Sovereign Power, Government and Global Liberalism’s Crisis

CUADRO, MARIELA

CONTEXTO INTERNACIONAL

INSTITUTO BRASILEIRO DE RELACOES INTERNACIONAIS

Año: 2021 vol. 43 p. 439 - 459

0102-8529

For some time now a leading cause of debate among IR scholars has been the so-calledLiberal International Order (LIO) and its assumed crisis. This article pierces this debate from a critical perspective asserting that different conceptions and analytics of power allow diverse questionson and diagnoses of liberalism in the global realm. With this objective, it confronts Ikenberry?sconception of LIO with the Foucauldian notion of liberalism. This is done by identifying the conception of power that underlies each notion of liberalism, assuming the former as performative.This way, it first defines two different conceptions of power: sovereign and governmental. Second,it links Ikenberry?s conception of LIO with the sovereign conception of power and points out thepolitical and analytical effects of this relation, mainly, the hierarchical character of LIO and the consequent desire for a West-led world. Third, it develops Foucault?s conception of liberalism linked togovernmental power and establishes some of its political and analytical effects: the importance of aheterarchical notion of power focused on the dimension of subject and subjectivity for the analysisof the present, and the political need to reflect on our practices of freedom.