Theories in IR: Liberalism — Lecture #5

Liberalism is often understood as the opposite, or the adversary, if you will, of Realism.

Topics important to Liberalists.
First of all, Liberalists are concerned with how international institutions simplifies cooperation and historical changes. They’re also preoccupied with studying how transnational relations (international relations in which non-governmental organizations participates) affects the foreign policy of states. Liberalists are furthermore engaged in questions relating to the nature of peace, beyond the narrow Realist understanding of peace as simply balance of power and the absence of war. Another important focus is interdependence, and how this concept can contribute to avoiding the Realist conclution about anarchy causing everlasting struggles for power. Finally, Liberalists want to discover when states seek absolute rather than relative gains.

Liberalism — a definition.
Liberalism is a normative theory about (i) historical change, and the progress of human societies, linked to the Industrial Revolution; (ii) how the natural state of international politics (i.e. its anarchic nature) can be modified and moderated; (iii) how wars can be avoided; and (iv) how institutions and transnational changes can induce international cooperation.
Liberalism has also been refered to as “Idealism”, and it’s been criticised for being more normative than descriptive.

Different classifications of Liberalism.
The different schools within Liberalism can be classified either through the level of analysis they focus on, or through the historical era in which they were most active. The three most common levels of analysis are the human nature (i.e. the individual), the state (including its structure and organization) and the structure of the system (transnational relations, trade, international law, etc.). Three is also the number of historical eras used to separate different kind of Liberalism. First, there’s the era of “International Liberalism”, lasting from the 17th or 18th century until the outbreak of WWI. Second, the interwar years’ “Idealism”, linked to Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points and The League of Nations. Finally, there’s an postwar “Institutional Liberalism”, connected to the rise of such organizations as the UN, GATT, NATO, and so on.

Additionally, there are some schools that have dominated Liberalism after WWII. They’ll be treated more closely later, so I’ll only mention them here: Sociological Liberalism, Interdependence Liberalism, Institutional Liberalism and Republican or Constiturional Liberalism. The latter is often closely connected to the thoughts around “democratic peace“.

Basic Liberal assumptions (ontology).
Liberalists have take a positive view of human nature, claiming that human progress, human reason and human cooperation influences and reinforces each other, and that they combine into the process of modernization, and the development of the modern state.
These are beliefs rooted in the Industrial Revolusion and the Age of Enlightenment, and are related to an optimistic view of the future, a positive view on human nature, and the belief that war isn’t rational.

Classic Liberalism.
Classical Liberalism focused on freedom, cooperation, peace and progress. Early contributors include John Locke (1632-1704), Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832).

Locke was most concerned with constitutional states and tolerantism. He believed that a liberal democracy with a capitalist economic system was the best system to induce human progress, as the people’s rights would be best secured in such a system.

Kant is perhaps best known as a moral philospher, but he also thought about international relations. His main emphasis lay with progress and eternal peace, and he claimed that democratic states would be more peaceful than autocratic ones, because of their constitutions, and the fact that democracies would share a mutual respect for each other, resulting in eternal peace.

Bentham, as we have seen earlier, was preoccupied with international law. His main hypothesis was that liberal or constitutional states respects and treats each other in accordance with rules and norms. It is, said Bentham, in the states’ interest that international relations are governed by rules and laws, and a system of duties and rights between states. However, Benthem believed that this system would arise on its own; an “invisible hand” would ensure its creation.

Sociological Liberalism.
Sociological Liberalism is a school of Liberalists who focus primarily on the system level. They claim that IR consists of both relations between states, and transnational relations. Relations between transnational actors are based more on cooperation than those between states or governments, as the larger number of transnational actors increases the number of opportunities for cooperation. Furthermore, they maintain that a world with more transnational networks would be a more peaceful world. They explain this by asserting that overlaping memberships in various groups minimizes the risk of serious conflicts; the more peaceful connections between states (network), the more the states benefit from not going to war with each other. This has often been called the “network model”, while the model of relationships between states put forward by the Realists has been called the “billiard ball model”. [I assume my readers are clever enough to understand why. ] Because of this focus on networks, Sociological Liberalists emphasise the importance of charting communication and patters of transactions between transnational actors, and their influence on international events.

Sociological Liberalists explain this increased importance of transnational actors with an parallel increase in the importance of individuals in IP. This “individual trend” is in turn explained by pointing to (i) the reductions and diffusion of state power; (ii) the spread of television, media, and the Internet, migration and tourism, and the spread of technology and knowledge; (iii) a growing attention to global problems; (iv) the revolution in information technology, which makes it easier to access information about events taking place far away; and (v) individuels’ growing awareness of their own ability to affect events.

Interdependence Liberalism.
According to this Liberalist school, modernization increases the level of and amount of interdependence between states. International trade and investments, traveling and tourism, and other economic and social ties help make war irrational as a tool for developed states. The multitudes of actors, relations and causes on the global arena entails a similarly multitude of foreign political goals and tools among states. In a situation of complex interdependence, the importance of transnational actors increases, while the utility of military coercion diminishes. Wealth or welfare, not security, becomes the primary target of states. This implies a more cooperative world, where states are integrated with each other through functional spill-overs, primarily from the economy onto other fields, as was the case with the European Union, which started out as an European Coal and Steel Union. All of this combined reduces the profit of using war as a tool in the conducting of foreign policy.

Realism and complex interdependence: A point by point comparision.
Actors.
Realism: In Realism, uniform states are the dominant actors.
Complex interdependence: Advocates of Complex Interdependence claim that transnational actors are more important, and that states aren’t uniform.
Views on means.
Realism: To Realists, the use of military coercion is a both alright and effective means.
Complex interdependence: Opposing this, CILs maintain that military coercion is a less effective and useful means, and that economic and institutional means are more useful.
Goals/Agenda.
Realism: For Realists, military security dominates the agenda.
Complex interdependence: Complex interdependence reduces the importance of military security, focusing more on causes related to welfare.

To summarize, Realism has a more traditional focus on “high politics” (i.e. military security and threats), while Complex Interdependence Liberalists see “low politics” (economic welfare, environmental issues, human rights, and so on) as the most important issues. They claim that the focus of states both are and should be moving towards low politics, causing international politicis to become more similar to national politics.

Institutional Liberalism.
According to Institutional Liberalists, international institutions contributes to the promotion of international cooperation by (i) reducing transaction costs; (ii) inform actors and thus reduce insecurity, distrust and deceit; (iii) increase the level of lawfulness, by e.g. following up international agreements and imposing sanctions on trespassers; and (iv) strengthen expectations concerning the durability of international agreemens, e.g. through such measures as sketched under (iii).

However, Institutional Liberalists doesn’t take it for granted that all types of institutions will promote cooperation. Neither do they claim that institutions guarantee cooperation; they merely state that institutions increases the probability of cooperation. In this way, Institutional Liberalists can be said to approach Realism.

Constitutional Liberalism. (Kant)
The main assertion of Constitutional Liberalism, is that democracies do not go to war against each other. This, they claim, is because (i) their national culture is based on finding peaceful solutions to problems — democracy is understood as a system of negotiations between different groups within a society; (ii) they share a commom moral platform, cosisting of respect for human rights, and so on; and finally, (iii) their have mutual gains from economic cooperation and interdependence.

For this school, spreading democracy becomes a means to international peace. The question remains, however, if democracy can be forced upon a country from the outside. Nevertheless, if there’s anything like an empirical law in IR, it’s that democracies doesn’t wage war against each other. There are certain exceptions to this, but they are superficial and easily explained. Constitutional Liberalism has won several new adherents after the end of the Cold War, such as Francis Fukuyama.

Critique put forth by Realists.
Concerning human nature: Some Realists claim that Liberalists have misunderstood politics because they misunderstand human nature. Humans aren’t ruled by reason, and there’s no such thing as “progress”. There’s only fear.
Concerning the motivation of states: The actions of states are determined by relative gains, not absolute ones.This places severe limitations on the possibilities for cooperation.
Concerning the amount and degree of interdependence and globalization: Economic and financial interdependence isn’t new, and in the past it’s done little to stop wars between states. (WWI and WWII are often cited as examples.)
Concerning the role of international institutions: Institutionalized cooperation is still governed by self-interest, and international institutions are strictly nothing but stages where power politics unfolds. International institutions are the instruments of states, not independent actors.
Concerning the prospects of a democratic peace: It’s always possible for a democratic or liberal state to revert into autocracy, and that today’s friend can become the enemy of tomorrow, independently of whether or not they’re democracies.
Concerning September 11, 2001: The terrorist attacks on amongst other things the World Trade Center is as great a threat to Liberalism as the end of the Cold War was to Realism.

Liberal responses.
“Weak” Liberalists.
First of all, there is a group of Liberalists who are referred to as “weak” liberalists, meaning that they, in an attempt to bulid bridges between Liberalism and Realism, ends up as a part of the neo-neo synthesis in IR, which I’ll take a closer look at in the next lecture notes I post. These weak Liberalists accept basic Neorealist expectations — such as the focus on anarchy, rational and uniform actors, and power — as the starting point for analysis. However, they stay true to the Liberalist thought of international institutions playing the role as organizers and simplifiers of cooperation under anarchy. Furthermore, they claim that international institutions can be especially useful as creators of cooperation in cases where common interest unites the actors, and that in such cases, states’ fucos shift from relative to absolute gains.

Counterattack from “strong” Liberalists.
According to the Liberalists who reject most of Realism altogether, Neorealism manages to leave most of the field of IR outside of the field, so to say. Also, a qualitative shift has taken place, a shift Neorealism doesn’t take into account — it’s very hard for welfare states to withdraw from interdependent relations, and in consolidated, Western democracies, a return to autocracy is almost unthinkable.
Additionally, the separation between a hierarchical national sphere and an anarchic international sphere is wrong: Anarchy is modified by international institutions with a relative high degree of international authority, while a lot of states have failed, which makes them less than hierarchical, to put it lightly. (Compare the situation in Somalia, as an example, to that of world society. Which is the most anarchical?) Furthermore, “security communities” has been established, communities with dependable expectations of peaceful change; communities with the prevailing belief that common social problems must and can be resolved by processes of peaceful change. [I'm a little unsure of just what this entails, but I suppose it's a term that includes such organizations as the EU, the AU and AL...] A result of these security communities is that we must separate between different kinds of peace: Cold peace and warm peace, peace based on common values (security communities) and peace based on mutual deterrent (balance of power).

Also, the strong Liberalists emphasise that states aren’t uniform, ad thus their interests cannot be taken for granted. The foreign policy of a country reflects the interests of different combinations of groups and individuals within that country. In the international system, each state seeks to realize its interests — to get what it wants — under the limitations set by the interests and power of other states.