Failing through success? How stable liberal orders become self-destabilising
30.10.2025
Der Open Access Artikel "Failing through success? How stable liberal orders become self-destabilising" wurde von Prof. Laura Seelkopf gemeinsam mit Prof. Christoph Knill, Prof. Berthold Rittberger und Prof. Bernhard Zangl im Journal of European Public Policy veröffentlicht.
Über folgenden Link kann auf den Artikel zugegriffen werden:
https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2025.2580519
Abstract: There is no shortage of diagnoses portraying liberal orders – both national and international – as either in decline, or, conversely, as uniquely resilient. Confronted with these contradictory assessments, this paper neither sides with the optimists’ emphasis on the continuing stability of liberal orders nor with the pessimists’ expectation that liberal orders are doomed. Instead, we argue that such contradictory views stem from a paradoxical dynamic: the very mechanisms that stabilise liberal orders can also contribute to their destabilisation. Building on principles widely seen as essential to the stability of liberal orders – universalism, inclusion, responsiveness – we conceptualise distinct paradoxes of stabilisation and destabilisation. These paradoxes arise through mechanisms of excess, exploitation and exhaustion, which transform stabilisation processes into destabilising dynamics once they are over?accentuated. We show that these mechanisms are at the core of many manifestations of today’s crisis of liberal order(s). By highlighting the dynamic interplay between success (stabilisation) and failure (destabilisation) of liberal
orders, our analysis not advances theoretical debates on the fate of liberal orders but also holds significant implications for policymaking.
