Future of the Liberal World Order
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: Source: Nord, Marina, David Altman, Fabio Angiolillo, Tiago Fernandes, Ana Good God, and Staffan I. Lindberg. 2025. Democracy Report 2025: 25 Years of Autocratization […]
Read MoreThe Liberal World Order and the Future of Transatlanticism: Tensions, Debates and Critiques
European University Institute, Florence, 9–10 June 2025Session 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 […]
Read MoreVulnerability and Precarity in a Post-Liberal Order: Lessons from Ukraine
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, […]
Read More“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 TermsIn our current moment – […]
Read MoreIntroduction 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 […]
Read More