Liberali

sm
AN OPTIMISTIC PERSPECTIVE OF
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

BY
NUNO MAGALHÃES

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 INTRODUCTION
• Opposition to Realism.
• Normative character of Liberalism.
• Optimistic view of International Relations?
• State power is not the only variable in International
Relations.
• Peace, Law, Justice, non-state actors, have also a
fundamental role in International Relations.
• Despite the common points concerning a stable
international order not based upon state relations of
power, there are different opinions inside Liberalism.
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DIFFERENCES INSIDE LIBERALIM
• Different approaches within the same perspective.
• Why wars occur: Imperialism, Balance of Power or
Undemocratic regimes?
• Peace or Order: What’s the objective of world
politics?
• How to reach that objective: collective security,
commerce or world government?
• Relation between liberal states and non-liberal states:
conquest, conversion or toleration?
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 VARIETIES OF LIBERALISM
• Early manifestations of liberalist thought in the
sixteenth century.
• Rejection of the idea that conflict is the natural
relation between states.
• First liberals: Erasmus (war is not profitable - 1517);
Penn (Diet of Europe – 1693); Kant (Perpetual Peace
- 1795)
• Liberal thought in international relations can be
separated into three major patterns: Liberal
Internationalism, Idealism, Liberal Institutionalism.

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LIBERAL INTERNATIONALISM
• Reactions to the barbarity of international
relations.
• Kant: lawless state of savagery. Proposed a
“perpetual peace through a federation of free
republican states. Believed that reason could
deliver freedom and justice in international
relations. A federal contract between state
would be required to abolish war: a permanent
peace treaty.

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LIBERAL INTERNATIONALISM
• Bentham defended that a federation of states was able
to prevent wars between its members, putting an end
to the pattern of recurring to war as a way of settling
disputes. “Between the interests of nations there is
nowhere any real conflict”.
• Cobden believed that “the progress of freedom
depends more upon the maintenance of peace, the
spread of commerce, and the diffusion of education,
than upon the labours of cabinets and foreign
offices.”
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LIBERAL INTERNATIONALISM
• Liberal internationalism presumed that states
would be submited to a system of legal rights
and duties, but without the need of any world
government.
• There is a natural order underpinning human
society, a natural harmony of interests in
international relations.

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 IDEALISM
• Contrary to liberal internationalists, idealists do not
defend a natural harmony between states.
• Idealism assert that the international order should be
constructed and managed by an international
organization.
• James Hobson opposed the “naturalist” vision of
Adam Smith - a believer in the fact that the pursuit of
individual interests led to inadvertedly to the
promotion of public good – and defended that
capitalism and imperialism caused conflicts in
international politics.
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 IDEALISM
• Liberal internationalist assumption that
interdependence was associated with peace
was contradicted by World War I.
• Idealists believed that peace is not a natural
condition but needs to be constructed.
• According to Woodrow Wilson peace could
only be secured with the creation of an
international institution that regulated
international relations.
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 IDEALISM
• Balance of power and secret diplomacy was
not a guarantee of international security.
• Analogy between international order and
domestic order.
• Wilson’s “fourteen points” and the creation of
the League of Nations materialized the idealist
approach on international relations.

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 IDEALISM
• The League of Nations was based upon the
idea of collective security.
• The failure of the League of Nations and the
World War II would bury idealist expectations
of international peace.
• However, after World War II some of the
liberal ideas were implemented, such as the
self-determination principle or the respect for
human rights.
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LIBERAL INSTITUTIONALISM
• Liberal institutionalism is less normative than
Idealism. Due to the trauma of World War II,
ambitious assumptions about building a
peaceful order became illogical.
• Despite less ambitious, the need to have an
international body with responsibility over
peace and security was maintained.

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 LIBERAL INSTITUTIONALISM
• The United Nations were created, but this time with
the sense that the most powerful states would be
essential to its survival, thus the need of power
arrangement within the Security Council.
• Liberal institutionalists defended the idea that the
state is not able to cope with modernatization and, as
Mitrany asserted, transnational co-operation was was
required in order to solve common problems. He also
defended ramification, the likelihood that co-
operation in one sector would lead to other sectors, a
fact later confimed in Europe.
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LIBERAL INSTITUTIONALISM
• After entering into such a process, states will
have high costs in withdrawing from it.
• For Haas, international and regional
institutions were a necessity to sovereign states
whose capacity to deliver welfare goals was
decreasing.

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LIBERAL INSTITUTIONALISM
• Afterwards, US scholars – also called
pluralists – would reject the idea that the state
is the sole actor important agent in
international relations.
• Keohane and Nye defended the centrality of
other actors: interest groups, transnational
companies, NGOs.

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 LIBERAL INSTITUTIONALISM
• Pluralists tried to characterize international relations
through the existence of multiple channels linked to
several actors.
• The biggest contribution of pluralism was the notion
of Interdependence. This concept characterized a
complex system of interactions - brought by
development of capitalism and mass culture – in
which actions in one of its parts had more and more
consequences to the other part, a fact that fatally
undermined state autonomy.
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 LIBERAL RESPONSES TO
GLOBALIZATION
• After the end of the bipolar system in the early
1990s and the rise of the globalization process,
Liberalism has suffered a development and
presents new approaches.
• Those approaches are brought by neo-liberal
internationalism, neo-idealism and neo-liberal
institutionalism.

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 NEO-LIBERAL
INTERNATIONALISM
• Since the end of the Cold War that the idea of a
democratic peace thesis has been developed.
• Kant defended a federation of liberal republics to
guarantee perpetual peace, while neo-liberal
internationalists assert that liberal states do not use
war to resolve problems between them: Doyle defines
it as the “separate peace”.
• Fukuyama defended the triumph of liberalism after
the end of the Cold War, naming it “ The End of
History” and defending the exportantion of liberal
values.
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 NEO-LIBERAL
INTERNATIONALISM
• These author defend that expansionism of
liberalism against authoritanism will provide
peace and stability to the international order.
• The limits of liberal expansionism offer
serious problems, namely concerning
principles such as sovereignty and non-
intervention.
• There is also the difficulty of measuring
democracies.
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 NEO-IDEALISM
• Also believe in democracy and that interdependence
brings peace.
• They do not believe that peace and justice are natural,
but built.
• To built a liberal peaceful order include encourage or
coerce non-liberal states to become liberal.
• International institutions, essential to build such an
order, also need to be democratic as well as domestic
state - double democratization.

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 NEO-IDEALISM
• Global social movements must be brought into the
decision-making process.
• Contrary to neo-liberal internationalists, neo-idealists
do not always perceive globalization as a positive
process and tend to criticise its evolution.
• Falk recognizes that globalization and community are
frequently at odds with each other, and calls for
“globalization from below”.
• Held defends a cosmopolitan model of democracy,
based upon parliamentary innovations.

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 NEO-LIBERAL
INSTITUTIONALISM
• Close to realism
• Shift towards a more state-centric vision of the
international relations, viewing the state as a
legitimate representation of society.
• Non-actor states are subordinate to states.
• The international system has having an
anarchical structure, but international co-
operation can be achieved.
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 NEO-LIBERAL
INSTITUTIONALISM
• Integration at global and regional level is the
privileged process.
• Absolute gains are more importante than
relative gains: a state will enter into co-
operative relations even if another state gains
more inside that relation, contrary to the neo-
realist vision.
• Neo-liberal institutionalism is close to neo-
realism.
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 LIBERALISM KEY CONCEPTS
• Collective security
• Conditionality
• Cosmopolitan model of democracy
• Democratic peace
• Democracy promotion
• Enlightnement
• Idealism

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 LIBERALISM KEY CONCEPTS
• Integration
• Interdependence
• Liberalism
• Liberal Institutionalism
• Liberal Internationalism
• Normative
• Pluralism
• World government
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 CASE STUDIES:
THE DIFFICULTIES OF LIBERALISM
• US foreign policy and democracy exportation.
• Australia: a democracy in an undemocratic regional
subsystem.
• Brazil and south-american integration process.
• Angola, Cabinda and the self-determination principle.
• France: raison d’état beyond democratic rhetoric.
• Portuguese support to the US-led intervention in Iraq.
• Israel and a future democratic Palestine.
• Japan: did liberalism really buried strategy?
• The United Nations and European Union: the exceptions on
the edge.

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 CONCLUSION:
THE CRISIS OF LIBERALISM
The enthusiasm of most liberals after the end of Cold War has
been gradually replaced by the hard truth of Realpolitik and
human ability to be unhuman. Conflicts still exist in every
continent, even if they do not obey to the traditional inter-state
wars. Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Chechnya or Afghanistan are
some examples. As a whole, Liberalism is also divided
through the inumerous tendencies and faces difficulties to
function as a theoretical support to defend a unitary position.
One other challenge of Liberalism is to reinvent itself as a non-
universalizing and non-westernized political idea that
privilegies cultural diversity as well as the traditional liberal
value of human solidarity.

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 PERSONAL CONCLUSION
In my opinion liberalism has a high value as an “ought
to be” theorization of International Relations, but it
generally fails to explain thoroughly the actual
international political phenomena, with the exception
of neo-liberal institutionalism. Its normative character
is fundamental to the evolution of the international
system; its optimism is a sign of hope; and its
pessimism towards power relations a catalyst for a
balanced change and the evolution of a reliable
alternative to this international (dis)order.
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 OBRIGADO
PELA VOSSA ATENÇÃO.

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