Abstract

Scholars and practitioners agree that the liberal international order (LIO) is encountering formidable challenges. The rise of nationalism within established democracies and the ascendancy of states with authoritarian political systems together threaten its foundational liberal principles. While these challenges are well recognized, systematic empirical analyses of their impact remain sparse.

In this lecture I examine the liberal norms upheld by international organizations (IOs) within the LIO's periphery. I utilize a novel dataset detailing the rhetorical commitment of 28 regional IOs to liberal norms from 1980 to 2019, presenting the first comprehensive empirical and theoretical exploration of IO adherence to these norms. The findings reveal a surprising resilience among many regional IOs, which continue to uphold liberal commitments despite nationalist and authoritarian pressures. This resilience appears significantly linked to institutional designs, bureaucratic mechanisms, and supportive peer networks.

The analysis not only challenges prevailing assumptions about the decline of the LIO but also highlights the critical role of robust institutional frameworks in sustaining the order’s liberal principles.
 

Bio

Tobias Lenz is Professor of International Relations at Leuphana University of Lüneburg and spent the academic year 2023/24 as a visiting fellow at the European University Institute in Florence. Previously, he was Assistant Professor at the University of Göttingen and the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA) as well as a postdoctoral fellow at the Free University of Amsterdam. He holds an M.Phil in Politics and a D.Phil in IR, both from the University of Oxford and has held visiting positions at the Free University of Berlin, the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, among others.

His research deals with international intergovernmental organizations, comparative regionalism as well as diffusion and legitimation processes in world politics. He has published widely on these issues, including in the European Journal of International Relations, International Studies Quarterly, International Theory, The Review of International Organizations, and the Review of International Studies.

He recently published two books, Interorganizational Diffusion in International Relations: Regional Institutions and the Role of the European Union (OUP, 2021) and Theory of International Organization (OUP, 2019, with Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks).