States of Empire
States of Empire
Liberal Ordering and Imperial Relations
This chapter addresses the complex and contingent interplay between liberal order and empire. It draws attention to the seemingly irresolvable dilemma that the United States maintains imperial relations with other political communities, whilst also rejecting the legitimacy of empire. The solution has been to ‘democratize’ imperial functions and to vest them in multilateral international organizations and to ensure that they as much as possible reflect the consent of the international community. Deploying an original framework of analysis based on ideal types of empire, the chapter advances the argument that imperial structures may be found embedded in at least three different variations of imperial logics in surprising settings, including inter-governmentalist liberal practices in UN peacekeeping operations and neo-trustee arrangements, such as those following the NATO intervention in Kosovo and NATO's role in Afghanistan.
Keywords: imperial structures, empire, legitimacy, NATO, UN peacekeeping, Kosovo, Afghanistan
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