The intellectual backdrop to this argument is a profound shift in how the international community treats democracy. In the immediate post-Cold War period, peace-building missions, international interventions, and security sector reform were explicitly conceived as vehicles for democratic governance, and Western security aid was frequently conditioned on liberalization, elections, and human rights commitments. That orientation collapsed rapidly after the early 2000s, the study argues, as terrorism, irregular migration, cyber-attacks, and renewed geopolitical rivalry pushed governments and international institutions toward “security first” models. Democracy conditionality was relaxed or abandoned in favor of reliable security partnerships, and authoritarian-leaning regimes received tolerance as long as they delivered cooperation. Democracy was reframed as an aspirational goal rather than an immediate imperative, creating a widening gap between rhetorical commitments and practical governance that forms the empirical basis of the research.

Protection diplomacy, as defined in the study, is a strategic exchange in which states secure regime survival and territorial protection through international guarantees, thereby reducing their dependence on domestic democratic legitimacy. Unlike conventional alliances built on reciprocity or shared values, these arrangements are characterized by asymmetry, dependence, and explicit political tradeoffs: states relinquish some measure of democratic input in exchange for military assistance, intelligence sharing, diplomatic cover, or financial aid. Crucially, the framework is not limited to autocracies. Authoritarian, hybrid, and democratic systems all engage in protection diplomacy when survival is at stake, which is precisely why the study treats it as a structural feature of modern international politics rather than a pathology of any single regime type.

The theoretical machinery behind the argument combines securitization theory from the Copenhagen School, critical political economy, and relational sovereignty. Securitization theory describes how political elites define an issue as an existential threat requiring extraordinary measures, suspending the deliberation, transparency, and accountability that normally constrain executive power. The study’s innovation is to show how foreign security commitments stabilize and prolong these threat narratives. When external patrons legitimize a regime’s definition of a security need, they lower the political cost of repression and rights restrictions. Emergency governance, once framed as temporary, becomes the normal way of doing business, and the distinction between emergency politics and ordinary politics dissolves. External actors, preferring predictable security partners over unpredictable reformers, remove the international pressure that might otherwise push regimes to de-securitize.

Relational sovereignty supplies the second analytical pillar. Against the idea that sovereignty confers untrammeled discretion, the study argues that sovereignty is socially constructed within an international hierarchy in which weaker states trade autonomy for protection, economic benefits, or recognition. Formal independence is retained while substantive autonomy narrows. External guarantors become de facto underwriters of regime stability, gaining influence over domestic political trajectories without public acknowledgment, while the norms of non-interference are formally observed. Drawing on hierarchy theory, the study notes that compliance in protection diplomacy extends beyond foreign policy alignment into domestic governance itself: border security becomes conditional on regime stability rather than democratic character, and democratic accountability comes to be seen as a liability rather than an asset within these hierarchical relationships.

From this framework the study derives four causal propositions. First, international security guarantees substitute for popular consent, reducing the cost of suppressing dissent. Second, international acceptance of a regime’s threat framing institutionalizes securitization and normalizes emergency government. Third, accountability shifts from citizens toward the foreign patron, weakening electoral and civic oversight even when elections continue. Fourth, and perhaps most counterintuitively, the short-term stabilization achieved through protection diplomacy generates long-term fragility, as institutional erosion, diminished legitimacy, and dependency cycles accumulate. The causal sequence runs from security assistance through internationally legitimized securitized governance, to executive centralization, to democratic erosion, and finally to a feedback loop in which growing instability deepens reliance on external security assistance, perpetuating the cycle.

The empirical cases illustrate how the same causal chain produces regionally distinct forms of erosion. In the Sahel, Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso cooperated for years with France, the United States, and the European Union on counterterrorism while domestic institutions collapsed. In Mali, a national state of emergency transferred sweeping authority to the armed forces, civil liberties restrictions expanded, oversight mechanisms were bypassed, and security assistance flowed directly to executive and military institutions without accountability. The study documents how external recognition of military leadership empowered officers, hollowed out civilian institutions, and contributed to a wave of military coups, after which international partners adapted by continuing to cooperate with military elites rather than terminating partnerships. Western criticism of human rights abuses remained largely symbolic and irregular, while counterterrorism operations displaced civilians and deepened grievances.

Eastern Europe demonstrates that protection diplomacy can operate inside formal democratic alliances. Hungary and Poland, both NATO and European Union members, received extensive security assurances that multiplied after geopolitical tensions with Russia reignited in 2014, weakening the leverage available to enforce democratic conditionality. Hungary’s government consolidated control over courts, media, and civil society under justifications of national cohesion and security, while the V-Dem Institute recorded a fall in the country’s liberal democracy score from nearly 0.80 in 2010 to approximately 0.30 in 2023, and Freedom House downgraded Hungary from Free to Partially Free in 2019. Elections continued, and opposition victories such as the Budapest mayoral races showed that competition persisted, but the study argues that protection diplomacy devalues elections rather than eliminating them. The European Union’s sanction mechanisms proved slow and consensus-bound, allowing illiberal normalization to proceed within the liberal international order itself.

The Middle East case shows the regime-focused variant in its starkest form. Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf monarchies rely on large-scale military support and diplomatic backing legitimized by regional instability. After the Arab Spring, external actors pivoted toward protecting incumbent regimes, treating democratic reform attempts as threats to stability. Egypt illustrates the pattern: despite a brief pause in some deliveries, the United States continued providing over 1.3 billion dollars per year in military assistance after the 2013 military takeover, while emergency law has been continuously extended since 2017, enabling broad detention powers and restrictions on assembly, and opposition figures have been prosecuted under counterterrorism charges. The study highlights the irony that security arrangements designed to produce stability instead bred insecurity, as coercion replaced legitimate political channels and external actors were repeatedly drawn back into crises of their own making.

The study’s conclusions carry significant implications for international relations theory and policy. Liberal theories have long assumed that security provision creates conditions for democratic consolidation; protection diplomacy shows the opposite can occur, meaning security agreements must be understood as governance mechanisms rather than merely strategic arrangements. Because democratic backsliding is co-authored by international and domestic processes, responsibility for it crosses borders, yet existing global governance frameworks contain no mechanism for assigning that responsibility. The study recommends differentiated democratic conditionality tailored to each donor, structural rather than merely declaratory de-securitization, security assistance that builds civilian institutions alongside military capacity, multilateral accountability mechanisms with democratic indicators and transparent agreements, and ultimately a reframing of security as a democratic public good in which citizens participate rather than an executive privilege. Without such reforms, the research warns, the short-term gains of protection diplomacy will continue to undermine the long-term institutional resilience on which both security and democracy ultimately depend.

Subject of Research: The relationship between external security guarantees and democratic erosion in the contemporary multipolar international order

Article Title: The tradeoff between democratic governance and external security guarantees in a multipolar order

Article References: Edmond, C. (2026). The tradeoff between democratic governance and external security guarantees in a multipolar order. Discover Global Society, 4(1), Article 224. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44282-026-00557-6

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44282-026-00557-6

Keywords: protection diplomacy, democratic backsliding, securitization, sovereignty, security alliances, Sahel, Eastern Europe, Middle East, authoritarianism, international relations, global governance, counterterrorism

The core of the argument is that the United States has shifted its strategic ambition from sustaining global governance to advancing national goals within a competitive system. Where the neoliberal unipolar order of the 1990s and 2000s rested on the premise that a benevolent hegemon would underwrite institutions such as the WTO, the UN framework, and the liberal trading system, the emerging order is one in which a declining hegemon and rising powers vie to promote norms that serve their respective national interests. In this environment, the authors argue, the Trumpist mix of unilateral enforcement, bilateral coercion, and selective multilateralism is not a contradiction but a toolkit, with each instrument deployed according to a ruthless cost-benefit calculus aimed at maximizing American leverage against strategic competitors such as China and Russia.

The theoretical framework the authors develop, which they term the post-neoliberal competitive global order, builds on scholarship about transnational legal orders, the processes by which global norms are constructed, contested, and institutionalized across national boundaries. Halliday and Carruthers’s classic model of recursive lawmaking described global norm-making as a negotiation between international standard-setters and national lawmakers. Sun and Yu argue that this model must be augmented to capture contemporary dynamics, because norm-making has shifted from multilateral consensus-building toward overt coercion and geopolitical bargaining. They identify three interconnected processes defining the new order: agenda-setting for global norms has become a contested arena rather than a cooperative endeavor; norm-making itself is increasingly characterized by coercion rather than persuasion; and enforcement now spans a spectrum from unilateral sanctions to selective multilateral mechanisms, with great powers strategically choosing among them.

The first pillar of the Trumpist strategy, unilateral enforcement, is illustrated most vividly by trade policy. The calculated paralysis of the WTO’s Appellate Body, achieved by blocking the appointment of judges, was not simply an exit from a dispute mechanism but a coercive act that dismantled a binding legal constraint perceived as no longer serving US interests. What followed was an unprecedented global tariff war. According to the study, the imposition of high, across-the-board levies caused a dramatic drop in global exports to the United States, with EU exports falling 21 percent and Chinese exports falling 36 percent in a single quarter of 2025. China retaliated against a 54 percent US tariff with 34 percent tariffs on all American imports, and in a striking reversal of alignments, the European Union and China issued a rare joint statement condemning the widespread disruption caused by the US tariffs and stressing their shared responsibility to support a strong, reformed trading system.

Unilateral enforcement extended well beyond trade. The withdrawal from the Paris Agreement signaled that the United States would no longer be bound by collective climate targets it deemed economically disadvantageous, challenging the existing agenda of global environmental governance. In the security domain, airstrikes against Iranian facilities were conducted outside the framework of the UN Security Council, an assertion that non-proliferation norms would be enforced through unilateral force when multilateral institutions were judged too slow or politically constrained. The authors emphasize that these moves should not be read as isolationist retreat. Rather, they represent a hegemon selectively abandoning its role as steward of multilateral governance in order to wield raw power in a manner it believes maximizes advantage, even at the cost of weakening the very system it once shaped.

The second pillar, bilateral coercion, operates through one-on-one pressure where American power advantages are most pronounced. The renegotiation of NAFTA into the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement is the paradigmatic case. By negotiating directly with Canada and Mexico, the United States imposed new model clauses that would have been impossible to secure in a multilateral forum, including the elimination or narrowing of investor-state dispute mechanisms and restrictions on partners’ trade agreements with so-called non-market economies, a clear reference to China. The study describes this as a deliberate act of bilateral coercion designed to promote US-centric rules for international trade while isolating strategic competitors and avoiding collective resistance from emerging powers in venues such as the WTO.

The same coercive logic was applied to alliance management. Rather than working through the North Atlantic Council, where collective pressure could be exerted back on Washington, the administration opted for direct, public bilateral criticism of individual European allies, as well as Asian partners including Japan and South Korea, demanding significant increases in defense spending. The objective, according to the authors, was to shatter the collective free-rider problem in collective security by replacing collaborative consensus with asymmetric bilateral pressure, compelling allies to internalize costs the United States had previously borne and freeing American financial and military resources for strategic competition elsewhere. Alliance relationships were thus restructured on purely transactional terms.

The third pillar, selective multilateralism, completes the strategic triad and explains the puzzle of why an administration hostile to broad institutions simultaneously deepened engagement in others. The strengthening of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue with Japan, Australia, and India exemplifies a limited coalitional effort aimed at establishing a norm of a free and open Indo-Pacific as a direct counter to China’s expanding influence, without subjecting the United States to the institutional constraints of bodies like the UN or NATO. In global health, the study notes, the administration withdrew funding from the WHO while engaging with and funding the Global Fund, a limited, voluntary mechanism where US pharmaceutical interests held disproportionate sway; the US State Department’s own America First Global Health Strategy records that the Global Fund has procured 3.5 billion dollars in goods and services from US corporations since 2010. Similarly, the administration maintained influence in the IMF and used the UN Security Council’s snapback procedure to restore sanctions on Iran, favoring institutions where it holds veto power while disengaging from those led by competitors.

The implications, the authors conclude, are profound. The strategic selectivity of Trumpism has accelerated the fragmentation of global governance into a contested regime complexity, creating governance vacuums and a precarious gap in the supply of global norms and public goods at precisely the moment when challenges such as climate change and pandemics demand collective action. Theoretically, the framework suggests that hegemonic dominance generates a recursive response from competing powers: China is developing corresponding governance initiatives, including the Belt and Road Initiative and newly founded multilateral institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which paradoxically embrace multilateralism even as the declining hegemon turns unilateral. The authors draw a historical parallel to the rivalry between a declining British Empire and an emerging United States after World War I, when the declining power favored coercive measures while the rising power championed Wilsonian multilateralism. If that pattern holds, the cost-benefit calculus articulated by Trumpism is likely to persist across administrations, compelling a lasting reshaping of multilateralism and the very structure of the global governance order in the twenty-first century.

Subject of Research: The Trumpist strategy of selective engagement with global governance institutions in a post-neoliberal competitive global order

Article Title: The trumpist rationale of global governance in post-neoliberal competitive global order

Article References: Sun, J., & Yu, H. (2025). The trumpist rationale of global governance in post-neoliberal competitive global order. Global Public Policy and Governance, 5(4), 316-328. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43508-025-00132-w

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43508-025-00132-w

Keywords: global governance, Trumpism, unilateralism, selective multilateralism, bilateral coercion, post-neoliberal order, US-China rivalry, WTO, tariff war, Paris Agreement, hegemonic stability, international relations