Delegitimating U.S. Hegemony

Abstract

The relative distribution of power in todays international system is shifting from one of unipolarity. The shift has not yet been significant enough to allow balance of power, or a coalition of states led by China against the United States, but has been large enough to raise demands for an alternative order. In this setting, how can we conceptually locate the current stage of competition between China and the United States? What framework other than power can best capture the behavior of China? This thesis answers this question by adopting delegitimation as an analytical framework to explain Chinas behavior against the United States and the international order created under U.S. influence. Legitimacy and delegitimation have not been researched extensively thus far because of an overwhelming tendency towards adopting a power framework. There is no synthesized work on the concept of delegitimation, and the idea has not been operationalized to be applied in analyzing any nations behavior. To fill in these gaps, this thesis adopts delegitimation as one phase in Modelskis long cycle model as an analytical framework to operationalize the concept of delegitimation and apply it to recent behaviors exhibited by China, focusing on the G20 Summits and the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference (COP15) in 2009 as case studies. The results of the study are as follows. First, Chinas behavior has delegitimated the United States and the U.S.-dominated order in the G20 Summits and the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference. Second, the degree of delegitimation in the two areas were different

delegitimation was strong at the G20 Summits and weaker at the Copenhagen Conference. These results offer intriguing implications on the pattern of Chinas delegitimation in terms of occurrence and degree, as can be seen through the temporal significance of the year 2009 and sectoral differences in occurrence and degree of delegitimation. The results of this study contribute to the growing body of research on the U.S.-China relationship, which has been mainly examined within the frameworks of power transition or balance of power. Analyzing Chinas behavior through the framework of legitimacy and delegitimation allows a reinterpretation of Chinas apparent inaction and non-events in the currently shifting international order into action and events.