The liberal international order is a fragmented institutional complex, comprising often disparate elements. One of these is a distinctive institutional approach to the global organization of cultural difference. This approach combines universal Westphalian sovereignty (and the pluralist interstate order it facilitates) with international human rights norms that seek to protect the cultural freedoms of individuals. I term this institutional amalgam “global pluralism”. Like many elements of the liberal order, such pluralism is now under challenge, confronted by resurgent ethno-nationalism, politicized religion, and civilizational chauvinism. The key question is whether global pluralism has the adaptive capacities to withstand such challenges. This article develops a theoretical framework for comprehending these institutional capacities. Conceiving global pluralism as a “diversity regime,” I argue that such regimes always rest on social “recognition contracts,” and that these give them certain structural characteristics: configurations of political authority and modes of cultural recognition. Focusing on these characteristics, I compare global pluralism with past Western and non-Western diversity regimes, and clarify the adaptive strengths and weaknesses of different institutional forms. This contractual-structural analysis exposes the historical uniqueness of global pluralism but also its structural vulnerabilities. While global pluralism has distinct advantages over past diversity regimes—principally, that it does not itself generate unstable cultural cleavages and hierarchies—it requires complex forms of social contracting to sustain, and its individualist mode of recognition struggles to accommodate collectivist cultural claims. Such contracting is essential, however, if global pluralism is to withstand current challenges, all of which involve collectivist claims.

自由国际秩序是一个支离破碎的制度复合体，通常由不同的要素组成。其中之一是针对全球文化差异组织的独特制度方法。这种方法将威斯特伐利亚的普遍主权（及其促进的多元化国家间秩序）与寻求保护个人文化自由的国际人权规范相结合。我将这种制度混合称为“全球多元主义”。像自由秩序的许多元素一样，这种多元主义现在面临着挑战，面临着复兴的民族主义、政治化的宗教和文明沙文主义。关键问题是全球多元主义是否具有应对此类挑战的适应能力。本文为理解这些制度能力建立了一个理论框架。将全球多元主义视为一种“多样性制度”，我认为这种制度总是依赖于社会“承认契约”，而这些赋予它们某些结构特征：政治权威的配置和文化承认的模式。围绕这些特征，我将全球多元化与过去的西方和非西方多元化制度进行了比较，并阐明了不同制度形式的适应性优势和劣势。这种契约结构分析揭示了全球多元主义的历史独特性，但也揭示了其结构上的脆弱性。虽然全球多元化与过去的多元化体制相比具有明显的优势——主要是它本身不会产生不稳定的文化分裂和等级制度——它需要复杂的社会契约形式来维持，其个人主义的承认模式努力适应集体主义的文化主张。然而，如果全球多元主义要承受当前的挑战，所有这些都涉及集体主义主张，这种契约是必不可少的。