Imperial Projections & Crisis: The Liberal International Order as a ‘Pseudo-Empire’

ABSTRACT

This article proposes that empire serves as a suitable framework for understanding how and why the liberal international order is exhibiting symptoms of ‘imperial overstretch’. Noting that many of its critics and opponents subscribe to a simplistic and yet powerful narrative that views liberal internationalism as a pseudo-imperial project, it shows that detractors tend to perceive democracy promotion and globalisation as the two main instruments of an order-building endeavour that is remoulding international structures along imperial lines to reflect liberal values and institutions. Within the transatlantic community, critics from the left resent liberal internationalism for its corporate greed, its imperialistic tendencies, wars of intervention, and the veneer of humanitarianism that disguises its ideology of a ‘civilising mission’. Critics from the right fear the erosion of national boundaries and the subversion of the nation-state as a result of mass migration, the dilution of national identities, and the constant meddling of supra-national organisations. Externally, the order is under attack by revisionist states, competitors, and violent non-state actors. Ideological incompatibility and differences in motives notwithstanding, these hostile forces are increasingly united in their struggle against the liberal order – with the risks of its possible disintegration all too familiar to the students of empire.     

Urban experimentation and institutional arrangements

ABSTRACT

Currently little is known about how institutional arrangements co-evolve with urban experimentation. This paper mobilizes neo-institutional literature and recent urban experimentation literature as a framework to explore how and why institutional arrangements differ across urban contexts. Empirically the paper focusses on smart city initiatives in Amsterdam, Hamburg and Ningbo. These three cities are frontrunners in adopting a comprehensive smart city agenda, but they do so in different ways. The paper examines regulative, normative and cognitive elements of institutional arrangements, explores how they shape experimentation, and reflects on their place-based specificities. The comparative analysis suggests that the focus of, and approach to, experimentation can be understood as resting in a (possibly unique) combination of strategic agency and dynamics at multiple spatial scales.