Content area
Full text
The Liberal International Order (LIO) has structured relations among capitalist, democratic, and industrialized nations since the late 1940s; it has also influenced international affairs in general. It is now being challenged in multiple and wide-reaching ways: populist, nationalist, and antiglobalist movements within its core members; the rise of peer competitors with different, more state-centered economies and authoritarian political systems; and the threats of climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic that exacerbate other challenges to the LIO. This is not the first time the postwar LIO has faced difficulties, of course. Like Mark Twain's death, rumors of the demise of the LIO have been greatly exaggerated. The LIO has proven resilient in the past, and it may prove to be so once more. Yet, the combination of internal and external challenges suggests that this time might be different.
International Organization (IO) grew up alongside the LIO, first as almost a journal of record describing events at the United Nations and its related institutions and, later, as a venue for some of the most innovative and important scholarship on this order. Many of the key concepts used to interpret the LIO first appeared or received serious scholarly attention in the pages of this journal: transnational relations; hegemony; domestic structures; international regimes; embedded liberalism; multilateralism; international norms; the function and design of international institutions; the process of legalization; socialization. The journal has long been a premier outlet for the study of economic interdependence, alliances, war, human rights, the European Union, and other substantive issues central to the LIO.
At the seventy-fifth anniversary of IO, we can justly celebrate our collective success in getting much right about the origins and functions of the LIO. At the same time, few of the current challenges to the LIO were fully anticipated even by the best scholarship published in this journal, or elsewhere. It is appropriate to take stock of the field of international relations (IR), highlight what we have learned, and importantly reflect on our collective “blind spots” to help identify a research agenda for the future.
We begin by identifying what we mean by the Liberal International Order. We then turn to the challenges currently confronting this order, and finally address what we collectively missed or pushed...