A World Safe for Democracy?

The liberal international order (LIO) is in crisis. This article aims to show how a version of an LIO could be preserved or regenerated in the future. Previous manifestations have emphasized the importance of making the world safe for democracy through maxilateral forms of multilateral international organization and universal normative aspirations, commitments, and enforcement. This article questions the centrality of Western liberal democratic formulations of domestic governance, positing that it serves as a distraction from achieving the more central international governance aims of reconciling conflicting interests, generating collective good, and providing security for all from traditional and non-traditional security (NTS) threats. Under conditions of geopolitical rivalry and contestation, combined with epistemological and regional resistance to the normative hegemony of Western universalist perspectives, it presents a way forward for global governance in a new LIO. This can be achieved by harnessing the capabilities of newly empowered actors and institutions of cooperation. Middle powers were very active in both the formal and informal processes of international organization upon which the old order was built. Recent challenges to the LIO and to multilateralism (especially the maximalist formulation) have created an impression that the middle power moment is over. However, this article sees a way forward for stronger, more pragmatic second-tier powers to continue to influence international governance through more ad hoc coalitions of the willing, NTS minilateral frameworks, and regional international commissions.