Failing through success? How stable liberal orders become self-destabilising
本文提出自由主义秩序的稳定机制（普遍主义、包容性、回应性）在过度强化时会产生过剩、剥削和耗竭，反而导致秩序不稳定，对理解当前自由主义危机和政策制定有启示。
There is no shortage of diagnoses portraying liberal orders – both national and international – as either in decline, or, conversely, as uniquely resilient. Confronted with these contradictory assessments, this paper neither sides with the optimists’ emphasis on the continuing stability of liberal orders nor with the pessimists’ expectation that liberal orders are doomed. Instead, we argue that such contradictory views stem from a paradoxical dynamic: the very mechanisms that stabilise liberal orders can also contribute to their destabilisation. Building on principles widely seen as essential to the stability of liberal orders – universalism, inclusion, responsiveness – we conceptualise distinct paradoxes of stabilisation and destabilisation. These paradoxes arise through mechanisms of excess, exploitation and exhaustion, which transform stabilisation processes into destabilising dynamics once they are over-accentuated. We show that these mechanisms are at the core of many manifestations of today’s crisis of liberal order(s). By highlighting the dynamic interplay between success (stabilisation) and failure (destabilisation) of liberal orders, our analysis not advances theoretical debates on the fate of liberal orders but also holds significant implications for policymaking.