Challenges of the Liberal International Order (LIO)

The core institutions of the LIO are subject to increasingly intense contestation. We study the sources of this contestation with a particular focus on the endogenous, “homemade” factors which drive the contestation of the LIO and its sub-orders. In this context we investigate the contestation of international institutions through various contestation frames and contestation modes; as well as how IOs respond to their contestation. We also investigate neoliberal competition as a source of post-truth politics and challenge to the LIO and the task of critique today.

Publications

  • Knill, C., Kruck, A., Rittberger, B., Seelkopf, L., & Zangl, B. (2026). Failing through success? How stable liberal orders become self-destabilising. Journal of European Public Policy, 1-27.
  • Stacie E. Goddard, Ronald R. Krebs, Christian Kreuder-Sonnen & Berthold Rittberger. (2025, July 28). Liberalism Doomed the Liberal International Order. Foreign Affairs.
  • Goddard, S. E., Krebs, R. R., Kreuder-Sonnen, C., & Rittberger, B. (2024). Contestation in a world of liberal orders. Global Studies Quarterly, 4(2), ksae026.
  • Schindler, S. (2024). Post-truth politics and neoliberal competition: the social sources of dogmatic cynicism. International Theory, 16(1), 102-121.
  • Kreuder-Sonnen, C., & Rittberger, B. (2023). The LIO’s growing democracy gap: An endogenous source of polity contestation. Journal of international relations and development, 26(1), 61-85.
  • Kruck, A., Heinkelmann-Wild, T., Daßler, B., & Hobbach, R. (2022). Disentangling institutional contestation by established powers: Types of contestation frames and varying opportunities for the re-legitimation of international institutions. Global Constitutionalism, 11(2), 344-368.
  • Daßler, B., Heinkelmann-Wild, T., & Kruck, A. (2022). Wann eskalieren westliche Mächte institutionelle Kontestation? Interne Kontrolle, externe Effekte und Modi der Kontestation internationaler Institutionen. Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen, 29(H. 1), 6-37.
  • Heinkelmann-Wild, T., & Jankauskas, V. (2022). To yield or shield? Comparing international public administrations’ responses to member states’ policy contestation. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, 24(3), 296-312.
  • Schindler, S. (2020). The task of critique in times of post-truth politics. Review of International Studies, 46(3), 376-394.