Liberalism: The long road to peace

Dr David Norman
Learning Outcomes

• Recognise and be able to recount

the central ideas and claims of
liberalism.
• Understand the historical and
political context in which liberalism
has emerged as a key world-view or
understanding of international
relations.
• Understand the multiplicity of
liberal thought
Liberalism and the
Origins of IR

• Liberalism is a political tradition with

long historical roots
• Founding of the first department of
International Relations at Aberystwyth
(1919)
• Woodrow Wilson Chair in recognition of Wilson’s ‘14 points’ was a call
for:
Wilson’s role in establishing the League
of Nations (1919) democracy, self-
determination, free trade,
• Early liberal work = ‘idealism’ disarmament, collective
security institutions
Liberalism: Some core
concepts
On War
• War is not the natural
condition of international
relations
• Peace is normal
• National interests are
safeguared by more than
military means
On Governance
• Democracy is necessary for
the perfectibility of human
beings to develop
• States are not the main
actors on the international
stage
• States are not unitary actors
• Interdependence between
states a key feature of
international relations
On Human Nature
• Human beings are
perfectible
• Faith in the power of human
reason
• Faith in the power of humans
to realise their inner
potential
• Belief in progress
(Scientific/technological/mo
ral/social)
Daddow (2009)
 Classical Liberalism (1)
Liberalism Internationalism
‘The civil constitution of every
Absolutist states of his time were ill-
fitted for peace
state shall be republican’
• People would be voting to
• Wars were pursued for ‘continual fight for themselves
aggrandizement’
• They will have to pay for the
• The state was seen as the property of costs of war themselves
rulers, and could be ‘inherited,
• They will have to repair the
exchanged, purchased, or donated’
Immanuel Kant destruction war leaves in its
(1724-1804) • Wars were financed by debt, crippling wake
domestic economies

The Democratic Peace
Theory
No two liberal democracies have
every gone to war with each other
Michael Doyle (1983; 1986; 1995)
“The absence of war between
democracies comes as close as
anything we have to an empirical law
in international relations” (Levy 1989)
“liberal democracies will have to
come to grips with the fact that, with
the collapse of the communist world,
the world in which they live is less
and less the old one of geopolitics
[...] the desire for a comfortable
preservation has been elevated over
the desire to risk one’s life in a
battle.”
Francis Fukuyama (1992)
• Of norms pertaining to conflict
resolution inherent in democracies
• Of mutual expectations about state
Why? behaviour between democracies
• Of institutional processes making a
decision to go to war more complicated
Democratic Peace Theory
“The reason why
in US Foreign Policy? I’m so strong on
democracy is
democracies don’t
“Ultimately, the best strategy to ensure our go to war with each
security and build a durable peace is to support other…I’ve got great
the advance of democracy. Democracies do not faith in democracies
attack each other; they make better partners in to promote peace.
trade and diplomacy.” George W Bush 2002
Bill Clinton, 1994.

“Democrats in the Kremlin are a

greater guarantee of security than
nuclear weapons”
George H. W. Bush, 1992.
 “As little

Classical Liberalism (2) intercourse as

possible betwixt the

Commercial Liberalism governments, as

much connection as
possible between
the nations of the
• Free trade leads to prosperity and peace world”
Richard Cobden
• Theory of comparative advantage (David 1836
Ricardo): All countries will have an advantage
in producing something; if they trade these
products with each other everyone is better
off
• Commerce leads to mutual dependence
between nations and a common interest in
generating prosperity and peace
• Liberal tenets: Natural harmony of interests;
human progress; constitutional and ‘small’
government
Commercial Liberalism
• Illusion = war and territorial conquest
still profitable for nations
• War is expensive
• War is economically disruptive
• War is politically divisive
• Rising interdependence changes the
nature of international politics
Angell received the Nobel Prize for Peace
in 1933
“military power is socially and
economically futile, and can
have no relation to the prosperity
of the people exercising it; that it
is impossible for one nation to
seize by force the wealth or trade
of another [...] in short, war,
even when victorious, can no
longer achieve those aims for
which peoples strive.”
(Norman Angell 1910)
 Capitalism and Democracy:
the route to peace?

“In the twentieth century, the

United States became a “liberal
Leviathan.” Indeed, American global
authority was built on Hobbesian
grounds—that is, other countries,
particularly in Western Europe and
later in East Asia, handed the reigns
of power to Washington, just as
Hobbes’s individuals in the state of “In the twenty-first century, this will involve sharing
nature voluntarily construct and authority among a wider coalition of liberal democratic
hand over power to the Leviathan.” states, advanced and developing, rising and declining,
(Ikenberry 2011: 10) Western and non-Western. It is this liberal complex of
states that is the ultimate guardian of the rules,
institutions, and progressive purposes of the liberal
order.” (Ikenberry 2011)
 (Neo) Liberal
Institutionalism
• Focus on institutions as providing state incentives
to cooperation
• Similar to Neo-Realism – move away from ‘human
nature’ towards the structural role of anarchy in
the international system
• Developed from 1930s analysis of functionalism- EU
• Belief in ‘spill-over effects’ and ‘complex
Interdependence’ How can institutions enhance
cooperation?

Cooperation under Anarchy: Share information

Stops cheating
Absolute gains? (liberalism) Reduce transaction costs
Relative gains? (realism) Reduce vulnerability/uncertainty
Agenda-setting, coalition-building
Access for non-state actors
Enshrine bargains
 International Regimes: ‘sets of implicit or
The role of explicit principles, norms, rules and decision-
making procedures around which states’
International Regimes expectations converge in a given area of
international relations’ (Krasner, 1983)

Trade regimes (GATT, WTO)

Security regimes (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty)

Communications regimes (International

Telecommunications Union)

Outer space regimes (Outer Space Treaty 1967,

Convention on Liability for Damage caused by
Space Objects 1972, …)

Environmental regimes (Kyoto Protocol, Paris

Agreement)