Liberalism
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Study guide
-Origin: Locke
-Main idea: necessity of just orders in
order to survive
-Prescriptive, normative theory
-Appeared as a study in 20th century
-War - evidence of failure
-Main actors: states+non-state actors
-Interdependence —> harmony of
interests —> rule of law —>
cooperation—> peace
-Anarchy
-Liberals prefer formal agreements
-The most just form of order is
provided by regimes
Krasner(1983): sets of... principles, norms, rules and decision-making procedures around which
actors’ expectations converge in a given area of international relations.
- Regimes codify actors’ rights and responsibilities in a series of treaties, agreements and
charters
- Institutions must be codi ed into international law. IOs ensure peace
- Absolute gains—> order is stable
- Peace is best achieved through the liberation of humanity from authoritarian rule
through democratic politics
- Democratic peace theory (DPT) - liberal democracies will not go to war with one
another
- Goal: establishment of liberal democratic domestic governments around the world - pursued
through military means(humanitarian intervention)
- Skepticism: ghting for peace? Afghanistan 2001, Iraq 2003
- UN - one of the main IOs
- Limitations:UN is not a global government, operates internationally, not domestically, no power
over states.
- UN can choose to intervene economically, politically or militarily
- global governance – the coordination of international action in pursuit of actors’
shared goals.
- From the point of view of Liberals, limitation is a natural product of the anarchic
international arena in which the UN operates
- Liberalism is good at analysing ecological crises, economic downturns, etc.
CA: cannot analyse the resistance of the DPT, etc.
- WW1: before 1914 world was dominated by institutions that encouraged competition and
con ict - militarism and nationalism – the belief that the world is divided into separate
identity groups that de ne themselves in opposition to one another.
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, - +Westphalian international society=state of war in 1914
- Between 1919 and 1939: Ikenberry - liberalism 1.0 - idealism(International law, League
of Nations
- Fail of post-1918 settlement —> Hegemonic stability theory - the idea that an
international society is most stable when it is supported by one or more states that are
both willing and able to reward supporters and punish opponents of the international
order.
- WW1 - failure to establish clear disincentives around the use of force
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BSO
- Time when liberalism was one of the most in uential theories: 1919-1939; after WW2
(UN) to the beg. of CW; 1990s - 9/11
- Hoffman(1987): 'international affairs have been the nemesis of Liberalism'. 'The
essence of Liberalism', Hoffmann continues, 'is self-restraint, moderation, compromise
and peace' whereas 'the essence of international politics is exactly the opposite: troubled
peace, at best, or the state of war'
- Liberals argue that power politics itself is the product of ideas, an crucially-ideas can
change. Therefore, even if the world has been inhospitable to liberalism, this does not
mean that it cannot be re-made in its own image.
- Doyle(1997): 4-dimensional de nition: 1) all citizens are equal and have basic rights
2)the legislative assembly possesses only the authority invested in it by the people 3)the
right to own property 4)the most effective system of economic exchange is one that is
largely market-driven and not one that is subordinate to bureaucratic regulation and
control.
- Liberalism as theory of government and international theory. Liberals see a parallel
between individuals and sovereign states: states have a right of non-intervention.
Sometimes a collective action is necessary=> need IOs.
- Kant and Bentham - Enlightenment - plans for 'perpetual peace’, reason could deliver
freedom and justice in international relations
- Kant's claim that liberal states are paci c in their international relations with other liberal
states was revived in the 1980s. In a much-cited article, Michael Doyle argued that
liberal states have created a 'sep rate peace' (1986: 1151). According to Doyle, there are
two elements to the Kantian legacy: restraint among liberal states and 'international
imprudence' in rel tions with non-liberal states.
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, - Democratic peace thesis: explanation why it is right: empirical evidence, a lower
frequency of co icts between liberal and non-liberal states(contrary to historical
evidence), liberal states are wealthier.
- Fukuyama(1989): ‘End of History’ - liberalism’s triumph over other ideologies
- Doyle(1995): li eral democracies are as aggressive as any other type of state in their
relations with authoritarian regimes and stateless peoples
- Bentham believed that federal states such as the German Diet, the American
Confederation, and the Swiss League were able to transform their identity from one
based on con icting interests to a more peac ful federation.
- Cobden's belief that free trade would create a more peaceful world order is a core idea
of nineteenth-ce tury liberalism. Trade brings mutual gains to all the players
- twentieth century: The idea of a natural harmony of interests in inte national political and
economic relations came under challenge: WW1
- The First World War shifted liberal thinking towards a recognition that peace is not a
natural condition but is one that must be constructed. Woolf argued that peace and
prosperity required 'consciously devised machinery' (Luard 1992: 465)
- Wilson: peace could only be secured with the creation of an international organ sation to
regulate international anarchy. League of Nations and the system of collective
security(each state in the system accepts that the security of one is the concern of all, and
agrees to join in a collective response to aggression)
- LoN: self-determination. CA: What would happen to newly created minorities who
felt no allegiance to the self-determining state? Could a democratic process adequately
deal with questions of identity-who was to decide what constituency was to participate in
a ballot? What if a newly self-determined state rejected liberal dem cratic norms?
CA2: failure of idealism, LoN was disaster - it did not include the United States
of America, it did not include the USSR – which was excluded on the grounds that it was
considered a rogue state, it did nothing to deal with the grievances of states like Italy,
Japan and Germany
- After 1945: pragmatic liberalism - understanding of a necessity of international
institution. UN with veto-system
- With the ideological polarity of the cold war, the UN procedures for collective security
were stillborn(as either of the superpowers and their allies would veto any action
proposed by the other).It was not until the end of the cold war that cooperation among
the great powers was suf ciently well developed for collective security to be enacted, such
as was evident in response to the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq on 2 August 1990.
- David Mitrany (1943): cooperation was required in order to resolve common problems.
His core concept was 'rami cation', meaning the likelihood that cooperation in one sector
would lead governments to extend the range of collaboration across other sectors.
- 60s-70s: This argument about the positive bene ts from tran national cooperation is one
that informed a new gener tion of scholars (because also of the appearance of non-
state actors - pluralism)
- Keohane and Joseph Nye (1972) argued that the centrality of other actors had to be taken
into consideration.
- Perhaps the most important contribution of pluralism was its elaboration of
interdependence. Due to the expansion of capitalism and the emergence of a global
culture, pluralists recognised a growing inte connectedness in which 'changes in one part
of the sy tem have direct and indirect consequences for the rest of the system' (Little
1996: 77).
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