This research paper offers a new conceptualization of the crisis of the liberal international order (LIO) as an endogenous phenomenon. It argues that, contrary to many IR accounts, the most severe contemporary challenge to the LIO comes from political actors within the system of liberal democratic states – actors empowered by the very mechanisms of democratic governance that they currently seek to delegitimize. The actions of the second Trump administration in the United States, both domestically and internationally, offer a prominent example.
Empirically, the paper analyses the evolution of the illiberal playbook, pioneered by Russia and utilized, at the regional level, by Viktor Orbán’s government in Hungary to challenge the EU from within, and, at the systemic global level, by the United States, long viewed as the LIO’s principal champion. Four strategic tools – brokerage, wedging, persuasion, and coercion – are identified, and the analysis shows how they have been used to challenge democratic liberalism in all three cases. The findings suggest that the contemporary challenge to the LIO spans both liberal-democratic and autocratic contexts and challenges conventional assumptions about the “inside” and the “outside” of the system of democratic states.
