The liberal international order, founded on theories of democratic peace, economic interdependence and liberal institutionalism, represents the most ambitious attempt of building a systematic world order in history. This order, however, faces a sustainability crisis, as the success of its own agenda has enabled the rise of illiberal powers that challenge it from within. This Master's thesis examines how the foreign policy behaviour of these illiberal actors affects the order's constitutive elements – liberal values and principles, institutional multilateralism and international norms – across the security, economic and legal-normative sub-systems. A historical-developmental analysis shows that illiberal powers have, in various stages of the order's lifecycle, acted both as challengers and as indirect co-creators from the outside. In the third millenium, they operate from within the existing institutions and build alternative governance mechanisms. The case study of China reveals how this great power undermines the rule of law and the institutional architecture within the security sub-system. In the economic sub-system, China is setting up parallel structures of economic governance that hinder the global integration based on liberal norms. In the legal-normative sub-system, China seeks to reinterpret liberal principles such as universality of human rights, thus diverting the liberal order away from its original purpose. Nevertheless, the liberal order retains internal mechanisms of resilience, including a deep institutional embeddedness of states and norms that legitimise it. In the transition to multipolarity, integration of illiberal powers represents a key challenge to the legitimacy of the liberal order.
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