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At the end of the last century, the prevailing conviction was that globalization had guaranteed the triumph of Western-style democracies. There was confidence that the Liberal International Order (LIO)1 was here to stay even in the event of US decline because it appealed to individual rationality, promoted global progress and democracy through diplomacy, and brought economic benefits to its member states by facilitating trade, foreign direct investments, and more efficient supply chains. In the second half of the last decade, that optimism has been replaced by concern or even pessimism about the LIO's durability, with the growing realization that liberal institutions are challenged by voters in the West itself, where established parties have either been taken over by populist forces or have lost ground to them, or where anti-liberal policy agendas have found popular support through developments such as Brexit. At the same time, Russian President Vladimir Putin's imprisonment of opponents, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's assaults on journalists, Brazilian President Jair Messias Bolsonaro's targeting of universities, US President Donald Trump's, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Mihály Orbán's, and Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini's attacks on immigrants all undermine international cooperation and regulation.2 With the recent COVID-19 pandemic, barriers between states have become even higher, and the LIO has few genuinely enthusiastic defenders left.
Much ink has been spilled to explain this seemingly abrupt erosion of support for the LIO. Some argue that voters supporting politicians like President Trump have legitimate economic grievances because of the unevenly distributed benefits of globalization,3 but that does not explain significant support for populist policies in economically higher strata of Western societies.4 Others blame the rot on Russia, and to a lesser extent on semiperipheral member states of the LIO—for example, Hungary, Poland, and Turkey—for fomenting disunity and openly flouting the rules,5 as well as for meddling in the politics of core liberal countries via lobbying firms, hacking, and other means, including troll farms.6 But even if the impact of such actions is not exaggerated,7 we do not yet have a good explanation for why these states have so easily turned their backs on an order that they once seemed eager to join, or for how their message appeals to voters...