Future of the Liberal World Order

Conference
9-10 June 2025
Badia Fiesolana, Via dei Roccettini 9 - San Domenico di Fiesole (Fiesole, Florence)

Academic organisers:
Veronica Anghel | Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute (EUI)
Hilary Appel | Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies, Claremont McKenna College (CMC)
Rachel Epstein | The Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver (DU)

Introduction
The liberal

August 4, 2025

Introduction[1]

The illiberal turn in the world is undeniable (Applebaum 2025; Enyedi et al. 2025; Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018). The Variety of Democracy’s 2025 lists the following facts:

• The level of democracy for the average world citizen in 2025 is back to 1985.
• Nearly 3 out of 4 persons in the

European University Institute, Florence, 9–10 June 2025
Session 1: The Global Assault on the Liberal World Order

Question 1: Is the decline of the liberal order an inevitable consequence of its own contradictions?

In the institutional systems of nation-states, the liberal political order is founded on the principle of limiting all forms of power and their diffusion of

August 15, 2025[1]

Since the end of the Cold War, former communist, East European states were given the opportunity to become full members of a Western-led liberal international order (Ikenberry, 2018). A broad set of countries could pursue the goals of stability, peace, and economic growth by establishing or joining multilateral treaties and liberal organizations, with the benefit

“Small” states historically have been central to upholding and legitimizing the liberal international order – often in the face of opposition of the world’s great powers. But they also reveal a longstanding paradox in this international order – no state engaged this order can be defined as wholly “liberal.”

Interrogating Terms
In our current moment – and with the

Introduction

In his seminal book on varieties of international political orders, John Ikenberry construed that after 1945 a constitutional international order (hereafter: CIO) had been established, an order where “international institutions bind powerful and weaker states together, creating a difficult-to-change institutional framework within which their relations are carried out, and thereby establishing some limits on the arbitrary and