Party-Political Contestation of the Liberal International Order

My research project on the party-political contestation of the liberal international order will be funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) between 2023 and 2026.

Project Summary

The liberal international order (LIO) is in a severe crisis. In addition to being challenged by non-liberal rising powers such as China, the LIO’s three pillars – free movement of goods and people, rule-based cooperation, and military interventions to protect and promote liberal values abroad – have been politically contested within the societies of the Global North, which have been its main stakeholders. In order to understand the challenge to the LIO from within the Global North, this project examines patterns of party-political contestation of all three pillars of the LIO because political parties are the key intermediaries between citizens’ attitudes and government policies. The project will analyse patterns of support for and opposition to the LIO in Western Europe as well as in two understudied regions: post-communist Eastern Europe and East Asia. The project will examine parliamentary votes and speeches in Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic, South Korea and Japan in order to answer the empirical questions how political parties have positioned themselves on the three pillars of the LIO and how these positions have developed and changed over time. Furthermore, the project will advance a theory of the foreign policy space by linking parties’ policy positions to political core values and by identifying the main cleavages that structure the party politics of foreign policy.

An abbridged version of the grant proposal with a more detailed description of the theoretical background, the methodological approach and the envisioned case studies can be found here.

Project Team

from left to right: Oliver Crazzolara (student assistant), Martina Stankova (PhD), Wolfgang Wagner (back row), Richard Sonneveld (PhD), Sungmi Shin (PhD), Lourdes Melese (student assistant) (front row).

picture taken by Özlem Terzi, February 2023

Fieldwork by Sungmi in South Korea

Sungmi Shin conducted her second fieldwork in various cities of South Korea from December 2025 to January 2026. During this period, she carried out semi-structured interviews with academics, members of the National Assembly, and former administrative and specialized staff of the National Assembly.

To examine recent research trends in Korean party politics, she conducted interviews with Dr. Professor Park Kyung-mi of Jeonbuk National University

and Dr. Professor Jin Hwalmin of Chonnam National University, both of whom are considered to be the top expert in Korean party politics and security issues.

She also visited the National Assembly and participated in the seminar titled “The foreign policy of the Dakaichi Administration and future prospects” organized by the incumbent vice-president of the National Assembly,

Joo Ho Young, the member of the National Assembly from the People’s Power Party. She conducted the follow-up interview with Mr. Nam Kiyoon, the chief of Staff to the vice-president.

In addition to meeting up with the former employees of the National Assembly in various constituencies, she also interviewed Ms. Kim Jung-hwa, the former Representative of the Minsang Party, who had served as the chief spokesperson of Bareun Mirae Party.

Through her second fieldwork, she gained insights into current trends and future prospects in Korean party politics related to foreign policy issues. These rare first-hand interview materials, providing insights not readily available through existing literature or media sources, will serve as a valuable source for her PhD dissertation.

Book workshop in November 2025

More than a year before the deadline to submit our manuscript to Oxford University Press, we discussed a first draft of our manuscript with experts on foreign policy and party politics. From left to right: Patrick Mello, Lien Jansen, Martina Stanková, Bertjan Verbeek, Mina Pollmann, Sungmi Shin, Richard Sonneveld and Francesco Baraldi (not in the picture: Julia Rone).

Lien Jansen visiting our poject

From October to December 2025, Lien Jansen is visiting our project. Lien does her PhD at the KU Leuven on the impact of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine on the dynamics within the European Parliament, particularly regarding EU enlargement to the Western Balkan countries. We share an interest in the party politics of foreign policy and in voting data to analyse this.

Martina Stanková presents her research at IPSA in Seoul

In July 2025, Martina Stanková attended the 25th World Congress of Political Science in Seoul to present her research on Party Ideology and International Treaty Ratification in Central Europe: Contestation and Politicisation.

Sungmi Shin Conducts Field Work in Korea

In September 2024, Sungmi Shin completed her first fieldwork in Korea, where she conducted interviews with public servants from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) of the Republic of Korea. These interviews sought to explore the nuances and insights surrounding the working relationship between the National Assembly and MOFA, as well as the perspectives of public servants on the National Assembly’s role in foreign policy-making. In addition to the interviews, she gathered data from the National Assembly Library, known for its extensive collection of articles and books.

Martina Stanková presenting her research in Rijeka and Florence

In June 2024, Martina Stanková presented her research on populism and foreign policy in Czechia and Slovakia at the joint conference of the Central and Eastern European International Studies Association (CEEISA) and the International Studies Association (ISA) in Rijeka/Croatia and at the workshop on political behavior in Central and Eastern Europe at the European University Institute in Florence.

First findings on treaty ratifications presented at workshop in Berlin

We wrote our first joint paper on “Party-political contestation of the international legal order.
Patterns of politicization in parliamentary treaty ratification votes, 1998-2023″ for the workshop
“Comparative International Legal Policy. National Political Approaches towards International Legal Order” that was organized by Malcolm Jorgensen (Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law) and Christian Marxsen (Humboldt University Berlin) at the Harnack House, Berlin in June 2024.

We find that the number of treaty ratifications has been declining and that the degree of contestation and politicization has been increasing.

Alexander Dannerhäll is visiting scholar in our project

In May 2024, Alexander Dannerhäll is visiting our project as a guest. Alexander is a PhD at Oslo Metropolitan University and writes his dissertation on the globalization backlash in Sweden. He recently published on the trade preferences of the radical right Sweden Democrats in Politics and Governance.

Wolfgang Wagner visiting scholar at Waseda University in Tokyo

In April 2024, the project brought me to Waseda University in Tokyo/Japan as a visiting scholar.I had background talks with practitioners, exchanged thoughts with colleagues and presented the project and our preliminary findings on Japan at Kobe University. This was a great opportunity to learn about Japanese politics and security and defense in particular. The picture shows me with my host Atsushi Tago who is also a member of the project’s advisory board and co-supervisor of Sungmi Shin.

kickoff-conference on 11 July 2023

On 11 July 2023 we had our kickoff conference with a keynote by Stephanie Hofmann (European University Institute) and presentations by Baris Ertürk, Sungmi Shin, Martina Stankova, Christina Stremming, Richard Sonneveld, and Vanessa Vohs. For a full program see here.