Realism vs Liberalism

BY: Sara Sofia Garcia

Realism Liberalism

grounded on the Leaded by the idea

idea of power of interdependence
politics and a state’s meaning mutual
benefit for growing
desire to focus
power together with
strictly on its own
other nations
power

mutual growth
ZERO-SUM
around the world,
GAME: one contrary to the zero-
state’s gain is sum idea because
inevitably you grow in power
another mutually with other
states
state’s loss

agreement under a
common law it can work
States only get for a state and for the
involved in world .
international his state must follow
some international laws
agreements to imposed by the UN,
search for their World Bank, and WTO.
own benefit this is for peace to
occur between the
different states

The spread of liberal

The spread of democracies will end
realism would up in perpetual peace
end up in an due to diplomatic
solutions, and
anarchic
economic ties.
world order
 balance of power theory:
Interdependence :

competition for the most powerful:

2. can also involve war because
states want to become the most
powerful by taking advantage of
smaller states
- nations collaborating for their
mutual gain
- promoting the expansion of liberal
democratic governance;
- preventing conflict via democracy;

3. the theory states that if one - fortifying political and economic

links;
state wants to grow its power, the
other states will try to grow also to - liberal institutions supporting the
have a balanced power global international order

Conclusions
When analyzing both concepts we can say that they
are the total opposite of each other mainly because
of the search for power and collaboration between
countries. While realism states that any other
country can be trusted and has to build up its power
on its own to be more powerful than the rest,
liberalism explains that it is necessary to build
bounds between countries for mutual growth. But is
realism completely wrong ? or is liberalism a real
path to a utopia? The answer is no, we can find many
differences between these concepts but there are
also some important similarities. This could be that
as liberalist states have a mutual growth of power,
the realists also have the balance of power that
inevitably ends up with the states growing in power
mutually by competition; they end up with the same
power as the other states won’t let one country to
become more powerful than others.
Another similarity we can observe is that all of the
states around the world are just willing to protect
their own country and make it grow in power but
many of these countries have corruption in their
governments and relevant national issues
happening inside even though they are liberalists
involved with international systems, this
demonstrates that the idea of having a more
powerful state it’s not just a concept that describes
the realism.