Liberalism

Introduction
-Liberalism, as a theoretical perspective to IR, has been the main challenger to Realism. Liberalism in
IR is closely linked to translating core liberal ideologies - such as universalism, rights, justice, liberty,
toleration, minimal state, democracy and institution building, etc - into International Relations.
Liberalism highlights peace, progress, cooperation, and interdependence among multiple actors in IR.
It believes in building trust, cooperation, integration through free trade, expansion of a free market
economy, democracy, international regimes and institutions.

-Liberalism argues that proper institutional regimes at the international level based on fair
international laws, treaties, covenants, norms, etc. can bring lasting peace and progress in the anarchic
world order. Liberals believe that reason could deliver freedom and justice in IR.

-Liberal scholars argue that there are moral universals that unify the plurality of peoples and societies;
and that liberal internationalism has come closer to articulating those shared values than the
alternatives.

-Liberals generally take a positive view of human nature. They have great faith in human reason and
they are convinced that rational principles can be applied to international affairs. Liberals recognise
that individuals are self-interested and competitive up to a point. But they also believe that
individuals share many interests and can thus engage in collaborative and cooperative social action,
domestically as well as internationally, which results in greater benefits for everybody at home and
abroad. In other words, conflict and war are not inevitable; when people employ their reason they can
achieve mutually beneficial cooperation not only within states but also across international
boundaries. Liberal theorists thus believe that human reason can triumph over human fear and the lust
for power. Liberals argue that in the long run cooperation based on mutual interests will prevail
because modernisation constantly increases the scope and the need for cooperation.

-Liberal thinking is closely connected with the emergence of the modern constitutional state. Liberals
argue that modernisation is a process involving progress in most areas of life. The process of
modernisation enlarges the scope for cooperation across international boundaries. Progress means a
better life for at least the majority of individuals. Humans possess reason, and when they apply it to
international affairs greater cooperation will be the end result.

-Liberalism also rejects the idea that national interest can be exclusively defined in terms of power.
Within the liberal approach, the formation and finalisation of national interest in a complex process
based on both domestic as well as international factors. Liberals argue that National Interest may have
non-power and non-security dimensions as well which can be achieved through cooperation and
interdependence in trade, commerce, investment, and technology.

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-Liberals also highlight the role of transnational actors such as NGOs and International
Regimes/Institutions in IR. This is in direct contrast to the Realist tradition which argues that only
states are the dominant players in IR. One prominent Liberal scholar, James Burton, in his book
‘World and Society’ proposed the idea of a ‘cobweb model’ of transnational relations in contrast to
the Realist model of the world often depicts the system of states as a set of billiard balls: i.e., as a
number of independent, self-contained units.

Phases of Evolution
Found Ideas of Enlightenment. (18-19th Century)

Writers and intellectuals as far back as the Enlightenment have advocated for conceptions of liberal
internationalism in which governments are just when they face the people, and lawful when they face
each other. Although written over two centuries ago, their moral and political philosophies contain
the seeds of core liberal internationalist ideas, in particular the belief that reason could deliver
freedom and justice in international relations.

1. John Locke

John Locke in the seventeenth century, saw great potential for human progress in modern civil
society and capitalist economy, both of which could flourish in states which guaranteed individual
liberty.

Locke argued that states existed to underwrite the liberty of their citizens and thus enable them to live
their lives and pursue their happiness without undue interference from other people. In contrast to
realists, who see the state first and foremost as a concentration and instrument of power, a
‘Machtstaat’, liberals see the state as a constitutional entity, a ‘Rechtsstaat’, which establishes and
enforces the rule of law that respects the rights of citizens to life, liberty, and property. Such
constitutional states would also respect each other and would deal with each other in accordance with
norms of mutual toleration.

The liberal intellectual revolution had great faith in human reason and rationality. The modern liberal
state invokes a political and economic system that will bring, in Jeremy Bentham’s famous phrase,
‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

1. Jeremy Bentham

The term ‘international’ was invented by Jeremy Bentham in his book ‘Introduction to the
Principles of Morals and Legislation’ (1780). In this book, Bentham argued for an international
jurisprudence based on the equality of sovereigns.

Bentham applied his utilitarian maxim of the ‘greatest happiness to the greatest number’ to the
international, such that the role of the judge or the legislator would be to establish greatest happiness
among family of nations.

Forty years later, a new edition of the Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation was
published. By this time, the term ‘international’ had come into widespread usage. And by the middle
of the nineteenth century, it had become an ‘ism’. Internationalism became a

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shorthand to describe the growing band of activists, feminists, publicists, and organisations, all
pushing for various reforms in domestic society and in the wider international society.

Bentham was an expansive thinker, writer, and publicist. He hoped to do for law and morality what
Captain Cook and other voyagers had done for exploration, namely conquer the world: at one point,
he immodestly declared that ‘The Globe is the field of Dominion to which the author aspires’.

1. Immanuel Kant

Kant graphically described international relations as ‘the lawless state of savagery’, at a time when
domestic politics was on the cusp of a new age of rights, citizenship, and constitutionalism.

For Kant, the imperative to achieve perpetual peace required the transformation of individual
consciousness, republican constitutionalism, and a federal contract among states to abolish war
(rather than to regulate it, as earlier international lawyers had argued). This federation can be likened
to a permanent peace treaty, rather than a ‘super-state’ actor or world government.

In his monumental work, ‘Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch”, Kant lays down several
preliminary articles (international ethics) and definitive articles which must be employed to the
practice of International Relations in order to pacify the anarchic order or IR.

6 Preliminary Articles maintained in Perpetual Peace (International Ethics)

1. "No secret treaty of peace shall be held valid in which there is tacitly reserved matter for a
future war"
2. "No independent states, large or small, shall come under the dominion of another state by
inheritance, exchange, purchase, or donation"
3. "Standing armies shall in time be totally abolished"
4. "National debts shall not be contracted with a view to the external friction of states"
5. "No state shall by force interfere with the constitution or government of another state"
6. "No state shall, during war, permit such acts of hostility which would make mutual
confidence in the subsequent peace impossible: such are the employment of assassins ,
poisoners, breach of capitulation, and incitement to treason in the opposing state"

3 Components/Definitive Articles of Kant’s Perpetual Peace

1. First Definitive Article: The Civil Constitution of Every State shall

be Republican.
● “If, as is inevitably the case under this constitution, the consent of the citizens is required to
decide whether or not war is to be declared, it is very natural that they will have great
hesitation in embarking on so dangerous an enterprise.”
1. Second Definitive Article: The Right of Nations shall be based on a
Federation of Free States.

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“-peace can neither be inaugurated nor secured without a general agreement between the nations; thus
a particular kind of league, which we will call a pacific federation, is required. It would be different
from a peace treaty in the sense that the latter terminates one war, whereas the former would seek to
end all wars for good.”

1. Third Definitive Article: Cosmopolitan Right shall be limited to Conditions

of Universal Hospitality

“-The peoples of the earth have thus entered in varying degrees into a universal community, and it has
developed to the point where a violation of rights in one part of the world is felt everywhere.”

Scholar Michael Doyle builds upon the Kantian Legacy of restraint among liberal states and
‘international imprudence’ in relation to non-liberal states and argued that Liberal states have created
a ‘separate peace’. This is known as the thesis of ‘Democratic Peace’.

Idealism

● The idea of a natural harmony of interests in international political and economic relations
came under challenge in the early part of the twentieth century. The First World War
shifted liberal thinking towards a recognition that peace is not a natural condition but is
one that must be constructed. In a powerful critique of the idea that peace and prosperity
were part of a latent natural order, the publicist and author Leonard Woolf argued that
peace and prosperity required ‘consciously devised machinery’.
● The most famous advocate of international authority for the management of international
relations was US president Woodrow Wilson. According to Wilson, peace could only be
secured with the creation of an international organisation to regulate international anarchy. he
argued that security and peace could not be left to secret bilateral diplomatic deals and a
fragile balance of power. Drawing upon a domestic analogy, Wilson argued that just as in the
domestic society, the international domain had to have a system of regulations for addressing
disputes and an international force that could be mobilised if non-violent conflict resolution
failed.
● In Wilson’s famous ‘Fourteen Points’ speech, addressed to Congress in January 1918, he
argued that ‘a general association of nations must be formed’ to preserve the coming peace
—and the League of Nations was to be that general association. The founders of the
League of Nations were desperate to avoid a repetition of the horrors of the Great War.
The main aims of the organisation included disarmament, preventing war through
collective security, settling disputes between countries through negotiation and diplomacy,
and improving global welfare.
● For the League to be effective, it had to have the military power to deter aggression and,
when necessary, to use a preponderance of power to enforce its will. This idea of
‘Collective Security’ was central to the League of Nations.
● Collective security refers to an arrangement where ‘each state in the system accepts that the
security of one is the concern of all, and agrees to join in a collective response to
aggression’. It can be contrasted with an alliance system of security, where a number of
states join together, usually as a response to a specific external threat (sometimes known as
‘collective defence’). Collective Defence is a limited or

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 group system, whereas Collective Security is a global system. Collective Defence is a
limited arrangement. It involves only some states who come forward to join hands against a
common enemy. Collective Security is a global system.
● Article 16 of the League’s Charter noted the obligation that, in the event of war, all member
states must cease normal relations with the offending state, impose sanctions, and, if
necessary, commit their armed forces to the disposal of the League Council should the use of
force be required to restore the status quo.
● The League’s constitution also called for the self- determination of all nations, another
central characteristic of liberal idealist thinking. However, default support for self-
determination masked a host of practical and moral problems such as; what would happen
to newly created minorities who felt no allegiance to the
self-determining state? Could a democratic process adequately deal with questions of
identity—who was to decide what community should be self-determining? And what if a
newly self- determined state rejected liberal democratic norms?.

The experience of the League of Nations was a disaster. While the moral rhetoric at the League’s
creation was decidedly idealist, in practice states remained imprisoned by
self-interest. here is no better example of this than the US’ decision not to join the institution it had
created. With the Soviet Union in opposition for ideological reasons following ht e Bolshevik
revolution, the League of Nations quickly became a talking-shop for the ‘satisfied’ powers.

The League lacked an armed force of its own to enforce any actions to achieve these aims. There
were minor successes involving small powers but overall the League lacked any real teeth. Success
ultimately depended on the involvement of the so-called Great Powers.
Unfortunately, the Great Powers that joined - like France and Britain - were generally
reluctant to do so.

After the Second World War, in 1945, the language of liberal internationalism was more pragmatic.
The states recognised the need to replace the League with another international institution with
responsibility for international peace and security. However, this time with the United Nations, the
states were careful to not repeat the mistakes they did while formulating the league. The framers of its
Charter were aware of the need for a consensus among the great powers in order for enforcement
action to be taken—hence the veto system (Article 27 of the UN Charter), which granted the five
permanent members of the Security Council the power of veto. his revision constituted an important
modification to the classical model of collective security, as each of the great powers would veto any
coercive action proposed by the others. It was not until the end of the cold war that cooperation
among the great powers was sufficiently well developed for collective security to be realised, as was
evident in the UN’s response to the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq.

The Era of American Hegemony and Challenges

With the demise of the cold war system it seemed like liberalism had defeated all other contending
political ideologies. Liberalism scholar Francis Fukuyama wrote a provocative article titled ‘The End
of History’, declaring the triumph of Liberal Internationalism over any other theory of International
Relations.

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However after the end of the Cold War in 1991, the USA emerged as a global hegemon, capable of
influencing events anywhere around the world. Post Cold War interventions such as Kosovo(1998)
and Iraq(2003) made it abundantly clear that the UN and with it the idea of an International
Institution for regulation of international relations was once again sidelined. This time, by America
and its allies.

As the end of the millennium approached, liberal internationalists saw America as the ‘indispensable
nation’ who could use force without first asking for permission. As Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright announced in 1998 in the context of disarming Iraq: ‘if we have to use force it is because
we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.’ his
imperial impulse lasted well into the first decade of the twenty-first century when the United States
fought the so-called ‘war on terror’. his global war required rules prohibiting war to be subverted
when these rules became an impediment to the exercise of American power.

However, from the vantage point of the end of second decade of 21st century, the wave of Liberal
Internationalism has ebbed and it is facing a crisis today. American-led international order no longer
seems to be an adequate framework for liberal international order. There are signs that the rest of the
world no longer wants an order in which a single state is preponderant.

Recurring crises and disagreements in the multilateral institutions designed to provide governance
over security, trade, and finance have demonstrated that cooperation is harder to achieve and to
sustain than liberals assumed. The on-going violence in the Middle East and Africa, the uneven
record of post cold war liberal foreign policies in delivering a more secure and just world order, and
continued unrest triggered by global economic inequalities have turned the triumphalism of the
‘liberal decade’ to despondency.

G. John Ikenberry maps the evolution of Liberal International order in 3 phases labelled ‘liberal
internationalism 1.0’, ‘2.0’, and ‘3.0’

Types of Liberalism
Sociological Liberalism/Communications Theory

For realists, IR is the study of relations between the governments of sovereign states. Sociological
liberalism rejects this view as too narrowly focused and one-sided. IR is not only about state–state
relations; it is also about transnational relations, i.e., relations between people, groups, and
organisations belonging to different countries. Transnational relations are considered by sociological
liberals to be an increasingly important aspect of international relations.

1. In focusing on transnational relations, sociological liberals return to an old theme in liberal

thinking: the notion that relations between people are more cooperative and more supportive
of peace than are relations between national governments. A high degree of transnational ties
between societies leads to peaceful relations that amount to more than the mere absence of
war. It leads to a security community: ‘a group of people which has become “integrated”’.
Integration means that a ‘sense of

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 community’ has been achieved; people have come to agree that their conflicts and problems
can be resolved ‘without resort to large-scale physical force’. (Karl Deutsch)
2. Many sociological liberals hold the idea that transnational relations between people from
different countries help create new forms of human society which exist alongside or even in
competition with the nation-state. In a book called World Society John Burton (1972)
proposes a ‘cobweb model’ of transnational relationships. The purpose is to demonstrate how
any nation-state consists of many different groups of people that have different types of
external tie and different types of interest: religious groups, business groups, labour groups,
and so on. In marked contrast, the realist model of the world often depicts the system of
states as a set of billiard balls: i.e., as a number of independent, self-contained units.
According to sociological liberals such as Burton, if we map the patterns of communication
and transactions between various groups we will get a more accurate picture of the world
because it would represent actual patterns of human behaviour rather than artificial
boundaries of states. Burton implies that the cobweb model points to a world driven more by
mutually beneficial cooperation than by antagonistic conflict. In this way the cobweb model
builds on an earlier liberal idea about the beneficial effects of cross-cutting or overlapping
group memberships. Because individuals are members of many different groups, conflict will
be muted if not eliminated; overlapping memberships minimise the risk of serious conflict
between any two groups.

Interdependence/Commercial Liberalism

Interdependence means mutual dependence: peoples and governments are affected by what happens
elsewhere, by the actions of their counterparts in other countries. Thus, a higher level of transnational
relations between countries means a higher level of interdependence. That also reflects the process of
modernisation, which usually increases the level of interdependence between states. The twentieth
century, especially the period since 1950, has seen the rise of a large number of highly industrialised
countries. This development has translated into various consequences in IR.

1. Throughout history states have sought power by means of military force and territorial
expansion. But for highly industrialised countries economic development and foreign trade
are more adequate and less costly means of achieving prominence and prosperity. That is
because the costs of using force have increased and the benefits have declined.

Why is force less beneficial for states and trade increasingly so?

The principal reason, according to Rosecrance, is the changing character and basis of economic
production, which is linked to modernisation. In an earlier age the possession of territory and ample
natural resources were the key to greatness. In today’s world that is no

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longer the case; now a highly qualified labour force, access to information, and financial capital are
the keys to success. The most economically successful countries of the post-war period are the
‘trading states’ such as Japan and Germany. They have refrained from the traditional military–
political option of high military expenditure and economic self-sufficiency; instead, they have
chosen the trading option of an intensified international division of labour and increased
interdependence. Many small countries are also ‘trading states’. For a long time the very large
countries, most notably the former Soviet Union and the United States, pursued the traditional
military–political option, thereby burdening themselves with high levels of military expenditure.
That has changed in recent decades. According to Rosecrance, the end of the Cold War has made
that traditional option less urgent and thus less attractive. Consequently, the trading-state option is
increasingly preferred even by very large states.

Liberals argue that a high division of labour in the international economy increases interdependence
between states, and that discourages and reduces violent conflict between states.

1. During the Second World War, David Mitrany (1966) set forth a functionalist
theory of integration, arguing that greater interdependence in the form of transnational ties
between countries could lead to peace. According to Mitrany, transnational actors play a
pivotal role in a stable world order. This is because legal transnational actors like MNCs or
NGOs seek cooperation and integration of society for their profits, success and sustenance.
Nation States by themselves do not foster co-operation. Thus, they must establish non-
political cooperative groups to achieve peace. These non-political co-operative actors must
be based on the mutual interest and shared concerns of the acting nation states. Nation states
must first establish them at the micro level, their success at the micro level will lead to their
replication and eventually these non-political co-operative actors will be functional at the
macro level. Mitrany calls this the ‘SpillOver Effect’. The ‘SpillOver’ Effect will also
translate the success of one non-political co-operative group to multiple domains.

However, Mitrany believed, that cooperation should be arranged by technical experts, not by
politicians. The experts would devise solutions to common problems in various functional areas:
transport, communication, finance, and so on. Technical and economic collaboration would expand
when the participants discovered the mutual benefits that could be obtained from it. When citizens
saw the welfare improvements that resulted from efficient collaboration in international
organisations, they would transfer their loyalty from the state to international organisations. In that
way, economic interdependence would lead to political integration and to peace.

1. Ernest Haas developed the NeoFunctionalist theory of International Relations.

Haas builds on Mitrany. But he rejects the notion that ‘technical’ matters can be separated
from politics. Integration has to do with getting self-interested political elites to intensify
their cooperation. Integration is a process whereby ‘political actors are persuaded to shift
their loyalties . . . toward a new center whose institutions possess or demand jurisdiction
over the preexisting national states’. This ‘functional’ process of integration depends on the
notion of ‘spillover’, when increased cooperation in one area leads to increased cooperation
in other areas. Spillover

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 would ensure that political elites marched inexorably towards the promotion of integration.
Haas saw that happening in the initial years of West European cooperation in the 1950s and
early 1960s.
2. Joseph Nye Jr. and Robert Keohene proposed the theory of
‘complex interdependency’ in their book ‘Power and Independence’
(1970).

They argue that post-war ‘complex interdependence’ is qualitatively different from earlier and
simpler kinds of interdependence. They differentiate in ‘high politics’ of security and survival and
‘low politics’ of economic and social affairs. Earlier, that is in the pre-war era, international relations
were concerned with ‘high politics’ with leaders of states interacting with each other. The use of
military was always a probable option in the case of a conflict between the state leaders. However,
under complex interdependence states become more preoccupied with the ‘low politics’ of welfare
and less concerned with the ‘high politics’ of national security.

There are multiple reasons for this :

1. Multiple channels connect societies: There is much more apart from

government-to-government interactions. Transnational relations between societal actors across
the nation-states including firms, NGOs and individuals become very prominent.
2. Variety of Actors: it assumes that international politics encompasses a wide array of actors
—which includes states but goes far beyond them. Within states also, actors like
bureaucracies, companies, political parties, interest groups and voters are considered to be
important.
3. There is no clear hierarchy of issues: Security, which realists find as dominant, isn’t
always the most important agenda item; especially in economic relations and in
transnational and trans-governmental relations. Military is always a less useful instrument
in the new era of ‘low politics’ under complex interdependency.

Consequently, under complex interdependency, international relations are becoming more like
domestic politics: ‘Different issues generate different coalitions, both within governments and across
them, and involve different degrees of conflict. Politics does not stop at the water’s edge’. In most of
these conflicts military force is irrelevant. Therefore, power resources other than military ones are of
increasing importance, for example, negotiating skills.

There are several consequences of the increasing complex interdependency:

1. States will pursue different goals simultaneously and transnational actors, such as NGOs and
transnational corporations, will pursue their own separate goals free from state control.
2. Power resources will most often be specific to issue areas. For example, in spite of their
comparatively small size, Denmark and Norway will command influence in international
shipping because of their large merchant and tanker fleets, but that influence does not
easily translate to other issue areas.
3. The importance of international organisations will increase. They are arenas for political
actions by weak states, they animate coalition formation, and they oversee the setting of
international agendas.

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Realists claim that any issue can become a matter of life and death in an anarchic world.
Interdependence liberals will reply that that is too simplistic and that a large number of issues on the
international agenda are important bread-and-butter items in line with the complex interdependence
assumptions. Therefore, interdependence liberals suggest a compromise:

“The appropriate response to the changes occurring in world politics today is not to discredit the
traditional wisdom of realism and its concern for the military balance of power, but to realise its
limitations and to supplement it with insights from the liberal approach.”

Henry Kissinger (1975) — Progress in dealing with traditional agenda is no longer enough… the
problems of energy, resources, environment, population, the uses of space and the seas now rank with
questions of military security, ideology, and territorial rivalry which have traditionally made up the
diplomatic agenda.

Institutional Liberalism

What is an Institution?

According to institutional liberals, it is an international organisation, such as NATO or the European

Union; or it is a set of rules which governs state action in particular areas, such as aviation or shipping.
These sets of rules are also called ‘regimes’.

Often the two go together; the trade regime, for example, is shaped primarily by the World Trade
Organisation (WTO). There may also be regimes without formal organisations; for example, the Law
of the Sea conferences held under the auspices of the United Nations do not have a formal international
organisation. Institutions can be universal, with global membership, such as the UN, or they can be
regional (or sub-regional), such as for example the EU.

What is a regime?

According to Stephen D Krasner, international regimes are defined as “a set of implicit and explicit
principles, norms, rules and decision-making processes around which the actors’ expectations
converge.”

The effectiveness of a regime rests upon the operations of functioning of institutions, organisations,
governments and international bodies that share a set of principles, rules and norms in a particular
area of international action. They can mitigate anarchy by reducing verification costs, reinforcing
reciprocity, and making defection from norms easier to highlight.

“Rockets and bombs might determine what occurs in the realm of military conflict, but they are
largely irrelevant when the goal is to limit the production of polluting gases or to combat drug
smuggling. Therefore, each separate issue has its own distribution of power and its own definition of
what constitutes power.”

Woodrow Wilson’s vision of transforming international relations from a ‘jungle’ of chaotic power
politics to a ‘zoo’ of regulated and peaceful intercourse laid the basis of Institutional

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Liberalism. Following the end of the First World War, Wilson voiced the need for an international
institution to regulate matters peacefully in the discourse of international relations. The League of
Nations, which Wilson described as ‘a general association of nations’ was formed as a result of this.
However due to multiple reasons both ideological and technical, the League failed.

Present-day institutional liberals are less optimistic than their more idealist predecessors. They do
agree that international institutions can make cooperation easier and far more likely, but they do not
claim that such institutions can by themselves guarantee a qualitative transformation of international
relations, from a ‘jungle’ to a ‘zoo’. Powerful states will not easily be completely constrained.
However, institutional liberals do not agree with the realist view that international institutions are
mere ‘scraps of paper’, that they are at the complete mercy of powerful states. International
institutions are more than mere handmaidens of strong states. They are of independent importance,
and they can promote cooperation between states.

The argument made by institutional liberals is that a high level of institutionalisation significantly
reduces the destabilising effects of multipolar anarchy identified by Mearsheimer a prominent Realist.
Institutions make up for lack of trust between states. They do that by providing a flow of information
between their member states, which consequently are much less in the dark about what other states
are doing and why. Institutions thus help reduce member states’ fear of each other. In addition, they
provide a forum for negotiation between states.

Institutions provide continuity and a sense of stability. They foster cooperation between states for
their mutual advantage. For example, European states can use the EU machinery to try to ensure that
other parties will respect commitments already made. Institutions help ‘create a climate in which
expectations of stable peace develop’.

David Mitrany (1943) in A Working Peace System—An Argument for The Functional
Development of International Organisations:

He envisaged a world organised on the basis of functional relations. He advocated a combination

between national freedom and international organisations. Mitrany suggested the model of an
expanded network of international activities and agencies, achieved by way of a gradual process
involving the integration of all nations, also called the ramification process. He argued in favour of a
functionalist approach which would supersede the importance of borders through the natural growth
of common activities and common administrative agencies.

The key arguments given by Mitrany (functionalist) and Ernst Haas (Neo functionalist because he
spoke of deeper integration) are that the state cannot fully satisfy all human needs and therefore the
solution was to gradually expand the functional international institutions. Mitrany sought to explain
that international peace couldn’t be limited to preventing violence between protagonists and that it
also had to factor in the social and economic components — essentially, the need for social unity
alongside the territorial constitutional one.

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He contended that the real security issue was not the preservation of peace between separate nations,
but the manner in which they could be persuaded to cooperate.

Ernst Haas (1964) Beyond the Nation-State—Functionalism and International

Organisation. ^

Republican Liberalism

Republican liberalism is built on the claim that liberal democracies are more peaceful and law-
abiding than are other political systems. The argument is not that democracies never go to war;
democracies have gone to war as often as have non-democracies. But the argument is that
democracies do not fight each other. This idea was first voiced by Immanuel Kant in ‘Perpetual
Peace: A Philosophical Sketch’ where he argued that Liberal states has a legacy of restraint among
themselves and a separate democratic peace.

There are 3 reasons given by scholars to back this argument:

1. Democracy encourages peaceful international relations because democratic governments

are controlled by their citizens, who will not advocate or support wars with other
democracies.
2. Democracies hold common moral values which lead to the formation of what Kant called a
‘pacific union’. The union is not a formal peace treaty; rather, it is a zone of peace based on
the common moral foundations of all democracies. Peaceful ways of solving domestic
conflict are seen as morally superior to violent behaviour, and this attitude is transferred to
international relations between democracies.
3. Peace between democracies is strengthened through economic cooperation and
interdependence. In the pacific union it is possible to encourage what Kant called ‘the spirit
of commerce’: mutual and reciprocal gain for those involved in international economic co-
operation and exchange.

For most republican liberals there is not only confidence but also hope that world politics is already
developing and will develop far beyond rivalry, conflict, and war between independent states.
Republican liberals are optimistic that peace and cooperation will eventually prevail in international
relations, based on progress towards a more democratic world.

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at best, or the state of war’. Hofmann’s reasoning comes as no surprise to realists, who argue that
there can be no progress, no law, and no justice where there is no common power. Despite the weight
of this realist argument, those who believe in the liberal project have not conceded defeat. Liberal
internationalists believe that power politics itself is the product of ideas, and— crucially—ideas can
change. Therefore, even if international affairs have been inhospitable to liberal ideas of progressive
change, this does not mean that the international cannot be remade in liberalism’s own image.

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