Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order.

• Author: Ozturk, Ozgur

By Alexander Cooley and Daniel Nexon

New York: Oxford University Press, 2020, 280 pages, $16.49 (Ebook), ISBN: 9780190054557

American hegemony, established in 1945, gained momentum after the collapse of the Soviet Union and has largely shaped the structure of international politics. Most states, willingly or unwillingly, have adopted the principles of the liberal order, such as democratic politics, free economic exchange, and multilateral institutions. However, the long-standing American hegemony is eroding today. Alexander Cooley and Daniel Nexon's Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order offers a detailed and timely analysis of that process. The authors contend that we are "experiencing a steady but unmistakable transformation of the ecology of international order" (p. 14). The root causes of that transformation, the authors argue, are the presence of great power challengers, the availability of exit options for weaker states, and the opposition of illiberal transnational networks. Cooley and Nexon stress that although the orthodox understanding of hegemonic transition exclusively rests on great power war, the transition has already begun without a single shot being fired. The authors conclude that no American government could reverse the trend and "exit is upon us" (p. 17).

Exit from Hegemony consists of eight chapters. The introductory chapter recalls the past debates on the hegemonic decline that took place during the 1970s and 1980s. Those debates were far from reflecting the reality since American hegemony proved its robustness. However, "this time is different," (p. 1) the authors argue, because Russia and China are now challenging the liberal international order, weak states are exerting pressure from below and right-wing transnationalism has arisen as a counter-order movement. Chapter 2 first defines the concepts of international order and liberal international ordering, then elaborates on the sources of variation in the ecology of international orders. Accordingly, international orders have architectures and infrastructures and while the former refers to rules, norms, and values, the latter is composed of relationships, practices, flows, and interactions (p. 16). Variation in the ecology of international orders takes shape according to "the density of their infrastructures and the degree to which their architectures are harmonized or conflictual" (p. 34). Chapter 3 exposes how hegemonic orders unravel. The...