Crisis of Legitimacy

Abstract The liberal international order (LIO) is in crisis. Not only are the principles on which it was founded—democracy and economic openness—now deeply contested, but its underlying political decision-making structures of US leadership and multilateralism are also being called into question. Drawing on theories of legitimacy, this essay probes the construction of the LIO after World War II and the deep contests that now challenge that order. As the United States has fractured into highly polarized partisan camps, American populists actively seek to withdraw from the LIO and find common cause with the opponents of liberalism in Europe. In any period of deep contestation, it is impossible to identify what exactly causes what. But in the current crisis it appears that globalization, its distributional inequities, and the decline of the working class has created fissures in the legitimacy of the LIO and catalyzed deep contestation over its procedures and principles.