The fall of liberalism and rise of the civilisation state: implications for middle powers

This article offers a theoretical, interpretative synthesis of scholarship on the erosion of liberal universalism, the rise of civilisation-state narratives and pressures on middle powers. Rather than conducting an independent discourse analysis, it compares how scholars interpret the civil-religious, historical and ideological narratives through which major powers justify authority and visions of order. It argues that the American liberal project – historically sustained by a civil-religious narrative of exceptionalism symbolised by the ‘city upon a hill’ – has entered a phase of ideological contraction as its universalist claims lose domestic coherence and international authority. In the resulting environment, major powers increasingly articulate self-understandings grounded in religious, historical and civilisational imaginaries that recast sovereignty and international order in particularistic terms. This pluralisation of legitimacy reshapes the strategic environment for middle powers, which must preserve autonomy within an order increasingly structured by competing demands for symbolic, moral and political alignment. Civilisational narratives function both as instruments of legitimation and mobilisation and as sources of structural vulnerability, requiring continual reinforcement and narrowing of the space for pluralism. The article argues that middle-power agency now depends not only on material balancing or institutional diplomacy, but also on narrative restraint, institutional diversification and maintaining pluralistic, non-messianic national identities.

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