Contestations of Liberal Order

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

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2. Introduction

   • Marko Lehti, Henna-Riikka Pennanen, Jukka Jouhki

   Pages 1-15

3. Beyond Liberal Empire and Peace: Declining Hegemony of the West?

   • Marko Lehti, Henna-Riikka Pennanen

   Pages 17-59

4. Crises of the West: Liberal Identities and Ontological (In)Security

   • Marko Lehti, Henna-Riikka Pennanen

   Pages 61-97

5. From Identification to Division: Contesting the Unity of the West from Within

   • Johanna Vuorelma

   Pages 99-121

6. The West: Divided in Freedom and Fear?

   • Ville Sinkkonen, Henri Vogt

   Pages 123-150

7. They Hate Our Freedoms: Homosexuality and Islam in the Tolerant West

   • Roderick McGlynn

   Pages 151-174

8. Who Owns the West? German Political Establishment and the New Right

   • Ann-Judith Rabenschlag

   Pages 175-199

9. Imagining the West in the Era of America First

   • Henna-Riikka Pennanen, Anna Kronlund

   Pages 201-232

10. Resilience of the Humanitarian Narrative in US Foreign Policy

    • Noora Kotilainen

    Pages 233-261

11. Confrontational Civilizational Identity in the Making? The New Turkey and the West

    • Toni Alaranta

    Pages 263-288

12. A Russian Radical Conservative Challenge to the Liberal Global Order: Aleksandr Dugin

    • Jussi Backman

    Pages 289-314

13. A Non-world: Chinese Perceptions of the Western International Order

    • Matti Puranen

    Pages 315-341

14. Balancing Between Narratives of the West and Hindu Nationalism in Emerging India

    • Jukka Jouhki

    Pages 343-371

15. Back Matter

    Pages 373-384

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This volume explores the Western-led liberal order that is claimed to be in crisis. Currently, the West appears less as a modernizing or civilizing entity leading the way and more as being engulfed in a deep crisis. Simultaneously, the West still appears to be needed in order to imagine the global order by promoters of liberal peace as well as its opponents. This book asks how and why “crisis” is needed for constituting “the West,” liberal, and global order and how these three are conjoined and reinvented. The book encompasses narratives endorsing and rejecting the West and the liberal international order, as well as alternative visions for a post-Western world conceived within the rising and challenging powers. The study is of interest to scholars and students of international relations, critical security studies, peace and conflict research, and social sciences in general.

• liberal
• liberal international order
• the West
• crisis
• hegemony
• liberal world order
• liberal peace
• legitimacy
• crisis narratives
• civilization
• identity
• ontological security
• identification
• foreign policy
• Occidentalism
• Orientalism
• illiberalism
• tolerance
• open society
• humanitarianism

• Tampere Peace Research Institute, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland

  Marko Lehti

• Turku Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Turku, Turku, Finland

  Henna-Riikka Pennanen

• Department of History and Ethnology, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland

  Jukka Jouhki

Marko Lehti is Professor at Tampere Peace Research Institute (TAPRI) at Tampere University, Finland. His research focuses on peace mediation and dialogues, crises of liberal peace, transformation of identities, and the idea of Nordic peace. His recent publication is The Era of Private Peacemakers (Palgrave 2019).


Henna-Riikka Pennanen is Postdoctoral Researcher at the Turku Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Turku, Finland. Her research focuses on the United States–East Asia relations in the past and present.


Jukka Jouhki is Senior Lecturer of Anthropology at the Department of History and Ethnology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. He is the Director of The West Network endorsing multidisciplinary research on ‘the West’. His research focuses on communities and their identities.

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