LIBERALISM THEORY

My Rough Notes Liberalism Theory and Concept

Basic Assumptions:

Liberalism contains a variety of concepts and arguments about how institutions, behaviours
and economic connections contain and mitigate the violent power of states. When compared
to realism, it adds more factors into our field of view – especially a consideration of citizens
and international organisations. Most notably, liberalism has been the traditional foil of
realism in IR theory as it offers a more optimistic world view, grounded in a different reading
of history to that found in realist scholarship.
The basics of liberalism
Liberalism is based on the moral argument that ensuring the right of an individual person to
life, liberty and property is the highest goal of government. Consequently, liberals emphasise
the wellbeing of the individual as the fundamental building block of a just political system. A
political system characterised by unchecked power, such as a monarchy or a dictatorship,
cannot protect the life and liberty of its citizens. Therefore, the main concern of liberalism is
to construct institutions that protect individual freedom by limiting and checking political
power. While these are issues of domestic politics, the realm of IR is also important to
liberals because a state’s activities abroad can have a strong influence on liberty at home.
Liberals are particularly troubled by militaristic foreign policies. The primary concern is that
war requires states to build up military power. This power can be used for fighting foreign
states, but it can also be used to oppress its own citizens. For this reason, political systems
rooted in liberalism often limit military power by such means as ensuring civilian control over
the military.

A core argument of liberalism is that concentrations of unaccountable violent power are the
fundamental threat to individual liberty and must be restrained. The primary means of
restraining power are institutions and norms at both domestic and international level. At the
international level institutions and organisations limit the power of states by fostering
cooperation and providing a means for imposing costs on states that violate international
agreements. Economic institutions are particularly effective at fostering cooperation because
of the substantial benefits that can be derived from economic interdependence. Finally,
liberal norms add a further limitation on the use of power by shaping our understanding of
what types of behaviour are appropriate.

Kant:
Kant's “Towards Perpetual Peace": He speaks of republican states (rather than of
democratic ones, which he defines to have representative governments, in which the
legislature and executive are separated. He does not discuss universal suffrage, which is
vital to modern democracy and quite important to some modern theorists; his commentators
dispute whether it is implied by his language. Most importantly, he does not regard
republican governments as sufficient by themselves to produce peace: freedom of travel,
though not necessarily migration, (hospitality); and a league of nations are necessary to
consciously enact his six-point program.
Unlike some modern theorists, Kant claims not that republics will be at peace only with each
other, but are more pacific than other forms of government in general.

Jeremy Bentham:

Jeremy Bentham (1748—1832) Jeremy Bentham was an English philosopher and political
radical. He is primarily known today for his moral philosophy, especially his principle of
utilitarianism, which evaluates actions based upon their consequences.
Utilitarianism is a theory in normative ethics, or the ethics that define the morality of actions,
as proposed by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. It is defined by utility, the existence of
pleasure and the absence of pain. Utilitarianism sees happiness as existing in low and high
pleasures.

The first concept of liberal thought is called Idealism.

means true and testified knowledge. The word ideal stands for the perfected form of an idea
or ideas. If we study the basic principles, Idealism puts forth the argument that reality, as we
perceive it, is a mental construct. It means that experiences are the result of sensory abilities
of the human mind and not because reality exists in itself as an independent entity. In the
philosophical term, this means that one cannot perceive the existence of things beyond the
realm of the intellect.

Idealism:

It is an optimistic doctrine which seeks to transcend the international anarchy and create a
more cosmopolitan and harmonious world order.

The narrow understanding sees idealism as intimately tied to the inter-war period (1919-
1939). It is a doctrine that dominated the first phase of IR theorizing, emphasizing the
growing interdependence and unity of mankind, and bound-up with the experiment in
internationalism that was the League of Nations. It received a visceral attack in E. H. Carr’s
The Twenty Years’ Crisis (1939).

There is no agreed definition of idealism. Idea (true and testified knowledge) plus ideal (ideal
perfect form of the idea)- Plato
Indeed, the term is often employed in a rhetorical way, particularly by realist thinkers, in
order to discredit radical or reformist ideas they dislike. As a consequence, various
approaches and bodies of thought—cosmopolitanism, internationalism, liberalism—have
frequently been lumped together and labelled idealism, despite considerable differences
between and diversity within them.

According to most accounts, idealists emphasize the power of reason to overcome prejudice
and counteract the machinations of sinister forces. They believe that the spread of education
and democracy—including increasing democratic control of foreign policy—will empower
world public opinion, and make it a powerful force that no government can resist. They view
war as a disease of the international body politic, contrary to the interests of all barring a few
special interests and unrepresentative governments. Arms manufacturers and merchants
have frequently been targets of their wrath. Left-internationalists have also attacked large
business corporations for their aggressive pursuit of profit and disregard of general human
welfare.

Idealists emphasize the importance of universal bodies such as the League and the UN in
galvanizing and organizing world public opinion. Through such means, they contend, it will
be possible to eliminate crude power from international relations, substituting research,
reason and discussion in place of national armies and navies. Importantly, idealists tend to
stress the existence of a natural harmony of interests between all peoples underlying the
superficially conflicting interests of their states and/or governments.

While accepting that different peoples exhibit different codes of behavior, cultural norms,
values, habits and tastes, they contend that human beings are fundamentally uniform.
Regardless of ethnic, social, cultural and religious background, all human beings desire the
same things in terms of security, welfare, recognition and respect. All are bound by a
common morality with its bedrock in basic human rights and the Kantian principle that
human beings should be respected as ends in themselves and never treated as mere
means.

Many idealists share the belief of Mazzini that there is no essential incompatibility between
nationalism and internationalism. There is a natural division of labor between nations.

Each nation has its special task to perform, its special contribution to make to the well-being
of humanity. If all nations were to act in this spirit, international harmony would prevail.
This doctrine provided the philosophical basis for President Woodrow Wilson’s campaign to
put national self-determination at the heart of the 1919 peace settlement.

In the inter-war period these beliefs gave rise to numerous policy prescriptions, nearly all of
which sought to regulate the power of the independent nation state by investing increasing
power and political authority in international organizations.

The international anarchy of competing nation-states was seen as the underlying cause of
the catastrophe of World War One, and thus the principle of sovereignty and the institution of
the balance of power needed to be regulated and, in the view of some of the more radical
idealists, abolished if the same was not to happen again.

Collective security, compulsory adjudication of disputes, national disarmament, open

diplomacy and international colonial accountability were the most cherished policy
prescriptions of inter-war idealists. Some went further, calling for the creation of an
international police force and complete international oversight of armaments production.

Complex Interdependence:

Unlike realism, neoliberals’ contention is that international politics can no longer be divided
simply into’ high’ and ‘low’ politics. While the high politics of national security and military
power still remain important and relevant, they argue that economic, social and
environmental issues - low politics – are high priorities on the international agenda.
States cooperate because it is in their own common interest and direct result of this
cooperation is prosperity and stability in the international system.

It takes into consideration both the costs and benefits of interdependence relationship. In the
world of ‘Complex Interdependence’, despite the increasing economic cooperation and
ecological interdependence, the possibility of international military conflicts cannot be
ignored.

According to Robert O Keohane and Joseph Nye: interdependence should not be defined
entirely as situations of ‘evenly balanced mutual dependence’. They contend: “It is
asymmetries in dependence that are most likely to provide sources of influence for actors in
their dealings with one another. Less dependent actors can often use the interdependence
relationship as a source of power in bargaining over an issue and perhaps to affect other
issues.

Multiple Channels In international politics:

there are multiple channels connecting the societies, including all the interstate, trans
governmental, and transnational transactions. This is opposed to the unitary state
assumption of realism. International Journal of Business and Social Science Vol. 6, No. 2;
February 2015 292 In this complex world of interdependence not only formal and informal
interaction between governmental elites are a source of connecting societies but informal
ties among non-governmental elites and transnational organizations are gaining more and
more importance.

Multinational firms and banks have a great impact on the domestic as well as interstate
relations. These actors, besides pursuing their own interests, also “act as transmission belts,
making government policies in various countries more sensitive to one another.”(Keohane&
Nye, 1977:26) 3.2 Absence of Hierarchy among Issues In the world of Complex
interdependence, there is no hierarchy among the issues. The dividing line between
domestic and foreign policy becomes blurred and there is no clear agenda in interstate
relations. There are multiple issues which are not arranged in a clear or consistent hierarchy.
Among other things, “military security does not consistently dominate the
agenda.”(Keohane& Nye, 1977:25)The foreign affairs agendas have become more and more
diverse now. As opposed to the realists’ assumption where security is always the most
important issue between the states, in complex interdependence, any issue-area might be at
the top of the international agenda at any particular time. 3.3 Minor Role of Military Force As
opposed to the central role that force is given in realist’s world, i.e. an ultimate necessity to
guarantee survival, Complex Interdependence assumes that in international relations force is
of low salience. When Complex Interdependence prevails, military force could be irrelevant
in resolving disagreements on economic issues among members of an alliance, however
simultaneously be very important for the alliance’s political and military relations with its rival
bloc.

According to Keohane and Nye, intense relationships of mutual influence may exist but force
is no more considered an appropriate way of achieving other goals such as economic and
ecological welfare which are becoming more important, because mostly the effects of
military force are very costly and uncertain. (Keohane & Nye, 1977:28) In fact due to modern
nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, all the actors are aware of the maximized costs of
war. Thus, the significance of military force as key policy tool for resolving disputes has
declined in the globalized world. However, its role as bargaining tool is still important and
may vary from issue to issue. Its role cannot be completely ignored. In an asymmetric
relationship, the less dependent actor may use it as a bargaining tool. In fact the changing
role of force has made the situation more complex.

NEOLIBERALISM:

Most liberal scholarship today focuses on how international organisations foster cooperation
by helping states overcome the incentive to escape from international agreements. This type
of scholarship is commonly referred to as ‘neoliberal institutionalism’ – often shortened to
just ‘neoliberalism’. This often causes confusion as neoliberalism is also a term used outside
IR theory to describe a widespread economic ideology of deregulation, privatisation, low
taxes, austerity (public spending cuts) and free trade.

The essence of neoliberalism, when applied within IR, is that states can benefit significantly
from cooperation if they trust one another to live up to their agreements. In situations where
a state can gain from cheating and escape punishment, defection is likely. However, when a
third party (such as an impartial international organisation) is able to monitor the behaviour
of signatories to an agreement and provide information to both sides, the incentive to defect
decreases and both sides can commit to cooperate. In these cases, all signatories to the
agreement can benefit from absolute gains. Absolute gains refer to a general increase in
welfare for all parties concerned – everyone benefits to some degree, though not necessarily
equally. Liberal theorists argue that states care more about absolute gains than relative
gains. Relative gains, which relate closely to realist accounts, describe a situation where a
state measures its increase in welfare relative to other states and may shy away from any
agreements that make a competitor stronger. By focusing on the more optimistic viewpoint of
absolute gains and providing evidence of its existence via international organisations,
liberals see a world where states will likely cooperate in any agreement where any increase
in prosperity is probable.

INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS (from 30 in 1910 to 70 in 1940 to 1000 in 1981):

institutions are rules that govern world politics and the organizations that implement these
rules. But how are these institutions governed themselves? 1941950s onward onwards Only
after UN did int insti began to catch attention. But except for some peacekeeping missions
the UN was paralyzed to implement resolutions because of conflict of interest of great
powers in the UN SC.

In the postcolonial era new states entered the UN and GA could pass resolutions that were
against the US interest. Hence world politics appeared to be still run by state power and not
int insti.
1960s onward Nonproliferation of Nukes, NATO(highly institutionalized with a secretary
general, permanent staff and rules governing member states).GATT lowered tariffs among
industrialized nations by 90%; IMF was used for monetary regulation and later by 1970
became a leading agent for financing and promoting development projects in the Third W
Cs.
To avoid future embargoes like the OPEC embargo in 1973, int inst were established by the
US . It was realized that policy coordination was required and that could not be achieved
without int insti.

Why should these exist in a world dominated by sovereign states? Because states began to
view them as devices to help them achieve their objectives.