An illiberal economic order: commitment mechanisms become tools of authoritarian coercion

Globalization did not negate state power. It changed the toolkit. We expected the norms and incentives of the liberal economic order to push regimes in places like China and Russia to democratize. Instead, authoritarianism appears to be thriving. This article argues that authoritarians have learned how to take advantage of the institutions underpinning globalization for their own illiberal ends. They use courts in major economic powers to negate the effects of international institutions and to target their political competition. They subvert our expectations by repurposing the basic premises of liberalism–predictability and openness. The article demonstrates these claims by examining how the institutions of multiple international economic regimes, which were designed as constraints, have been turned into offensive tools. The findings illustrate that International Political Economy (IPE) scholars need to begin analyzing how governments learned these tactics and whether we can reconcile the contradictions they exploit.