Liberal International Order in Trouble

Leading expert in International Relations & former British Academy President, Professor Sir Adam Roberts will deliver a Keynote Lecture on the contemporary decline of the liberal order, calling for a rethinking of liberal ideas and practices. The term ‘liberal international order’ has become widely used—generally to refer to the international system that developed in the years after the end of the Cold War in 1989, or even to the whole period since the end of WWII. Although the term itself is relatively new, the ideas and practices that comprise it are not. They include multi-party democracy, the growth of international law and institutions, human rights, freedom of religious belief, the removal of barriers to international trade. This is not an elegy for a liberal international order that is now under threat, but rather a call for rethinking it, especially in light of its long, diverse and troubled history.