We hope that in choosing our introduction you have chosen wisely. But other introductions will offer different ‘perspectives’ and ‘themes’. Here are a selection of those you might want to go to next, bearing in mind that several are available in other editions.
Baylis, J., Smith, S. and Owens, P. (eds) (2007), Globalization and World Politics (4th edn), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Brown, C. (2005), Understanding International Relations (3rd edn), London: Macmillan.
Brown, C. and Sinley, K. (2009), Understanding International Relations, London: Palgrave.
Burchill, S. and Linklater, A. (2009), Theories of International Relations (4th edn), Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Dunne, T., Kurki, M. and Smith, S. (eds) (2009), International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Edkins, J. and Zehfus, M. (eds) (2008), Global Politics, London: Routledge.
Jackson, R. and Sorenson, G. (2006), Introduction to International Relations: Theories and Approaches, Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Kegley, C. and Wittkopf, E. (2001), World Politics: Trends and Transformation (8th edn), New York: St Martin’s Press.
Mandaville, P. and Williams, A. (eds) (2003), Meaning and International Relations, London: Routledge.
McGowan, P.J., Cornelissen, S. and Nel, P. (2006), Power, Wealth and Global Equity: An International Relations Textbook for Africa, Juta Legal and Academic Publishers.
Weber, C. (2004), IR Theory: A Critical Introduction, London: Routledge.
1
Introduction
Liberal thought about the nature of international relations has a long tradition dating back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. During these centuries liberal philosophers and political thinkers debated the difficulties of establishing just, orderly and peaceful relations between peoples.
One of the most systematic and thoughtful accounts of the problems of world peace was produced by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant in 1795 in an essay entitled Perpetual Peace. Kantian thought has been profoundly influential in the development of liberalism in IR (see below).
However, solutions to the problem of war evaded even the most eminent of thinkers. In the nine-teenth century, scholars contented themselves with merely describing historical events, and the study of international affairs was largely confined to the field of diplomatic history. In the wake of the destruction of the First World War, there was a sense of greater urgency to discover the means of pre-venting conflict. The senseless waste of life which characterised this conflict brought about a new determination that reason and cooperation must prevail.
While the conflict itself was horrific, International Relations scholars were initially quite opti-mistic about the possibilities of ending the misery of war. A new generation of scholars was deeply interested in schemes which would promote cooperative relations among states and allow the realis-ation of a just and peaceful internrealis-ational order, such as the fledgling League of Nrealis-ations (see World Example Box, pp. 33–4). This liberal or idealist enterprise rested on the beliefs that people in general are inherently good and have no interest in prosecuting wars with one another. Furthermore, people suffer greatly as a consequence of war and thus desire dialogue over belligerence. Therefore, for ide-alists all that was needed to end war was respect for the rule of law and stable institutions which could provide some form of international order conducive to peace and security. The widespread anti-war sentiment within Europe and North America which existed in the 1920s seemed to provide the necessary widespread public support for such an enterprise to succeed.
During the late 1930s and following the Second World War, idealism fell out of favour for a long period of time, as realism (chapter 2) seemed to provide a better account of the power politics char-acteristic of the post-war era. The decline in the popularity of idealism was partly encouraged by the failure of The League of Nations to act as a forum for resolving differences peacefully and as a mech-anism to prevent inter-state conflict. With the outbreak of a number of major conflicts in the inter-war period, the onset of economic nationalism as a result of the Great Depression and World War Two, it is not entirely surprising that a much more pessimistic view of world politics prevailed from the 1940s onwards. However, idealism dominated the academic study of International Relations between the First and Second World Wars with its basic faith in the potential for good in human beings and in the promise of the rule of law, democracy and human rights and continues to be influential within liberal IR theory today.
Idealism as used here is about a particular approach to International Relations and should not be confused with the notion of ‘idealism’ as describing say an unrealistic person. Further explanation in text.
There have been many innovations in liberal theory since the 1970s which are reflected in a number of distinctive strands of thought within liberalism. For example, idealism, pluralism, interde-pendence theory, transnationalism, liberal internationalism, liberal peace theory, neo-liberal institutionalism and world society approaches. In the 1970s a liberal literature on transnational relations and world society developed. So called ‘liberal pluralists’ pointed to the growing import-ance of multinational corporations (MNCs), non-governmental organisations (NGOs), pressure groups, and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), as evidence that states were no longer the only significant actors in international relations. Liberal pluralists believed that power, influence and agency in world politics were now exercised by a range of different types of actors.
Furthermore, by the 1980s conflict was not the major process in international relations as, increas-ingly, cooperation in pursuit of mutual interests was a prominent feature of world politics. Terms much in vogue in contemporary International Relations literature (and in the media), such as ‘glob-alisation’ or ‘multiculturalism’, while not intrinsically liberal, have liberal adherents or interpretations and have received growing attention from liberal scholars. In more recent years lib-erals have made important contributions to the study of international relations in the areas of international order, institutions and processes of governance, human rights, democratisation, peace and economic integration.
In this chapter we aim to highlight the many and varied ways in which liberal thought has con-tributed to International Relations. We present liberalism as a coherent perspective or school of thought. Our justification for doing so is that, despite some differences in the ‘versions’ of liberalism, there are, nonetheless, prevailing and constant liberal principles and core assumptions. It is useful first to offer a few qualifications and clarifications. It is important not to lose sight of the fact that the term ‘liberal’ has been applied to the political beliefs of a wide variety of people. Liberals have views about the economic organisation of society, for instance; here we can detect a division in liberal thought between those on the political ‘right’ who believe that individual liberty must extend into the economic realm: that is, people must be free to buy and sell their labour and skills as well as goods and services in a free market which is subjected to minimal regulation. On the other hand, ‘left-lean-ing’ liberals recognise that the principles of political liberty and equality can actually be threatened by the concentration of economic power and wealth. This form of liberalism supports a much more interventionist role for the state in the regulation of the economy, in the interests of providing for basic human needs and extending opportunities to the less privileged. As we shall see below, these two strands of liberal thinking live on in neo-classical and Keynesian approaches to International Political Economy (IPE), which has developed as a discrete area of study within IR since the 1970s.
Liberalism, as an ‘ism’, is an approach to all forms of human organisation, whether of a political or economic nature, and it contains within it a social theory, philosophy and ideology. The result is that liberalism has something to say about all aspects of human life. In terms of liberal philosophy, liberalism is based upon a belief in the inherently good nature of all humans, the ultimate value of individual liberty and the possibility of human progress. Liberalism speaks the language of ration-ality, moral autonomy, human rights, democracy, opportunity and choice and is founded upon a commitment to principles of liberty and equality, justified in the name of individuality and rationality.
Liberal internationalism: the belief that political activity should be framed in terms of a universal human condition rather than in relation to the particularities of any given nation.
Politically this translates into support for limited government and political pluralism. We will sum-marise the main assumptions of liberalism below. First, we need to consider further the historical and intellectual origins of liberal thought.
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Figure 1.1 The relative growth in the number of international NGOs in the twentieth century.
Original source: B.B. Hughes (1993), International Futures, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, p. 45.
Taken from: B. Russett and H. Starr (1996), World Politics: The Menu for Choice, 2nd edn, New York: W.H.
Freeman, p. 66
Liberal pluralists see a complex web of interactions in International Relations that goes beyond the mere interaction of states.