LIBERALISM

HISTORICAL CONTEXT
 Liberal thinking influenced policy-making elites and opinion in Western states
after World War I (IR Idealism)

 Liberal sentiments briefly rose again at the end of World War II amid the birth of
UN

 This resurgence ended by the rise of Cold War power politics.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

 Liberalism became resurgent again in the 1990s.

 Intellectuals were providing theoretical justifications for the supremacy of

liberal ideas.

 Since 9/11 , there was another resurgence of realism with US interventionism in

the name of “national security” and national interest”.
"In a world where freedom, not tyranny,
is on the march, the cynical calculus of
pure power politics simply does not
compute. It is ill-suited to a new era.“-
Bill Clinton, 1992
LIBERAL ARGUMENTS

 Liberals argue that the behavior of states, including

power politics, is the product of ideas.

 Ideas can change. People are rational and capable of

self-development. Even though there is a tendency for
rivalry in politics, people want conflict resolution.

 Therefore, even if the world has not been very liberal,

this does not mean that it cannot be re-made.
 FOUR POSTULATES OF
LIBERALISM
1. People are equal and possess certain basic rights: to education, access to free
press, and religious toleration.

2. State institutions possess only the authority invested in them by the people.

3. Key dimension of the liberty of the individual is the right to own property.

4. Economy is market-driven and not one that is subordinate to state

regulation and control. Both self-interest (higher cost of conflict) and shared
commercial values promote peace.
BASIC IDEAS OF LIBERALISM
 Like individuals, states have different characteristics- some are
bellicose and war-prone, others are tolerant

 Like individuals, all states (regardless of character) are accorded

certain 'natural' rights, such as non-interference.

 At the same time, liberty of the state must be compromised by the

need for collective action
 Hence the importance of international organizations
LIBERALISM AND WAR
 Causes of persistent war:
 imperialism,
 failure of the balance of power,
 undemocratic regimes.

 Solution in:
 collective security,
 commerce,
 or IO.
 HISTORICAL LIBERALS
 Immanuel Kant and Jeremy Bentham two of the leading liberals of the
Enlightenment.

 Both were reacting to the barbarity of international relations at a time when

domestic politics was entering a new age of rights and constitutionalism.

For Kant, the imperative to achieve perpetual peace required:
 the transformation of individual consciousness,
 republican constitutionalism,
 contract between states to abolish war (rather than to regulate it, as earlier
international lawyers had argued)
HISTORICAL LIBERALS AND DEMOCRATIC
PEACE

 Kant had argued that if the decision to use force were taken by the people,
rather than by elites, then the frequency of conflicts would be drastically
reduced.

 This argument also implies a lower frequency of conflicts between liberal and
non-liberal states.

 This has proven to be contrary to the historical evidence because conflict

frequency is lowered only between liberal states
 LIBERALISM AND PEACE
 Part of liberal thinking is and was that free and interdependent markets promote
peace.
 In mid 19th century the pacifying role of free markets was propagated by a British
stateman Richard Cobden.

 However, there is evidence to the contrary.

 Britain and Germany had highly interdependent economies before World War I
LIBERALISM AND PEACE
 World War I shifted liberal thinking towards a recognition that peace is not a
natural condition but one that must be constructed.

 The most famous advocate of an international authority for the management of

international relations was Woodrow Wilson.
 Argued that security could not be left to secret bilateral diplomatic deals and a blind
faith in the balance of power.
 League of Nations

 Just as peace had to be enforced in domestic society, the international domain

had to have a system of regulation for coping with disputes and an international
force that could be mobilized if non-violent conflict resolution failed.
LIBERALISM AND PEACE: LEAGUE
OF NATIONS

 While the moral rhetoric at the creation of the League was

idealist, in practice states remained driven by self-interest.

 USA decided not to join the institution it had created.

 Soviet Union outside the system for ideological reasons.

LIBERALISM AND PEACE
 Due to failure of idealism, the language of liberalism
after 1945 was less ambitious.

 Yet familiar core ideas of liberalism remained.

 In the case of the UN, there was an awareness among

the framers of its Charter of the need for a consensus
between the great powers.
 Security Council
 NEW LIBERALS

 New generation of scholars (particularly in the USA) came about in the

1960s and 1970s.

 Their argument was not simply about the mutual gains from trade, but that
other transnational actors were beginning to challenge the dominance of
sovereign states.

 In one of the central texts of this genre, Rob Keohane and Joseph Nye (1972)
argued for the centrality of other actors
 These included interest groups, transnational corporations, and international non-
governmental organizations (INGOs).
 THE NEO- NEO DEBATE
 In the course of their engagement with Waltz and other neo-realists, early
pluralists modified their position.

 Neo-liberals, as they came to be known, conceded that the core assumptions of

neo-realism were indeed correct.

 They agreed on
 the anarchic international structure
 the centrality of states
 and a rationalist approach to social scientific enquiry.
THE NEO-NEO DEBATE
 Yet, neo-liberals differ in the argument that anarchy does not
mean that durable patterns of cooperation are impossible.

 The creation of international regimes matters.

 Regimes facilitate cooperation by sharing information, and
making defection from norms easier to punish

 Moreover, neo-liberals argued that actors would enter into

cooperative agreements if the gains were evenly shared
(absolute gains).
 Unlike neo-realists, for whom it was about RELATIVE gains
 LIBERALISM AND
CONTEMPORARY WORLD
 From the vantage point of the second decade of the twenty-first century,
confidence in the liberal international order has ebbed.

 Reasons for this:

 recurring crises and disagreements in the multilateral institutions designed to provide
governance over security, trade, and finance
 the uneven record of post-cold war liberal foreign policies in delivering a more
secure and just world order
 unrest triggered by the global financial crisis
 multipolar competition
 REALISM VS. LIBERALISM:
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
 How do we account for the moral dimensions of foreign policy such as
development assistance given to poor states that have no strategic or economic
value to the donor?

 How do we explain domestic interests that promote isolationist policies in the

USA at a time when system changes suggest that international activism might
result in both absolute and relative gains?
NEO-NEO DEBATE: A
SUMMARY
 Both agree that the international system is anarchic.

 Neo-realists say that neo-liberals do not appreciate the constraints on foreign

policy imposed by this anarchy.

 Neo-realists state that anarchy requires states to be preoccupied with relative

power, security, and survival.

 Neo-realists claim that neoliberals overlook the importance of relative gains.

The fundamental goal of states is to prevent others from gaining more.
NEO-NEO DEBATE: A SUMMARY

 Neo-liberals believe that, despite anarchy, actors with common interests try to
maximize absolute gains.

 Neo-liberals claim that neo-realists minimize the importance of international

interdependence, globalization, and the regimes created to manage these
interactions.

 Neo-liberals are more concerned with economic welfare and other nonsecurity
issue-areas.
NEO-NEO INSTITUTIONALISM
DEBATE: A SUMMARY
 Neo-liberals see institutions and regimes as significant forces in
international relations.

 Neo-realists state that neo-liberals exaggerate the impact of regimes and

institutions on state behavior.

 Neo-liberals claim that they facilitate cooperation, but neo-realists say that
they do not mitigate the constraining effects of anarchy on cooperation.