Bulletin n. 3/2008
February 2009
CONTENTS
  • Section A) The theory and practise of the federal states and multi-level systems of government
  • Section B) Global governance and international organizations
  • Section C) Regional integration processes
  • Section D) Federalism as a political idea
    • Deudney Daniel, Ikenberry G. John
    The Myth of the Autocratic Revival . Why Liberal Democracy Will Prevail
    in Foreign Affairs , January/February 2009 Vol 88, Number 1 ,  2009
    After two decades of post-Cold War liberal triumph, U.S. foreign policy is being challenged by the return of an old antiliberal vision. According to this vision, the world is not marching toward universal liberal democracy and "the end of history." Rather, it is polarizing into different camps and entering an era of rivalry between Western liberal states and dangerous autocracies, most notably China and Russia. Unlike the autocracies that failed so spectacularly in the twentieth century, today's autocracies are said to be not only compatible with capitalist success but also representative of a rival form of capitalism. And their presence in the international system supposedly foreshadows growing competition and conflict and is dangerously undermining the prospect of global cooperation. Several recent developments seem to support this emerging view. Democratic transitions have stalled and reversed. In China, the Communist Party dictatorship has weathered domestic challenges while presiding over decades of rapid economic growth and capitalist modernization. Rising oil prices have empowered autocratic regimes. In Russia, Vladimir Putin's government rolled back democratic gains and became increasingly autocratic. At the same time, relations between Russia and the West have deteriorated from the near amity of the early post-Cold War era, and China and the West remain divided over Taiwan, human rights, and oil access. Meanwhile, much less powerful autocratic states, such as Venezuela and Iran, are destabilizing their regions. There even appear to be signs that these autocratic states are making common cause against the liberal Western states, with nascent alliances such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The United Nations, and particularly the Security Council, has returned to the paralysis of the Cold War. In this view, the liberal West faces a bleak future. The new prophets of autocratic revival draw important foreign policy implications from their thesis. One of the most forceful exponents of this new view, Robert Kagan, insists that it is time for the United States and the other liberal democracies to abandon their expectations of global convergence and cooperation. Instead, they should strengthen ties among themselves, perhaps even through a formal "league of democracies," and gird themselves for increasing rivalry and conflict with the resurgent autocracies. Containment rather than engagement, military rivalry rather than arms control, balance of power rather than concert of power -- these should be, according to such theorists, the guideposts for U.S. foreign policy. Fortunately, this new conventional wisdom about autocratic revival is as much an exaggeration of a few years of headlines as was the proclamation of the end of history at the end of the Cold War. The proposition that autocracies have achieved a new lease on life and are emerging today as a viable alternative within the global capitalist system is wrong. Just as important, the policies promoted by the autocratic revivalists are unlikely to be successful and, if anything, would be counterproductive -- driving autocracies away from the liberal system and thereby creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Although today's autocracies may be more competent and more adept at accommodating capitalism than their predecessors were, they are nonetheless fundamentally constrained by deep-seated incapacities that promise to limit their viability over the long run. Ultimately, autocracies will move toward liberalism. The success of regimes such as those in China and Russia is not a refutation of the liberal vision; the recent success of autocratic states has depended on their access to the international liberal order, and they remain dependent on its success. Furthermore, the relentless imperatives of rising global interdependence create powerful and growing incentives for states to engage in international cooperation regardless of regime type. The resilience of autocracies calls not for abandoning or retreating from liberal internationalism but rather for refining and strengthening it. If liberal democratic states react to revived autocracies solely with policies of containment, arms competition, and exclusive bloc building, as neoconservatives advise, the result is likely to be a strengthening and encouragement of illiberal tendencies in these countries. In contrast, cooperatively tackling common global problems -- such as climate change, energy security, and disease -- will increase the stakes that autocratic regimes have in the liberal order. Western states must also find ways to accommodate rising states -- whether autocratic or democratic -- and integrate them into the governance of international institutions. Given the powerful logic that connects modernization and liberalization, autocratic regimes face strong incentives to liberalize. The more accommodating and appealing the liberal path is, the more quickly and easily the world's current illiberal powers will choose the path of political reform.
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