Paul Tucker, a Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and former deputy governor of the Bank of England, explores the intricacies of international cooperation in a fractured world. He discusses how democracies can navigate tensions with authoritarian regimes like China while upholding their values. Tucker critiques traditional international relations theories, advocating for a new framework that intertwines morality with power. He emphasizes legitimacy as essential for global governance and examines the implications of China's rise on international norms and alliances.
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insights INSIGHT
Cooperation Built on Shared Values
Cooperation among states depends on shared norms internalized as values rather than mere transactional interests.
Tucker combines David Hume's and Bernard Williams' philosophies to explain how values with grit support international cooperation.
insights INSIGHT
Legitimacy Grounds International Institutions
International institutions have real value because their norms are internalized and guide cooperation even without coercion.
The effectiveness of international regimes depends on a broader peaceful coexistence maintained by global power patterns.
insights INSIGHT
Legitimacy Means Acquiescing to Authority
Legitimacy means accepting a state's right to enforce law, not unconditional moral obedience.
Tacit consent is limited, so legitimacy comes from norms we critically reflect on and accept as valid.
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How to sustain an international system of cooperation in the midst of geopolitical struggle? Can the international economic and legal system survive today’s fractured geopolitics? Democracies are facing a drawn-out contest with authoritarian states that is entangling much of public policy with global security issues. In Global Discord: Values and Power in a Fractured World Order (Princeton University Press, 2024), Paul Tucker lays out principles for a sustainable system of international cooperation, showing how democracies can deal with China and other illiberal states without sacrificing their deepest political values. Drawing on three decades as a central banker and regulator, Tucker applies these principles to the international monetary order, including the role of the U.S. dollar, trade and investment regimes, and the financial system. Combining history, economics, and political and legal philosophy, Tucker offers a new account of international relations. Rejecting intellectual traditions that go back to Hobbes, Kant, and Grotius, and deploying instead ideas from David Hume, Bernard Williams, and modern mechanism-design economists, Tucker describes a new kind of political realism that emphasizes power and interests without sidelining morality. Incentives must be aligned with values if institutions are to endure. The connecting tissue for a system of international cooperation, he writes, should be legitimacy, creating a world of concentric circles in which we cooperate more with those with whom we share the most and whom we fear the least.
Paul Tucker is a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and the author of Unelected Power (Princeton). He is a former central banker and regulator at the Bank of England, and a former director at Basel's Bank for International Settlements, where he chaired some of the groups designing reforms of the international financial system after the Global Financial Crisis.
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