Hegemony, Institutionalism and US Foreign Policy: theory and practice in comparative historical perspective MARK BEESON & RICHARD HIGGOTT ABSTRACT This paper explores the theoretical and policy implications of contemporary American hegemony. A key argument is that the development of US hegemony generally, and the distinctive turn in US foreign policy that has occurred in the wake of 11 September in particular, can best be understood by placing recent events in a comparative and historical framework. The immediate post-World War II order laid the foundations of a highly institutionalised multilateral system that provided key benefits for a number of countries while simultaneously constraining and enhancing US power. An historical reading of US hegemony suggests that its recent unilateralism is undermining the foundations of its power and influence. The re-election and subsequent policy direction of the administration of George W Bush suggests that the distinctive qualities that emerged during his first period in office will continue to be central to his second. Unilateralism, pre-emption and a disdain for the sort of multilateral order that distinguished earlier phases of US ascendancy look set to continue. Unsurprisingly, there has been an outpouring of analyses of the emerging ‘American empire’ as a consequence. Our contribution to this burgeoning debate is threefold. First, we suggest that US power is best thought of as hegemonic rather than imperial: from Vietnam to Iraq the empirical record suggests that Americans don’t do empire well. On the contrary, we argue that the USA has been most influential when its power has apparently been constrained by the array of institutions it helped create in the aftermath of the World War II. The second and main contribution of this paper, therefore, is to explain this seeming paradox by contrasting the postwar international order (PWIO) with the contemporary period. The central argument that emerges from this comparative exercise is that unilateralism is difficult to sustain, corrosive of American legitimacy, and is undermining the international institutional order it helped create—of which it has been the primary beneficiary. Indeed, the PWIO has been one of the principal mechanisms through which US national, rather than systemic, interests have been realised. Mark Beeson is in the School of Political Science and International Studies, Room 560, Building 39A, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. Email: m.beeson@uq.edu.au. Richard Higgott is in the Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK. Third World Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 7, pp 1173 – 1188, 2005 ISSN 0143-6597 print/ISSN 1360-2241 online/05/071173–16 Ó 2005 Third World Quarterly DOI: 10.1080/01436590500235777 1173