The Selective Moralism Trap: Trust, Legitimacy, and Sovereignty in the Contestation of the Liberal International Order

Federico  Verri

doi:10.60027/iarj.2026.e301992

Authors

Federico Verri British School of Timișoara, Timișoara, Romania https://orcid.org/0009-0008-5841-0674

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.60027/iarj.2026.e301992

Keywords:

Behavioural Political Economy, Trust and Legitimacy, Selective Moralism, Multipolarity, Sovereignty and Security

Abstract

Background and Aims: This conceptual review article examines why accusations of Western double standards have become a durable frame in the contestation of the liberal international order. Existing international-relations scholarship has explained this contestation mainly through changes in material power, norm diffusion, or status politics. Less attention has been given to the behavioral micro-foundations through which perceived hypocrisy becomes a self-reinforcing source of mistrust. The article, therefore, asks how perceptions of selective moralism are aggregated into state-level diplomatic behavior and what this mechanism means for trust, legitimacy, sovereignty, and security in a multiplex world order.

Methodology: The study uses a conceptual review design. It synthesizes literature on liberal-order contestation, political trust, procedural justice, and behavioral political economy. Five paired historical episodes from 1999 to 2024 are used as illustrative cases, selected because each pair contains a comparable norm claim but divergent Western framing. The cases are not treated as a coded dataset; they are used for theory-building comparison, mechanism clarification, boundary-condition identification, and the development of falsifiable expectations.

Results: The review reveals that the selective-moralism frame resonates because it transforms diffuse resentments into perceptions of hypocrisy. These perceptions are then mediated by leaders’ narrative strategies, bureaucratic pathologies, media hype, partisan competition, and coalition calculus. The two episodes illustrate a common pattern: asymmetric norm enforcement, perception of fairness violations, motivated social cognition, trust displacement, and hedging. Structural realist theories point to enabling conditions; constructivist theories point to normative contestation. Behavioral political economy explains how the accusation of hypocrisy becomes pervasive and durable.

Conclusion: The selective-moralism trap is conceptualized here as a behavioral force multiplier, not as an analytical substitute for structural realism or constructivism. Institutions that seek to rebuild trust also need to mitigate perceptions of procedural unfairness on their own merits, through consistency, transparency, correctability, and representativeness. Three practical measures are proposed: procedural-fairness audits, reform of international-relations curricula, and early-warning indicators linking legitimacy shortfalls to conflict-prevention mechanisms. Keywords: behavioral political economy; selective moralism; liberal international order; procedural justice; multipolarity.

References

Acharya, A. (2018). Constructing global order: Agency and change in world politics. Cambridge University Press.

Adler-Nissen, R., & Zarakol, A. (2021). Struggles for recognition: The liberal international order and the merger of its discontents. International Organization, 75(2), 611–634. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818320000454

Allison, G. (2017). Destined for war: Can America and China escape Thucydides’s trap? Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Bicchieri, C. (2017). Norms in the wild: How to diagnose, measure, and change social norms. Oxford University Press.

Buzan, B., & Lawson, G. (2015). The global transformation: History, modernity and the making of international relations. Cambridge University Press.

Cooley, A., & Nexon, D. H. (2020). Exit from hegemony: The unraveling of the American global order. Oxford University Press.

Downs, G. W., & Rocke, D. M. (1994). Conflict, agency, and gambling for resurrection: The principal-agent problem goes to war. American Journal of Political Science, 38(2), 362–380. https://doi.org/10.2307/2111408

Hafner-Burton, E. M., Haggard, S., Lake, D. A., & Victor, D. G. (2017). The behavioral revolution and international relations. International Organization, 71(S1), S1–S31. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818316000400

Haidt, J. (2012). The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion. Pantheon Books.

Hopf, T. (2002). Social construction of international politics: Identities and foreign policies, Moscow, 1955 and 1999. Cornell University Press.

Hurd, I. (2007). After anarchy: Legitimacy and power in the United Nations Security Council. Princeton University Press.

Ikenberry, G. J. (2018). The end of liberal international order? International Affairs, 94(1), 7–23. https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iix241

Kahan, D. M. (2017). Misconceptions, misinformation, and the logic of identity-protective cognition. Cultural Cognition Project Working Paper Series, Article 164. Yale Law School. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2973067

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Kalyvas, S. N. (2019). The landscape of political violence. In E. Chenoweth, R. English, A. Gofas, & S. N. Kalyvas (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of terrorism (pp. 11–33). Oxford University Press.

Krause, K., & Milliken, J. (2009). Introduction: The challenge of non-state armed groups. Contemporary Security Policy, 30(2), 202–220. https://doi.org/10.1080/13523260903077296

Lake, D. A., Martin, L. L., & Risse, T. (2021). Challenges to the liberal order: Reflections on International Organization. International Organization, 75(2), 225–257. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818320000636

Levi, M., & Stoker, L. (2000). Political trust and trustworthiness. Annual Review of Political Science, 3, 475–507. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.3.1.475

Mattern, J. B., & Zarakol, A. (2016). Hierarchies in world politics. International Organization, 70(3), 623–654. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818316000126

Mearsheimer, J. J. (2019). Bound to fail: The rise and fall of the liberal international order. International Security, 43(4), 7–50. https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00342

OECD. (2022). Building trust to reinforce democracy: Main findings from the 2021 OECD survey on drivers of trust in public institutions. OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/b407f99c-en

Ostrom, E. (2010). Beyond markets and states: Polycentric governance of complex economic systems. American Economic Review, 100(3), 641–672. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.100.3.641

Pouliot, V. (2016). International pecking orders: The politics and practice of multilateral diplomacy. Cambridge University Press.

Pytlik-Zillig, L. M., & Kimbrough, C. D. (2016). Consensus on conceptualizations and definitions of trust: Are we there yet? In E. Shockley, T. M. S. Neal, L. M. Pytlik-Zillig, & B. H. Bornstein (Eds.), Interdisciplinary perspectives on trust: Towards theoretical and methodological integration (pp. 17–47). Springer.

Reus-Smit, C. (2007). International crises of legitimacy. International Politics, 44(2–3), 157–174. https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.ip.8800182

Schnellenbach, J., & Schubert, C. (2015). Behavioral political economy: A survey. European Journal of Political Economy, 40(Part B), 395–417. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2015.05.002

Schweller, R. L. (2018). Three cheers for Trump’s foreign policy: What the establishment misses. Foreign Affairs, 97(5), 133–143.

Stuenkel, O. (2020). The BRICS and the future of global order (2nd ed.). Lexington Books.

Tyler, T. R. (2006). Why do people obey the law? Princeton University Press.

Voeten, E. (2021). Ideology and international institutions. Princeton University Press.

Wiener, A. (2018). Contestation and constitution of norms in global international relations. Cambridge University Press.

Zürn, M. (2018). A theory of global governance: Authority, legitimation, and contestation. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198819974.001.0001