Selective Universalism as a Structural Property of the Liberal International Order

This article explores the rationale behind why selective universalism should be comprehended not as a failure of the liberal international order (LIO), but rather as one of its structural conditions. Recent debates have often characterized the selective application of international law and human rights as a deviation from liberal principles, typically attributing it to geopolitical hypocrisy or institutional decay. This article proposes an alternative argument. Drawing on an international historical sociology and critical political economy account of the liberal-capitalist order, we argue that selective universalism is a structural feature of the LIO itself. We conceptualize universal norms not as abstract, neutral standards but as historically embedded social relations produced within specific political–economic and geopolitical contexts. We show how selectivity has been an integral component of the liberal-capitalist order since its inception, albeit with variations in its manifestation. From 1945 to the late 1980s, the article demonstrates that selective universalism was politically constrained by competing universalist projects, anti-colonial struggles, and mass social forces. The monopolization of universalism under neoliberal globalization in the post-1989 era has led to an intensification of selective enforcement. Since the mid-2010s, the unravelling of hegemonic neoliberal order has assumed a new form, increasingly expressed through civilizational and security-based tropes of an “identitarian universalism”.