international political authority has increased the contestation of international institutions independently of shifts in the underlying distribution of power. It has increased the political opportunities for transnational activities on the side of NGOs, and it has become a major object of interest for rising powers. International institutions provide a site for the contestation of world orders.
At the same time that international institutions have taken on a greater role, the distribution and nature of international power has been rapidly shifting. Emerging and developing countries have increased their share in the global economy significantly, and increasingly seek to translate market power into influence over international institutions. Between 2004 and 2014, China’s GDP grew from $6.6 trillion to $17.2 trillion (an increase of 159 per cent), while India’s expanded from $3.4 trillion to $7.0 trillion (109 per cent). At the same time, the United States’ grew from $14.2 trillion to $16.6 trillion (16.8 per cent) (Stephen 2017: 486). According to the World Bank, the combined GDP of Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, China, and South Africa represented, in 1995, around a third of that of the G7. By 2013, this portion had risen to nearly three-quarters (World Bank 2016). While these growth rates have stalled in recent years, it appears highly unlikely that the power relations that underpinned the early post-Cold War period can be restored. In fact, growth in emerging economies is expected to remain stronger than in high-income countries in future (World Bank 2016). Consequently, although we speak in this volume of ‘rising powers’, to a significant extent, the power balance in the international system has already changed (see also Kappel 2011; Layne 2012; Young 2010). Already in 2012, the United States’ National Intelligence Council surveyed these trends and concluded that ‘with the rapid rise of other countries, the “unipolar moment” is over and Pax Americana—the era of American ascendancy in international politics that began in 1945—is fast winding down’ (National Intelligence Council 2012: x). From this longer historical perspective, the ‘unipolar moment’ (Krauthammer 1991) of American power after the Cold War appears more as a hiatus than an enduring feature of the international system.
Power is a multivalent concept that we do not wish to reduce to the possession of resources, although resources may underlie most forms of power (Barnett and Duvall 2005; Lukes 2005). But there are at least three separate mechanisms by which an increased share of the world’s economic activity translates quickly into an increased influence on international institutions. These three mechanisms reflect closely the well-known three faces of power (Bachrach and Baratz 1962; Lukes 2005).
First, economic expansion increases the resources upon which a state and its representatives can draw in its dealings with other states. Economic resources can be converted into instruments of ‘direct’ and ‘relational’ power, such as bureaucratic capacity, epistemic capacity, and the ability to furnish material (dis) incentives and side payments. They can also ultimately be converted into military capabilities, as often underlined by realist theories. Similarly, having a large economy also conveys bargaining power through the leverage of access to large internal markets, which are particularly relevant in economic policy fields such as trade (Krasner 1976). This bargaining power and influence is reinforced to the extent
that economic size is associated with a central position in world networks, fostering rising states’ ‘network power’ (Hafner-Burton, Kahler, and Montgomery 2009). Growing economic size conveys the potential for ‘asymmetrical interdependence’ in relation to smaller states, and increasingly ‘symmetrical’ interdependence with the economic hegemon (Keohane and Nye 2001).
Second, a country’s share of the world economy is significant from a systemic point of view. Countries with particularly large shares of the world economy have a functional importance to the global economy that makes them ‘systemically significant’ in a way that smaller states are not. The threshold for systemic significance has, moreover, been lowered as a result of economic globalization, as it increases the need for states to coordinate and collaborate in their decisions to govern transnational issues. Consequently, new powers have achieved a kind of veto or spoiling capacity over collective decisions in global governance (Nel, Nabers, and Hanif 2012).
A third mechanism for the translation of material power resource into power over outcomes lies in the less tangible realm of status and recognition (Larson and Shevchenko 2010; Paul, Larson, and Wohlforth 2014; Nel 2010). Rising powers have articulated aspirations to change global politics, but they have also been accorded recognition of their new status by established powers and other participants in global governance. The shift from the G7 to the G20 as the primary intergovernmental forum for the governance of the global economy is the clearest indicator of the increased status of some major non-G7 countries. But it can also be observed in other institutional domains, such as the changes in the inner circle of negotiators in climate and trade politics. This external recognition is, moreover, complemented by the increased self-identification of some states as ‘rising powers’, which can be seen in the proliferation of new coalitions and networks of rising powers (Flemes 2013), such as IBSA (since 2003), BRICS (since 2008–9), and BASIC (since 2009). Together, these three mechanisms have altered the interstate and inter-societal power relations that underpin international institutions, and brought new voices to the fore in calling for institutional changes.
There is virtually a cross-theoretical consensus that power shifts pose challenges for existing international institutions (Barnett and Finnemore 2004; Cox 1981; Keohane 1984; Mearsheimer 1994; Simmons and Martin 2002), especially since some of today’s rising powers have also been long-standing critics of the established order. This has provoked numerous debates within existing IR literature. What do rising powers want? Are the rising powers revisionist, satisfied, or somewhere in between? Is the authority of international institutions destined to
wane in the coming years? Do rising powers constitute a bloc across issue areas, confronting established powers? Do NGOs reinforce such a cleavage or cut across it? To answer these questions, we utilize a conceptual framework that brings together rising powers, the rise of international authority, and the growing role of NGOs.
With the rise of authority beyond the nation state, international and transnational organizations became key venues of political debates and struggles. International organizations are both instruments for producing norms and regulations and sites of opposition and critique. International organizations thus have become targets of a plethora of demands, advocating or criticizing specific policies, defending or attacking institutional set-ups, and debating the merits of the current world order as such. That IOs are targets of demands and claims is most obvious for many transnational CSOs and interest groups, who rely on their communicative strategies to influence global policy. Rising powers of course also target international institutions. When Germany was a rising power before World War I, the aspirations of the Kaiser were put forward primarily towards the German people and secondarily towards the dominant powers, especially Great Britain as hegemon. No doubt, today China similarly has expectations regarding the United States. Yet, it is a striking feature of contemporary world order that dissatisfied actors articulate their demands in terms of international norms and rules. Even deeply dissatisfied actors argue that norms and rules should be followed, complied with, deviated from, and, where necessary, changed, but rarely rejected outright. Because of this, a focus on international institutions helps us to look at the place where demands for change are bundled.
Rising powers and NGOs have the capacity to affect international institutions, but their demands will be a product not only of their increased influence but also of their interests, however formed. We look more specifically at three types of demands. Each speaks to an independent dimension of current international institutions in different policy fields. We ask (i) to what extent an actor’s demand calls for economic, social, or political liberalization, (ii) whether the demand implies more or less authority on the international level, and (iii) what the distributive intention of the demand is. These three dimensions allow us to locate demands on international institutions in a three-dimensional property space. We discuss these three properties of demands in detail.
Already E.H. Carr realized that international institutions tended to display certain world views and ideas. He wrote that dissatisfied powers try to use their
‘ideological power’, as well as their economic and military resources, to alter their normative content and thus the distribution of material and normative goods in the international system (Carr 1946: 102–45). International norms are, in his view, products of the dominant (English-speaking) nations, and are ‘designed to perpetuate their supremacy and expressed in the idiom peculiar to them’ (Carr 1946: 80). Following this reasoning, several strains of current IR theory suggest that a decline of American or Western dominance will pose a threat to the ‘liberal’ content of international institutions—such as democratic government, individual rights, private ownership, free markets, and economic openness—and thus change its social purpose. Hegemonic stability theorists have traditionally seen liberal economic orders as the products of the dominance of a single economic hegemon, which may be eroded when the power of the hegemon wanes (Gilpin 1987; Kindleberger 1981: 88; Layne 2012), while political economists see ‘catch-up’ developmental states as reliant upon interventionist industrial policies to challenge the competitive advantages of the dominant powers (Caldentey 2008; Wade 2003). Similar thinking leads others to conclude that rising powers will challenge the most liberal aspects of international order which are incompatible with their domestic orders (McNally 2012; Kupchan 2014; Nölke et al. 2015).
In associating power shifts with normative change, such perspectives dissent from accounts emphasizing the socialization of emerging powers into the (liberal) norms and principles espoused by established powers and embedded in IOs (Ikenberry and Kupchan 1990; Johnston 2008). Socialization describes a process by which governing elites of states come to accept and internalize the norms and principles supportive of structures of existing IOs. Socialization suggests that emerging powers and even NGOs may be brought into line with existing normative structures of global governance, via mechanisms such as familiarization, habitualization, argumentation and persuasion, and social integration (Checkel 2005; Kent 2002). John Ikenberry extends this line of argumentation and makes a trenchant case that the liberal order is more robust than realists acknowledge (Ikenberry 2010; Ikenberry 2011a; Ikenberry 2011b). Ikenberry emphasizes the role of institutions in mitigating the effects of international anarchy and providing benefits to both rising and established powers. First, the liberal order has fostered economic interdependence, which has become increasingly important for rising powers’ economic development. Second, existing institutions like the United Nations have fostered strategic restraint on the side of the United States, alleviating the security dilemma inherent in an anarchical international system. Third, even if rising powers wanted to change the current order, it would be very costly to do so, because of high sunk costs within existing institutions, and the difficulties of establishing alternatives. Finally, existing institutions contain ‘a wide array of channels and mechanisms that allow the new rising states to join and to be integrated into the governance arrangements of the old order’ (Ikenberry and Wright 2008: 5). Consequently, rising powers ‘are finding incentives and opportunities to engage and integrate into this order, doing so to advance their own interests’ (Ikenberry 2011a: 61).
A similar divergence of expectations can be discerned about the preferences of NGOs. Transnational protest movements often challenge the effects of ‘neoliberalism’ and are seen by some as part of an anti-globalization movement directed against the contemporary world order (Kaldor 2000, 2003). At the same time, interest groups and business actors are seen at least sometimes as actors trying to ‘capture’ liberal regulation and to withdraw it from the realm of the common good in order to control it and maximize profits (Mattli and Woods 2009). Many others see transnational NGOs as demanding necessary complements to the liberal regimes in order to deepen it (Keck and Sikkink 1998). Indeed, nonstate actors active on the level beyond the nation state sometimes challenge the content of existing institutions fundamentally; sometimes they use these institutions to further the policies they want to see.
Against this backdrop, we seek to define the ‘liberal’ dimension of world order in an operational way that allows for comparisons across issue areas.5 In doing so, we distinguish two versions of global liberalism—a neo-liberal version and an embedded version of liberalism—and a non-liberal order.
We define international institutions as neo-liberal to the extent that they promote the reduction of political barriers to the cross-national exchange of material goods (capital and commodities), labour power (services and migration), and ideas (cultural goods, rights, and knowledge). Demands in favour of neoliberalism can also be labelled as ‘market-making-demands’ (Streeck 1995), and have been seen as part of attempts at constitutionalizing neo-liberalism at a level beyond the nation state (Gill 2002). Mostly, they ask for institutions that guarantee the free and unhindered exchange of goods, services, capital, and (less often) people. They are directed against national political interventions and can be labelled negative integration (Corbey 1995; Scharpf 1996). Mechanisms in support of ‘human rights’ broadly understood are compatible with both versions of liberalism, but in tendency, ‘neo-liberal’ interpretations of individualist rights centre on the defence of private property rights.
The other version of liberalism may be labelled embedded liberalism (Katzenstein 1985; Ruggie 1982). Demands for embedded liberalism seek to reconcile economic openness with social stability via political interventions in order to reduce the unwelcome effects of free exchange, be it the diminution of political rights, inequality, environmental degradation, or the erosion of national cultures and habits. Such ‘positive integration’ can come in two forms. A more nationally oriented form of embedded liberalism seeks global recognition of some national autonomy to allow for the development of market-braking or market-correcting policies on the national level, while a more internationalist form seeks stronger market interventions on the international level, in the extreme case in favour of global redistribution. The notion of individual rights is much more broadly conceived in embedded liberalism than in neo-liberalism. It includes political and social rights in addition to economic rights.
One may therefore see embedded liberalism as lying between the poles of neo-liberalism and an order in which free market and individual rights are subordinated to collective goals such as sovereignty or equality. Such a non-liberal order can be achieved either by the rejection of any international rules that intrude into domestic affairs, in which case human rights and economic openness would be decided by different national systems, or, alternatively, one may create strong global agencies that push through politically determined schemes of exchange and fair redistribution. In distinguishing negative integration (neoliberalism) from positive integration (embedded liberalism) from no liberal integration at all (non-liberal stance), it is possible to assess new actors’ outlooks on the liberal dimension of world order more concretely. It is also important to point out that there is variation in the social purpose of different institutions in the current world order. The IMF is clearly liberal in a way that the United Nations General Assembly is not.
As we have argued above, the current world order is also characterized by a historically high level of authority on the international level. Here, expectations about the impact of rising powers and NGOs likewise vary. Some realists, for instance, have clear expectations that international power shifts will erode or destroy whatever international authority may be said to exist. The resurgence of a security competition between the United States and China would push aside international institutions that depend on cooperation between the great powers (Mearsheimer 2001), while the institutions of the ‘pax Americana’ are ‘doomed to wither in the early twenty-first century’ (Layne 2012: 205). Many authors, taking a closer look at the demands of rising powers such as the BRICS states, also suggest that a core feature of their foreign policy outlooks is a jealous approach to ceding sovereignty to strong international institutions (Laïdi 2012).
By contrast, liberal institutionalists such as Robert Keohane suggest that the rise of new powers may make the functioning of IOs more contentious, but a diffusion of international power is more likely to prevent the creation of strong new institutions rather than undermine the stability of existing ones (Keohane 2012: 136). Ikenberry’s picture of a robust international order in which rising powers are seeking greater influence would also appear amenable to the maintenance or even strengthening of the authority of international institutions (Ikenberry 2011b). In contrast to realists, liberal theorists make a clear distinction between international institutions and the primarily Western leadership within them, and suggest that rising powers’ dissatisfaction is not so much over international authority itself, but the privileged positions of established powers within it (Ikenberry 2011a; Kahler 2013: 711–29; Schirm 2009).
Most transnational NGOs seem to support strong international institutions and frequently ask for stronger ones, such as in the field of environmental politics or regarding human rights. To some extent, it seems that the organizational form of transnationally organized CSOs and interest groups predetermines their basic orientation in favour of international regulation (Wapner 1995). However, other NGOs act as defendants of weaker states trying to help them to protect their autonomy, for example at the World Trade Organization (see Stephen, this volume). This group of NGOs does often argue against international institutions that become too strong and too intrusive.
Our second question about preferences, therefore, concerns the degree to which the actor under question demands international rules, institutions, and authority. Actors’ positions on the role of international authority can be thought of as a spectrum along which three major benchmarks can be identified: national discretion, intergovernmental coordination, and supranationalism. National discretion leaves all decisions to sovereign states, prioritizing unilateral autonomy over international coordination. Intergovernmental coordination leaves decisions about compliance and implementation up to the states concerned. Supranationalism, the strongest form of international authority, involves the delegation or even transfer of some policymaking function to a body or forum beyond the state, undermining the consent principle of international politics.
If we consider these two dimensions of world order together—its liberal social purpose and the level at which decisions are made—we already can think more comprehensively about the kind of world orders that approximate different actors’ preferences (see Figure 1.1). Whereas the two dimensions are not fully orthogonal to each other, most world order perspectives can be located within such a two-dimensional space. World order demands which are simultaneously liberal but reject all forms of international coordination result in a competitive system of rival liberal capitalisms—a system depicted most vividly in the concept of a competitive ‘race to the bottom’ of market regulations and the idea of the marketoriented ‘competition state’ (Cerny 1997). A similar rejection of international coordination combined with non-market structures can be discussed as a ‘sovereign autonomy’ system, which in economic terms would manifest as a mercantilist or otherwise non-liberal order. The era of rival imperialisms and the lead up to World War II can be considered historical precedents (Cox 1987: 151–210). At the other extreme, world orders with high levels of supranational authority combined with the institutionalization of negative integration can be considered the ideal type of a neo-liberal minimal order in analogy to Nozick’s minimal state or Stephen Gill’s notion of ‘new constitutionalism’ (Gill and Cutler 2015; Nozick 1974). Finally, one can think of a supranational order based on positive integration and elements of global redistribution. Most varieties of cosmopolitanism approach these demands (Colás 1993; Linklater 2007), seeking a compromise with liberal constitutionalism in the form of global social democracy (Archibugi and Held 1995; Pogge 1992; Pogge 2008).
Intergovernmentalism Embedded liberalism
Competition states Mercantilism
National discretion
Neo-liberal Embedded liberalNon-liberal
Fig. 1.1 Varieties of world order
The real world knows at best approximations to ideal types. John Ruggie’s concept of ‘embedded liberalism’ as a description of the post-World War II order, for example, reflects a mostly intergovernmental order which sought a balance between liberal openness (coordinated liberalism) and domestic economic interventionism (coordinated dirigisme) (Ruggie 1982). While the extreme cases make the concepts clear, the typical demands of most actors will probably be located in the more central territory of the two-dimensional space.
There are few international institutions which do not involve some forms of distributional conflict (Krasner 1991). International agreements usually have an efficiency-related and a distributional component. Conflicts in and about international institutions often arise with respect to the distributional dimension. Distributive conflicts may be mediated or mitigated by external factors as part of a broader institutional environment, such as side payments and the presumed continued gains from ongoing institutionalized cooperation, but they cannot be avoided completely. Conflicts in this dimension tend to be over outcomes, resources, and relative positions within a given domain. Examples germane to the cases in this volume include the distribution of voting quota at institutions such as the IMF and World Bank, the possession of permanent seats on the UN Security Council, the distribution of financial resources or funding burdens, access to proprietary technology, or the costs of agreeing mutually beneficial standards. Particularly acute distributive conflicts involve the allocation of status and prestige between countries (Larson and Shevchenko 2010; Nel 2010; Wolf 2011). Recognition as a major power whose interests must be taken into account is often a central goal of the foreign policies of rising states. At the same time, threats to the status of established but potentially declining powers can be Supranationalism
Supranationalism
Intergovernmentalism National discretion Neo-liberal
Minor distribution conflict
Fig. 1.2 Policy space of world order demands
Major distribution conflict
expected vociferously to defend their relative standing. Where NGOs stand in relation to distributive conflicts is an open question to which we will return in the conclusion.
The contestation of international institutions may therefore involve not only disagreements over institutional form and purpose, but also more parochial disagreements over the gains of cooperation or distribution of relative goods. Rather than seeking to alter the liberal content or exercise of international authority, some actors may simply aspire to alter the distribution of material goods and status. The extent to which actors seek a redistribution of the distributive material and symbolic goods in a given institution constitutes the third dimension of the policy space against which we map actors’ preferences, as depicted in Figure 1.2.
In sum, in order to make sense of different actors’ preferences, we seek to analyse their demands with regard to three prominent features of contemporary international institutions: liberal social purpose, level of international authority, and distributional implications. While the dimensions are not fully orthogonal, they vary conceptually and, as we will show, empirically as well.
Once actors’ preferences are revealed, it becomes possible to analyse them in relation to the institutional status quo, in relation to each other, and across different issue areas. In doing so, we can assess three sets of competing propositions. The first set of propositions refers to the degree and depth of contestation. How much do demands deviate from the institutional status quo? Is it really true that especially rising powers put forward demands that question the current world orders, or do these demands come from under-represented actors generally? Second, we aim to test competing propositions about the coalitions observable in world politics. Is it true that the BRICS stand against the G7 states? Or, does the Global
South stand against the Global North? With whom do NGOs coalesce? Finally, we want to know whether the observed conflict lines add up to an overarching pattern. Do emerging powers or NGOs form coherent groups? Or, do they have divergent, context-specific preferences? In exploring these propositions, we also investigate the factors that might account for the positions adopted by rising powers and NGOs. Do the behaviours we observe conform to the expectations of theories emphasizing the international distribution of power, or is the picture more indicative of the role of domestic politics, or international institutional structure? In this section we offer a number of propositions in order to provide clear benchmarks against which to assess the empirical findings of the studies in this volume. Due to our case study approach, we do not expect to be able to corroborate or reject them definitively. They are designed to focus our enquiry and we will return to them in the conclusion.
To what extent are rising powers and NGOs dissatisfied with the institutional status quo? Traditional realism and Power Transition Theory (PTT) would suggest that rising powers especially tend to be dissatisfied with the existing hierarchies, institutions, and structures of the international system, because they reflect the interests of the former hegemonic power (Gilpin 1981; Tammen et al. 2000). In the classic PTT story, a rising power will challenge the status quo while the dominant state typically will defend the status quo, ‘from which it accrues substantial benefits’ (Tammen et al. 2000: 9). China looms large as the major likely challenger (Lemke and Tammen 2003; Mearsheimer 2010; Schweller and Pu 2011; Tammen and Kugler 2006). Such reasoning would suggest that the more power a rising state has, the more its preferences will diverge from the status quo. Similarly, it has been argued that at least the four biggest BRICS countries share several commonalities that give rise to shared interests (Hurrell 2006). This would suggest that the rising powers will be the most dissatisfied actors, and that they will form a fairly coherent group in this dissatisfaction. Against this background, each of the chapters in this volume asks to what extent the BRICS’ preferences diverge from those of established powers, and whether the BRICS constitute a coherent group or bloc in the issue areas under discussion.
In addition, we distinguish between (dis)satisfaction with existing institutional features, and (dis)satisfaction with the way the status quo is currently implemented. More ‘revisionist’ actors are likely to reject both established institutional structures and institutional practice. But softer forms of dissatisfaction may reflect unhappiness only with the way the institutional status quo is exercised and implemented. For instance, an actor may be in favour of a strong dispute settlement body in the WTO, but object to the practices of the DSB by pointing out
that it does not rule without bias. Similarly, not all rejections of intervention by the United Nations Security Council amount to a complete rejection of a UN-based responsibility to protect; instead, what is often called into question is the selectivity of interventionism (Binder 2017). Criticism of institutional practice is often done by reference to principles and norms acknowledged by the institution under question, such as transparency, equal treatment, fairness, and so on. These ‘internal criticisms’ reflect a more reformist position. With a willingness to simplify, we therefore formulate a benchmark ‘power transition’ proposition, which will be elaborated in each of the empirical chapters.
P 1: Rising powers strongly diverge from the institutional status quo in a revisionist manner, while established powers defend the status quo, with NGOs in-between with a reformist stance. Whether a state is revisionist, reformist, or satisfied is closely related to the state’s position in the international hierarchy.
Power transition theory represents only one strand of theorizing about rising powers. Other accounts stress the internal diversity of contemporary rising powers and the many varying factors—such as regime type, level of development, and normative compatibility with the existing order—that affect their behaviour and demands regarding global governance (Armijo 2007). Liberal and domestic political economy perspectives suggest that states’ preferences are shaped in crucial ways in interaction with their domestic political and economic structures (Cox 1981; Katzenstein 1977; Moravcsik 1997; Van der Pijl 1998). Different types of state— democratic or authoritarian, developed and developing, liberal and illiberal— typically have different preferences over global governance, suggesting strong contrasts between the different states identified as rising powers. Some go so far as to suggest that cross-cutting preference coalitions mean that some rising powers will find common purpose with some established powers, depending on the issue at stake (Schirm 2012). Moreover, collective ideas and the associated strategies can vary not only across rising powers, but also within a rising power over time (Legro 2007).
From these societal perspectives, states’ preferences are not determined by the distribution of power, but arise from their domestic social bases. Because the dominant states in the system have externalized a specifically liberal world order, the more liberal the domestic structures of the rising powers, the more they should be satisfied with the status quo. In particular, many authors have argued that non-democratic states favour sovereignty as the primary principle of world order, such that non-democratic rising powers are likely to be particularly sceptical regarding the emergence of international authority (Johnston 2003: 14–15; Laïdi 2012). This would suggest that the BRICS will be divided between the
democratic (Brazil, India, and South Africa) and non-democratic (China and Russia) members. These perspectives relocate explanatory power to the domestic level, suggesting that rising powers’ preferences can be explained with reference to variables such as regime type, their levels of economic development, and state–society relations in their domestic and transnational social contexts. These considerations lead to the second set of propositions that will be probed in the empirical chapters.
P 2a: States with a similar domestic structure direct similar demands towards international institutions. Democratic states especially will adopt similar positions regardless of whether they can be categorized as rising or established powers.
P 2b: The similarity between democratic states can be expected to be especially obvious regarding liberal social purpose, while the similarity between authoritarian states should be especially strong regarding the emphasis on sovereignty. It is only the distributional dimension where the domestic structure should play less of a role.
Similar questions arise concerning the behaviour and broader role of transnational NGOs. In the vast literature on NGOs’ roles in global governance, one strand sees NGOs as a means of ensuring the participation of world society in global decision-making and implementation (Beisheim 1997; Tallberg and Jönsson 2010). In this view, they serve as ‘transmission belts’ between society and governance units, and therefore contribute to the democratization of global governance (Steffek and Hahn 2010; Steffek, Kissling, and Nanz 2008). By implication, the variety of NGOs will be high since it should reflect the plurality of perspectives and interests in world society. While some accounts stress the role of NGOs in contesting and resisting features of existing international institutions (Daase and Deitelhoff 2013), others see NGOs as becoming part of the very machinery of global governance that they are supposed to contest (Hardt and Negri 2000, Higgott, Underhill, and Bieler 2000; Murphy 1998), with Western views being much better represented than the South (Ecker-Ehrhardt and Zürn 2013).
In order to better understand the real interaction of rising powers and NGOs regarding international institutions, we therefore need to avoid generalizations and look at specific rising powers and specific NGOs that can be seen as representatives of their actor type. We therefore ask whether systematic coalitions between certain types of NGOs and certain state coalitions can be observed and whether they are stable across issue areas.
These considerations lead to another pair of propositions which will be explored in the empirical part. Those who see NGOs as transmission belts from society to governors would expect NGOs generally to support international authority, and for their specific policy demands to be closely related to their social origins. By contrast, those who see NGOs through a resistance prism would expect them to be on the side of the revisionists.
P 3a: While NGOs in general support international authority, especially NGOs from the Global South can be expected to coalesce with those rising powers which want to have less liberal and more redistributive policies on the global scale.
P 3b: NGOs coalesce with states that put forward the most radical demands for changes of the global order.
The three faces of power discussed in section two can play out in different contexts. While power transition theorists locate power mainly in the international system writ large and consider the ‘overall’ power structure as most important, others cast doubt on the fungibility of power across issue areas. David Baldwin, for example, argued that ‘the notion of a single overall international power structure unrelated to any particular issue area is based on a concept of power that is virtually meaningless’ (Baldwin 1979: 193). Given the limited fungibility of power, institutionalists often point to ‘issue area structure’ as the relevant context for assessing power relationships (Keohane and Nye 2001). For this reason, the nature and extent of contemporary power shifts and the question of which countries qualify as ‘rising powers’ are issues that need to be taken up in a manner sensitive to institutional and issue area context (Lesage and Van de Graaf 2015: 5).
In line with a power-sensitive institutionalist reasoning, it has been observed that while international institutions are important, their most powerful members often exercised outsized influence over them and are powerful enough to resist decisions they do not like (Krasner 1999). There is little reason to assume that rising powers behave differently. Consequently, institutionalists would expect rising powers to be most critical of those international institutions which exercise a high level of authority and do not follow the one state, one vote principle. Conversely, established powers are most supportive of those institutions which exercise a high level of authority and have institutionalized inequality between states (Zürn 2018).
Only if the overall power logic dominates across issue areas can one speak of a fully developed systemic conflict or ‘cleavage’ that dominates world politics. The East–West divide of the twentieth century may be seen as such a cleavage. The question of whether a country belonged to the ‘West’ or the ‘East’ was almost always sufficient to predict their international preferences in almost all issue areas (Link 1980). While power transition theory predicts the development of such a cleavage at least regarding high politics issues, institutionalists would expect to see issue-area specific conflicts. We therefore ask about BRICS’ coalitions in each issue area and the role of NGOs to see whether they amount to a systemic conflict or ‘cleavage’ when looked at world politics as a whole. The following two