Liberalism
T I M D U N N E
• Introduction
• Core ideas in liberal thinking on international relations
1 14
1 1 6
1 20
1 23
• The challenges confronting liberalism
• Conclusion
Reader's Guide
The practice of international relations has not been
accommodating to liberalism. Whereas the domestic
political realm in many states has witnessed an
impressive degree of progress, with institutions providing
for both order and justice, the international
realm in the era of the modern states system has
been characterized by a precarious order and the
absence of justice. The introductory section of the
chapter will address this dilemma before providing
a definition of liberalism and its component parts.
The second section considers the core concepts of
liberalism, beginning with the visionary internationalism
of the Enlightenment, through to the idealism
of the inter-war period, and the institutionalism that
became dominant in the second half of the twentieth
century. The third and final section considers the
grave challenges that confront liberalism in an era of
globalization.
T I M D U N N E
Although realism is regarded as the dominant theory of
international relations, liberalism has a strong claim to
being the historic alternative. In the twentieth century,
liberal thinking influenced policy-making elites and
public opinion in a number of Western states after the
First World War, an era often referred to in academic
International Relations as idealism. There was a brief
resurgence ofliberal sentiment at the end ofthe Second
World War with the birth of the United Nations,
although this beacon ofhope was soon extinguished by
the return of cold war power politics. In the 1990s, liberalism
appeared to be resurgent again as Western state
leaders proclaimed a new world order and intellectuals
provided theoretical justifications for the inherent
supremacy of their liberal ideas over all other competing
ideologies. Since 9/1 1 , the pendulum has once again
swung towards the realist pole as the USA and its allies
have engaged in costly wars against states and networks
who were believed to be a threat; during this period, the
power and legitimacy of the Western-dominated order
has been called into question.
How do we explain the divergent fortunes of liberalism
in the domestic and international domains? While
liberal values and institutions have become deeply
embedded in Europe and North America, the same values
and institutions lacklegitimacyworldwide. To invoke
the famous phrase of Stanley Hoffmann's, 'international
affairshave been the nemesis ofLiberalism'. 'The essence
of Liberalism', Hoffmann continues, 'is self-restraint,
moderation, compromise and peace' whereas 'the
essence of international politics is exactly the opposite:
troubled peace, at best, or the state of war' (Hoffmann
1987: 396). This explanation 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 ofthis realist argument, those who believe in the
liberal project have not conceded defeat. Liberals argue
that power politics itself is the product of ideas, andcrucially-ideas
can change. Therefore, even ifthe world
has been inhospitable to liberalism, this does not mean
that it cannot be re-made in its own image.
While the belief in the possibility of progress is one
identifier of a liberal approach to politics (Clark 1989:
49-66), there are other general propositions that define
the broad tradition of liberalism. Perhaps the appropriate
way to begin this discussion is with a four-dimensional
definition (Doyle 1997: 207). First, all citizens
are juridically equal and possess certain basic rights to
education, access to a free press, and religious toleration.
Second, the legislative assembly ofthe state possesses only
the authority invested in it by the people, whose basic
rights it is not permitted to abuse. Third, a key dimension
of the liberty of the individual is the right to own
property, including productive forces. Fourth, liberalism
contends that the most effective system ofeconomic
exchange is one that is largely market-driven and not one
that is subordinate to bureaucratic regulation and control,
either domestically or internationally. When these
propositions are taken together, we see a stark contrast
between, on the one hand, liberal values of individualism,
tolerance, freedom, and constitutionalism, and, on
the other, conservatism, which places a higher value on
order and authority and is willing to sacrifice the liberty
ofthe individual for the stability ofthe community.
Although many writers have tended to view liberalism
as a theory ofgovernment, what is becoming increasingly
apparent is the explicit connection between liberalism
as a political and economic theory and liberalism as an
international theory. Properly conceived, liberal thought
on a global scale rests on the application of an analogy
from the character of a political actor to its international
conduct. Like individuals, states have different characteristics-some
are bellicose and war-prone, others are
tolerant and peaceful: in short, the identity of the state
determines its outward orientation. Liberals see a further
parallel between individuals and sovereign states.
Although the character of states may differ, all states are
accorded certain 'natural' rights, such as the generalized
right to non-interference in their domestic affairs. At the
same time, liberals believe that for certain purposes the
liberty ofthe state must be compromised by the need for
collective action, hence the priority attached to the coordinating
role ofint�rnational organizations.
Liberals concede that we have far to go before cooperative
patterns ofbehaviour are sustained across a variety
of issues and challenges. Historically, liberals have
agreed with realists that war is a recurring feature of the
anarchic system. But, unlike realists, they do not identify
anarchy as the cause of war. How, then, do liberals
explain war? As Box 7.1 demonstrates, certain strands of
liberalism see the causes of war located in imperialism,
others in the failure of the balance of power, and still
others in the problem of undemocratic regimes. And
ought this to be remedied through collective security,
One of the most useful analytical tools for thinking about differences
between individual thinkers or particular variations on a
broad theme such as liberalism is to differentiate between levels
of analysis. For example, Kenneth Waltz's Man, the State and War
(1 959) examined the causes of conflict operating at the level of
Chapter 7 Liberalism
the individual, the state, and the international system itself. The
followingtableturns Waltz on his head, as it were, to show how
different liberal thinkers have provided competing explanations
(acrossthethree levels of analysis)for the causes ofwar and the
determinants ofpeace.
Images of liberalism Public figure/period Causes of conflict Determinants of peace
First image (Human nature) Richard Cobden (mid-
1 9th century)
Interventions by governments
domestically and internationally
disturbing the natural order
Individual liberty, free trade,
prosperity, interdependence
Second image (The state) Woodrow Wilson (early
20th century)
Undemocratic nature of
international politics, especially
foreign policy and the balance
of power
National self-determination;
open governments responsive
to public opinion; collective
security
Third image (The structure
of the system)
J. A. Hobson (early20th
century)
The balance of power system A world government, with
powers to mediate and
enforce decisions
commerce, or world government? While it can be productive
to think about the various strands of liberal
thought and their differing prescriptions (Doyle 1997:
205-300), given the limited space permitted to deal with
a broad and complex tradition, the emphasis below will
be on the core concepts of international liberalism and
the way in which these relate to the goals of order and
justice on a global scale.
At the end ofthe chapter, the discussion will consider
the challenges facing the liberal institutions and values
that have shaped the post- 1945 order. Here we consider
the claim made by a leading thinker from Princeton
University, G. John Ikenberry, that liberal internationalism
is at a crossroads. The liberal states that have had
their hands on the tiller of world order are no longer
in command of the vessel. Why is this? Several reasons
are offered. From within the heartland of liberalism, the
issue is about the decline in relative power of the USA
and the EU. From outside the transatlantic �phere, fewer
states are prepared to fall into line: in other words, as
we move through the second decade of the twenty-first
century, there is a crisis ofboth leadership and followership
in world politics. This raises the question whether
other states and institutions are in a position to take up
the mantle of leadership. Despite the increased visibility
and coordination among the so-called rising powers,
there is no evidence that they believe themselves to have
a special responsibility for managing world order-in
a manner that parallels the role played by the USA after
1945. The other possibility, mooted by Ikenberry, is that
liberal institutions could strengthen to the point where
individual state power and capacity becomes a much less
significant determinant of stability. This possible future
for liberal internationalism remains a distant hope today.
• Liberalism is a theory of both government within states
and good governance between states and peoples
worldwide. Unlike realism, which regards the 'international'
as an anarchic realm, liberalism seeks to project values of
order, liberty, justice, and toleration into international
relations.
• The high-water mark of liberal thinking in international
relations was reached in the inter-war period in the work
of idealists, who believed that warfare was an unnecessary
and outmoded way of settling disputes between states.
• Domestic and international institutions are required to
protectand nurture these values.
• Liberals disagreeon fundamental issues such as the causes
ofwar and what kindofinstitutions are required to deliver
liberalvalues ina decentralized, multicultural international
system.
• An important cleavage within liberalism, which has
become more pronounced in our globalized world, is
between those operating with an activist conception of
liberalism, who advocate interventionist foreign policies
and stronger international institutions, and those who
incline towards a pragmatic conception, which places a
priority on toleration and non-intervention.
T I M D U N N E
Immanuel Kant and Jeremy Bentham were two of the
leading liberals ofthe EnIightenment. Both were reacting
to the barbarity of international relations, or what Kant
graphically described as 'the lawless state of savagery', at
a time when domestic politics was at the cusp of a new
age of rights, citizenship, and constitutionalism. Their
abhorrence ofthe lawless state ofsavagery led them individually
to elaborate plans for 'perpetual peace'. Although
written over two centuries ago, these manifestos contain
the seeds ofcore liberal ideas, in particular the beliefthat
reason could deliver freedom and justice in international
relations. For Kant, the imperative to achieve perpetual
peace required the transformation of individual consciousness,
republican constitutionalism, and a federal
contract between 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.
The three components ofKant's hypothetical treaty
for a permanent peace are outlined in Box 7.2.
Kant's claim that liberal states are pacific in their
international relations with other liberal states was
revived in the 1980s. In a much-cited article, Michael
Doyle argued that liberal states have created a 'separate
peace' (1986: 1151). According to Doyle, there are
two elements to the Kantian legacy: restraint among
liberal states and 'international imprudence' in relations
with non-liberal states. Although the empirical
evidence seems to support the democratic peace thesis,
it is important to bear in mind the limitations of
the argument. In the first instance, for the theory to
be compelling, believers in the thesis need to provide
an explanation as to why war has become unthinkable
between liberal states. Kant had argued that if
the decision to use force were taken by the people,
rather than by the prince, then the frequency of conflicts
would be drastically reduced. But, logically,
this argument also implies a lower frequency of conflicts
between liberal and non-liberal states, and this
has proven to be contrary to the historical evidence.
An alternative explanation for the democratic peace
thesis might be that liberal states tend to be wealthy,
and therefore have less to gain (and more to lose) by
engaging in conflicts than poorer authoritarian states.
Perhaps the most convincing explanation of all is the
simple fact that liberal states tend to be in relations of
amity with other liberal states. War between Canada
and the United States is unthinkable, perhaps not
because of their liberal democratic constitutions, but
because they are friends (Wendt 1999: 298-9), with a
high degree of convergence in economic and political
matters. Indeed, war between states with contrasting
political and economic systems may also be unthinkable
because they have a history of friendly relations.
An example here is Mexico and Cuba, which maintain
close bilateral relations despite their history of divergent
economic ideologies.
Irrespective of the scholarly search for an answer to
the reasons whyliberal democratic states are more peaceful,
it is important to note the political consequences of
Box 7.2 Immanuel Kant's 'Perpetual Peace: A
First Definitive Article: The Civil Constitution ofEvery
State shall be Republican
'If, as is inevitably the case under this constitution, the consent
ofthe 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 ...'
(Kant 1991: 99-102)
Second Definitive Article: The Right ofNations shall be
based on a Federation ofFree States
'Each nation, for the sake of its own security, can and ought to
demand of the others that they should enter along with it into
a constitution, similar to a civil one, within which the rights
of each could be secured ... But 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 that the latter terminates one war, whereas the
former would seek to end all wars for good ... It can be shown
that this idea of federalism, extending gradually to encompass
all states and thus leading to perpetual peace, is practicable
and has objective reality.'
(Kant 1 991: 102-5)
Third Definitive Article: Cosmopolitan Rightshall be
limited to Conditions ofUniversal 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. The idea of a cosmopolitan right is therefore not
fantastic and overstrained; it is a necessary complement to the
unwritten code of political and international right, transforming
it into a universal right of humanity.'
(Kant 1991: 105-8)
this hypothesis. In 1989 Francis Fukuyama wrote an
article entitled 'The End of History', which celebrated
the triumph of liberalism over all other ideologies,
contending that liberal states were more stable internally
and more peaceful in their international relations
(1989: 3-18). Other defenders of the democratic peace
thesiswere more circumspect. As Doyle recognized, liberal
democracies are as aggressive as any other type of
state in their relations with authoritarian regimes and
stateless peoples ( 1995a: 100). How, then, should states
inside the liberal zone of peace conduct their relations
with non-liberal regimes? How can the positive Kantian
legacy of restraint triumph over the historical legacy of
international imprudence on the part of liberal states?
These are fascinating and timely questions that will -be
taken up in the final section ofthe chapter.
Two centuries after Kant first called for a 'pacific
federation', the validity of the idea that democracies are
more pacific continues to attract a great deal ofscholarly
interest. The claim has also found its way into the public
discourse ofWestern states' foreign policy, appearing
in speeches made by American presidents as diverse as
Ronald Reagan, William Jefferson Clinton, and George
W. Bush. Less crusading voices in the liberal tradition
believe that a legal and institutional framework must be
established that includes states with different cultures
and traditions. Such a belief in the power oflaw to solve
the problem of war was advocated by Jeremy Bentham
at the end of the eighteenth century. Like many liberal
thinkers after him, Bentham believed that federal states
such as the German Diet, the American Confederation,
and the Swiss Leaguewere able to transform their identity
from one based on conflicting interests to a more peaceful
federation. As Bentham famously argued, 'between
the interests ofnations there is nowhere any real conflict'.
Cobden's belief that free trade would create a more
peaceful world order is a core idea of nineteenth-century
liberalism. Trade brings mutual gains to all the
players, irrespective of their size or the nature of their
economies. It is perhaps not surprising that it was in
Britain that this argument found its most vocal supporters.
The supposed universal value of free trade
brought disproportionate gains to the hegemonic
power. There was never an admission that free trade
among countries at different stages of development
would lead to relations of dominance and subservience.
Neither was it questioned by nineteenth-century
British liberals that internationalism ought to be the
enemy of imperialism and not its servant, a point
which is developed in Case Study 1.
Chapter 7 Liberalism
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
fact that Britain and Germany had highly interdependent
economies before the Great War (1914-18) seemed
to confirm the fatal flaw in the association of economic
interdependence with peace. From the turn of the century,
the contradictions within European civilization, of
progress and exemplarism on the one hand and the harnessing
ofindustrial power for military purposes on the
other, could no longer be contained. Europe stumbled
into a horrific war, killing 1 5 million people. The war
not only brought an end to three empires, but also was
a contributing factor to the Russian Revolution of 1917.
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' (Luard 1992: 465). But perhaps the
most famous advocate of an international authority for
the management ofinternational relations was Woodrow
Wilson. According to this US president, peace could only
be secured with the creation of an international organization
to regulate international anarchy. Security could
not be left to secret bilateral diplomatic deals and a blind
faith in the balance of power. Just as peace had to be
enforced in domestic society, the international domain
had to have a system of regulation for coping with disputes
and an international force that could be mobilized
if non-violent conflict resolution failed. In this sense,
more than any other strand of liberalism, idealism rests
on the domestic analogy (Suganami 1989: 94-113).
In his famous 'Fourteen Points' speech, addressed to
Congress in January 1918, Wilson argued that 'a general
association of nations must be formed' to preserve
the coming peace-the League ofNations was to be that
general association. 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 was the idea behind the 'collective security'
system that 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 ofall, and agrees to join in a collective response
to aggression' (Roberts and Kingsbury 1993: 30). It can
be contrastedwith an alliance system ofsecurity, where a
number of states join together, usually as a response to a
specific external threat (sometimes known as 'collective
• T I M D U N N E
Case Study 1 Imperialism and i nternationalism in nineteenth-century Britain
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The life of J. S. Mill illustrates the ambivalent character of nineteenth-century
liberal thinking in Britain. He was born in London
in 1 806, and became the intellectual protege ofJeremy Bentham,
the utilitarian philosopher who coined the term 'international'.
By mid-century, Mill was a dominant figure in Victorian intellectual
life. He was no stranger to international issues and concerns;
in fact, he was an employee ofthe East India Company for thirtyfive
years and later became a Member of Parliament at a time
when Britain was at the apogee of its preponderance. In common
with many other Victorian intellectuals, Mill regarded liberal
government as the highest stage of civilization.
A social reformer domestically, Mill was an imperialist internationally.
He contrasted European liberal modes of governance
with barbarism and savagery beyond Europe's edge. These two
defence'). In the case ofthe League ofNations, Article 16
ofthe League's Charter noted the obligation that, in the
event ofwar, 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 selfdetermination
of all nations-another founding characteristic
of liberal idealist thinking on international
relations. Going back to the mid-nineteenth century,
self-determination movements in Greece, Hungary,
and Italy received support among liberal powers and
public opinion. Yet the default support for self-determination
masked a host of practical and moral problems
that were laid bare after Woodrow Wilson issued
his proclamation. 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
constituency was to participate in a ballot? And what
coexisting but opposite states of development required the existence
of different moral codes. Among civilized countries, the
only matter to be resolved was 'the question of interference'
(Jahn 2006: 1 95). Between civilized and barbarian peoples, it was
both necessary and proper to permit imperial-even despoticsystems
of authority.
It became commonplace for intellectuals to divide international
order into these three domains of 'civilized', 'semi-civilized'
and 'barbaric'. As such distinctions entered the language
of international law, the effect was to produce a highly stratified
view of international society-one where membership was
based on race and religion. The consequences of this application
of the standard of civilization to nineteenth-century
diplomacy was 'horrible', to borrow Mark Mazower's description
(201 2: 72). By the century's end, Africa was re-ordered in
ways that reflected the interests of the great colonial powers;
such naked exploitation was justified by a mission to 'civilize'
the 'savages'. Small wonder that one of the countries that was
given to King Leopold of Belgium, the Congo Free State, has
been in such turmoil for the last two decades. With millions of
civilians murdered, displaced, beaten, and raped, Congo is at
the epicentre of what has been described as Africa's first world
war. From the time of the Berlin Conference (1 884-5) to today,
imperialists and internationalists have conspired to colonize
the territory, then decolonize it, and finally condemn it through
neglect and moral indifference.
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if a newly self-determined state rejected liberal democratic
norms?
The experience of the League ofNations was a disaster.
While the moral rhetoric at the creation ofthe League
was decidedly idealist, in practice states remained
imprisoned by self-interest. There is no better example .
of this than the USA'.s decision not to join the institution
it had created. With the Soviet Union outside the system
for ideological reasons, the League of Nations quickly
became a talking shop for the 'satisfied' powers. Hitler's
decision in March 1936 to reoccupy the Rhineland, a
designated demilitarized zone according to the terms of
the Treaty ofVersailles, effectively pulled the plug on the
League's life-support system (it had already been put on
the 'critical' list following the Manchurian crisis in 1931
and the Ethiopian crisis in 1935).
According to· the history of International Relations,
the collapse of the League of Nations dealt a fatal blow
to idealism. There is no doubt that the language ofliberalism
after 1945 was more pragmatic; how could anyone
living in the shadow ofthe Holocaust be optimistic? Yet
familiar core ideas of liberalism remained. Even in the
early 1940s there was recognition of the need to replace
the League with another international institution with
responsibility for international peace and security. Only
this time, in the case ofthe United Nations, there was an
awareness among the framers of its Charter of the need
for a consensus between the great powers in order for
enforcement action to be taken-hence the veto system
(Article 27 of the UN Charter), which allowed any of
the five permanent members ofthe Security Council the
power of veto. This revision constituted an important
modification to the classical model ofcollective security
(Roberts 1996: 315). With the ideological polarity ofthe
cold war, the UN procedures for collective security were
stillborn (as either of the superpowers and their allies
wouldveto any action proposed by the other). It was not
until the end ofthe cold war that cooperation among the
greatpowers was sufficientlywell developed for collective
security to be enacted, such as was evident in response
to the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq on 2 August 1990
(see Case Study 2).
An important argument advanced by liberals in the
early post-war period concerned the state's inability
to cope with modernization. David Mitrany (1943), a
pioneer integration theorist, argued that transnational
cooperation was required in order to resolve common
problems. His core concept was 'ramification', meaning
Chapter 7 Liberalism
the likelihood that cooperation in one sector would
lead governments to extend the range of collaboration
across other sectors. As states become more embedded
in an integration process, the 'cost' ofwithdrawing
from cooperative ventures increases.
This argument about the positive benefits from transnational
cooperation is one that informed a new generation
of scholars (particularly in the USA) in the 1960s
and 1970s. Their argument was not simply about the
mutual gains from trade, but that other transnational
actors were beginning to challenge the dominance of
sovereign states. World politics, according to pluralists
(as they are often referred to), was no longer an exclusive
arena for states, as it had been for the first 300 years of
the Westphalian states-system. In one ofthe central texts
of this genre, Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye (1972)
argued that the centrality ofother actors, such as interest
groups, transnational corporations, and international
non-governmental organizations (INGOs), had to be
taken into consideration. Here the overriding image
of international relations is one of a cobweb of diverse
actors linked through multiple channels ofinteraction.
Although the phenomenon of transnationalism was
an important addition to the International Relations theorists'
vocabulary, it remained underdeveloped as a theoretical
concept. Perhaps the most important contribution
of pluralism was its elaboration of interdependence.
Case Study 2 The 1 990-1 Gulf War and collective security
Source: US Air Force
Iraq had always argued that the sovereign state of Kuwait was
an artificial creation of the imperial powers. When this political
motive was allied to an economic imperative, caused primarily
by accumulated war debts following the eight-yearwarwith Iran,
the annexation of Kuwait seemed to be a solution to Iraq's problems.
The Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein, also assumed that
the West would not use force to defend Kuwait, a miscalculation
fuelled by the memory of the support the West had given Iraq
during the Iran-Iraq War (the so-called 'fundamentalism' of Iran
was considered to be a graver threat to international order than
the extreme nationalism of the Iraqi regime).
The invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1 990 led to a series of
UN resolutions calling for Iraq to withdraw unconditionally.
Economic sanctions were applied while the US-led coalition of
international forces gathered in Saudi Arabia. Operation 'Desert
Storm' crushed the Iraqi resistance in a matter of six weeks
(1 6 January to 28 February 1 991 ). The 1 990-1 Gulf War had certainly
revived the UN doctrine of collective security, although a
number of doubts remained about the underlying motivations
for the war and the way in which it was fought (for instance, the
coalition of national armies was controlled by the USA rather
than by a UN military command as envisaged in the Charter).
President George H. Bush declared that the war was about more
than one small country, it was about a 'big idea; a new world
order'. The content of this new world order was 'peaceful settlement
of disputes, solidarity against aggression, reduced and
controlled arsenals, and just treatment of all peoples'.
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Ill T I M D U N N E
Due to the expansion of capitalism and the emergence
ofa global culture, pluralists recognized a growing interconnectedness
in which 'changes in one part of the system
have direct and indirect consequences for the rest of
the system' (Little 1996: 77). Absolutestate autonomy, so
keenly entrenched in the minds ofstateleaders, was being
circumscribed by interdependence. Such a development
brought with it enhanced potential for cooperation as
well as increased levels ofvulnerability.
In his 1979 work, Theory ofInternational Politics, the
neo-realist Kenneth Waltz attacked the pluralist argument
about the decline of the state. He argued that the
degree of interdependence internationally was far lower
than between the constituent parts in a national political
system. Moreover, the level of economic interdependence-especially
between great powers-was less
than that which existed in the early part of the twentieth
century. Waltz concludes: 'if one is thinking of the
international-political world, it is odd in the extreme
that "interdependence" has become the word commonly
used to describe it' (1979: 144). In the course
of their engagement with Waltz and other neo-realists,
early pluralists modified their position. Neo-liberals, as
they came to be known, conceded that the core assumptions
of neo-realism were indeed correct: the anarchic
international structure, the centrality of states, and a
rationalist approach to social scientific enquiry. Where
they differed was apparent primarily in the argument
that anarchy does not mean that durable patterns of
cooperation are impossible: the creation ofinternational
regimes matters here as they facilitate cooperation by
sharing information, reinforcing reciprocity, and making
defection from norms easier to punish (see Ch. 19).
Moreover, in what was to become the most important
difference between neo-realists and neo-liberals (developed
further in Ch. 8), the latter argued that actors
would enter into cooperative agreements if the gains
were evenly shared. Neo-realists dispute this hypothesis:
what matters is a question not so much of mutual gains
as of relative gains. In other words, a neo-realist state
has to be sure that it has more to gain than its rivals from
a particular bargain or regime.
The ascendency of liberal ideas and institutions has
been one of the most striking trends in world politics
for the last two centuries. Furthermore, with the
There are two important arguments that set neo-liberalism
apart from democratic peace liberalism and the
liberal idealists of the inter-war period. First, academic
enquiry should be guided by a commitment to a scientific
approach to theory-building. Whatever deeply
held personal values scholars maintain, their task
must be to observe regularities, formulate hypotheses
as to why that relationship holds, and subject these to
critical scrutiny. This separation of fact and value puts
neo-liberals on the positivist side of the methodological
divide. Second, writers such as Keohane are critical
of the naive assumption of nineteenth-century liberals
that commerce breeds peace. A free trade system,
according to neo-liberals, provides incentives for cooperation
but does not guarantee it. Here he is making an
important distinction between cooperation and harmony.
'Co-operation is not automatic', Keohane argues,
'but requires planning and negotiation' (1986: 1 1). In
the following section we see how contemporary liberal
thinking maintains that the institutions of world politics
after 1945 successfully embedded all states into a
cooperative order.
• Early liberal thought on international relations took the
view that the natural order had been corrupted by
undemocratic state leaders and outdated policies such as
the balance of power. Enlightenment liberals believed that
a latent cosmopolitan morality could be achieved through
the exercise of reason and through the creation of
constitutional states. In addition, the unfettered movement
of people and goods could further facilitate more peaceful
international relations.
• Although there are important continuities between
Enlightenment liberal thought and twentieth-century
ideas, such as the belief in the power of world public
opinion to tame the interests of states, liberal idealism was
more programmatic. For idealists, persuasion was more
important than abstract moral reasoning.
• Liberalthoughtatthe end ofthetwentieth century became
grounded in social scientifictheories ofstate behaviour.
Cooperation among rational egoistswas possibleto
achieveifproperlycoordinated by regimes and institutions.
demise of the cold war system it seemed like liberalism
had seen off all other contending political ideologies.
At the start of the 1990s, leading Western politicians
hailed a 'new world order' as international institutions
such as the United Nations Security Council began
to operate as envisaged by the drafters of the Charter
back in 1945. These new and welcome patterns ofcooperation
prompted the then British Prime Minister Tony
Blair to declare, at the end of the 1990s, that 'we are all
internationalists now' (1999a).
From the vantage point of the second decade of the
twenty-first century, confidence in the liberal international
order has ebbed and liberalism is now in question
in international theory and in practice. 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
North Africa, the uneven record of post-cold war liberal
foreign policies in delivering a more secure andjust
world order, and unrest triggered by the global financial
crisis have turned the triumphalism of the 'liberal
decade' into despondency. It is now more common to
read about liberalism's demise than it is to hear about
its ascendency.
G. John Ikenberry is the most prominent analyst
of the influence liberal ideas have exerted over world
order in the last hundred years or so. In a highly cited
article, Ikenberry maps liberalism's influence through
three phases, conveniently labelled 'liberal internationalism
1.0', '2.0', and '3.0' (1999). Liberal internationalism
1.0 corresponds with the inter-war period
and the failed attempt to replace the old balance of
power order with the rule of law. After 1945, America
set about constructing liberal internationalism 2.0. It
did this by embedding certain fundamental liberal
principles into the regulatory rules and institutions of
international society. Contrary to realist claims about
state behaviour, the world's pre-eminent power chose
to forsake the pursuit of short-term gains in return
for a durable settlement that benefited its European
allies and those in Asia too. While America had more
power than other states in the system, it also accepted
a greater share of the burden when it came to setting
and upholding the rules of economic and security
governance (see Box 7.3).
This model of an American-led international
order-liberal internationalism 2.0-is experiencing a
crisis today. Why is this? First and foremost, American
hegemony 'no longer appears to be an adequate framework
to support lib'eral international order' (Ikenberry
2009: 99). Even if the USA had sufficient power, there
Chapter 7 Liberalism
The theme of liberal world order in crisis is one that has
received a great deal of scholarly attention in recent years.
In a book of the same title, Georg S0rensen compares the
optimistic sentiments of the 1 990s with the post-9/1 1 world
in which terror and great power rivalry darkened the horizon
of international relations. S0rensen defines world order
as 'a governing arrangement among states' (201 1 : 1 2), and
believes that sovereign states remain the primary building
blocks of these governance arrangements. The main contribution
of the book is the way in which tensions arise when
liberty is pursued in the world. One example of this tension is
the practice of democracy-promotion that has been pursued
by most liberal states, to varying degrees, in the last two decades.
Outsiders promoting democracy risk becoming overly
paternalistic and thereby lapsing into a form of imperialism
that has no legitimacy in international politics today. Another
example of this tension concerns the criteria for membership
of international institutions: should they be open to states
with illiberal constitutions, or should they be restricted to liberal,
democratic countries only? Such voices are frequently
heard in Western capitals when the will of liberal great powers
has been stymied by others, as was the case in 2003 when
the UN Security Council refused to give its consent to the
war against Iraq. S0rensen describes this tension, and the
protagonists putting one or other liberal position, as a choice
'between Imposition and Restraint' (201 1 , 64). The values
and practices associated with 'Imposition' include intervention,
foreign policy activism, scrutiny of other states, and the
pursuit of universal principles. The values and practices associated
with 'Restraint' include non-intervention, toleration,
empathy, and pragmatism.
are signs that the rest of the world no longer wants an
order in which a single state is preponderant. Related
to this point is the sense that the liberal principle of
sovereign equality is under threat. The security policies
being driven by America and its allies in NATO rest
on a conception of sovereignty that has become conditional
on good behaviour, understood either as being
on-side with the war on terror or ensuring basic human
rights are protected.
The controversy generated by the 2011 NATO-led
war against Gaddafi's Libya is an example of the deep
divisions that Western leadership is generating. Shortly
after the no-fly zone began to be enforced militarily,
Russia and China argued that the other three permanent
members of the Security Council (France, the
UK, and the USA) had shifted the mandate from one
of protecting civilians to regime change. Whether this
is a correct understanding of the NATO-led enforcement
action is less important than understanding the
magnitude of the struggle that is under way between
T I M D U N N E
influential Western states and the re-emerging powers
such as India, China, and Russia. In the realigned
world order, the question of where authority lies to
decide questions of intervention is one that will need
to be answered. The responsibility to protect doctrine
(or R2P) could become a key test for whether liberalism
can endure despite systemic changes to the distribution
of material and normative power.
At the start of the second decade of the twenty-first
century, it is apparent to Ikenberry that the US lacks
the capacity, and Western institutions the legitimacy, to
maintain a version 2.0 into the future. Alternative configurations
of liberal internationalism remain a distant
possibility. Liberal internationalism 3.0 requires a movement
away from a sovereignty-based order towards one
where global institutions become the new rulers of the
world. While less tied to American power, the governance
institutions of the future will nevertheless be
driven by liberal values. The dilemma for Ikenberry
is that liberal internationalism 2.0 is in crisis, yet 3.0
remains hopelessly unrealistic.
Given that liberalism has produced such unequal
gains for the West and the rest, it is perhaps unsurprising
that contemporary US-based liberal scholars have
become preoccupied with the question of preserving
the current order rather than reconstituting it according
to more just distributive principles. Rather than
seeing reform as a task that wealthy Western countries
have a responsibility to undertake, the use of Western
power is more often equated with extending control of
As we have seen, advocates ofthe democratic peace thesis believe
that liberal states act peacefully towards one another. Yet this
empirical law does not tell liberal states how to behave towards
non-liberal states. Should they try to convert them, bringing them
into the zone of peace, or should they pursue a more defensive
strategy? The former has not been successful in the past, and in a
world of many nuclear weapons states crusading could be suicidal.
For this reason, Michael Doyle suggests a dual-track approach.
• The first track preserves the liberal community, which means
forging strong alliances with other like-minded states and
defending themselves against illiberal regimes. This may
require liberal states to include in their foreign policy
strategies such as the balance of power in order to contain
authoritarian states.
• The second track is more expansionist, and aims to extend
the liberal zone by a variety of economic and diplomatic
institutions, and protecting markets and security access
to precious resources. When a hegemonic liberal order
comes under challenge, as it did on 9/1 1, the response
was uncompromising. It is noticeable in this respect that
former President George W Bush mobilized the language
of liberalism against Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and
also Iraq. He referred to the 2003 war against Iraq as
'freedom's war'.
The potential for liberalism to embrace imperialism
is a tendency that has a lorig history (Doyle 1986: 1 151-
69). We find in Machiavelli a number of arguments for
the necessity for republics to expand. Liberty increases
wealth and the concomitant drive for new markets; soldiers
who are at the same time citizens are better fighters
than slaves or mercenaries; and expansion is often the
best means to promote a state's security. In this sense,
contemporary US foreign policy is no different from the
great expansionist republican states of the pre-modern
period such as Athens and Rome. Few liberals today
would openly advocate territorial expansion along the
lines of nineteenth-century European colonial powers;
at the same time, many have been drawn to consider
the virtues of empire as a way ofdelivering liberty in an
insecure world. Even when empire is rejected by liberals
such as Michael Doyle, their defence of interventionism
in the affairs of non-liberal states suggests that the line
between internationalism and imperialism is a very fine
one. Doyle's defence ofdemocracypromotion by a policy
mix of forcible and non-forcible instruments is featured
in Box 7.4.
instruments. Doyle categorizes these in terms of 'inspiration'
(hoping that peoples living in non-democratic regimes will
struggle for their liberty), 'instigation' (peace-building and
economic restructuring), and 'intervention' (legitimate if the
majority of a polity is demonstrating widespread disaffection
with their government and/or their basic rights are being
systematically violated).
Doyle concludes with the warning that the march of liberalism
will not necessarily continue unabated. It is in our hands, he
argues, whether the international system becomes more pacific
and stable, or whether antagonisms deepen. We must be willing
to pay the price-in institutional costs and development aid-to
increase the prospects for a peaceful future. This might be cheap
when compared with the alternative of dealing with hostile and
unstable authoritarian states.
(Doyle 1999)
The goal of preserving and extending liberal institutions
is open to a number of criticisms. The liberal
character of those institutions is assumed rather than
subjected to critical scrutiny. As a result, the incoherence
of the purposes underpinning these institutions
is often overlooked. Issues of international peace and
security are determined by the fifteen states on the UN
Security Council, ofwhom only five have a right to veto
a resolution. Ifwe take the area ofpolitical economy, the
power exerted by the West and its international financial
• Liberal internationalism 2.0, which is associated with the
post-1 945 period, is in crisis. The ability of the USA to steer
world order is diminishing, rising powers are wanting a
greater share of the spoils, and new security challenges
are opening up significant divisions among the major
powers .
• If Ikenberry is right and 2.0 is in decline, it is not clear
what is going to replace it. If 2.0 collapses then the world is
back to the inter-war period when the League of Nations .
could not live up to its promise. If 2.0 is reinvigorated, then
global institutions will adapt to the challenge of new
emerging powers without losing their distinctively liberal
character.
Chapter 7 Liberalism
institutions perpetuates structural inequality and generates
new patterns of dominance and dependence. Also,
critics argue that the kind of crisis narrative evident in
the work of Ikenberry and S0rensen can be viewed as an
implicit pretext for more liberal ordering. It also risks
misrepresenting liberalism in terms of great powers in
the driving seat of global public policy, when governance
is multilevel and the actors driving policies are
often private enterprises or the new breed of global diplomats
and regulators.
• The assumption that liberalism has indeed triumphed during
the post-1 945 period is vulnerable to the critique that the
practices of trade, security, and development have never
delivered on their promise. As a result, liberal international
orders remain conveniently favourable to the most powerful
states in the system.
• Is the future of liberalism likely to be a return to
internationalism 1 .0-in other words, a period in which there
is an institutional architecture that is hopelessly out of step
with what is happening in world politics? Or is
internationalism 3.0 a realistic alternative to the rules and
institutions of the post-1 945 period, which seem unable to
deliver order and justice for most peoples in the world?
•
Conclus10n
The euphoria with which liberals greeted the end of
the cold war in 1989 has dissipated. The pattern of
conflict and insecurity that we have seen at the beginning
of the twenty-first century suggests that liberal
democracy remains at best an incomplete project.
Images and narratives from countries in every continent-Afghanistan,
Liberia, Chechnya, Colombia,
Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq,
Myanmar, Zimbabwe, and so on-remind us that
in many parts of the world, anti-liberal values of
warlordism, torture, intolerance, and injustice are
expressed daily. Moreover, the reasons why these
states have failed can to some extent be laid at the
door of liberalism, particularly in terms of its promotion
of often irreconcilable norms of sovereignty,
democracy, national self-determination, and human
rights (Hoffmann 1995-6: 169).
One response to the argument that liberalism is
incomplete or under threat is to call for more liberalism.
This is certainly the approach taken by G. John
Ikenberry and his co-author Daniel Deudney (2009).
They believe that there is only one path to modernization,
and that illiberal voices will be drowned out by
the imperatives to open markets and hold governments
accountable. A deeper reason for the crisis in liberalism
is that it is bound up with an increasingly discredited
Enlightenment view of the world. Contrary to the
hopes of Bentham, Hume, Kant, Mill, and Paine, the
application of reason and science to politics has not
brought communities together. Indeed, it has arguably
shown the fragmented nature of the political community,
which is regularly expressed in terms of ethnic,
linguistic, or religious differences. Critics of liberalism
argue that the universalizing mission of liberal
values such as democracy, capitalism, and secularism
undermines the traditions and practices of non-Western
cultures (Gray 1995: 146). When it comes to doing
intercultural politics, somehow liberals just don't
seem to take 'no' for an answer. The Marxist writer
Immanuel Wallerstein has a nice way of expressing
T I M D U N N E
the dilemma over universalism. Liberals view it as 'a
"gift" of the powerful to the weak' that places them in
a double bind: 'to refuse the gift is to lose; to accept the
gift is to lose' (in Brown 1999).
The challenges that lay ahead for liberalism are
immense. Whether the challenge is the environment,
or poverty reduction, or. nuclear non-proliferation, or
humanitarian atrocities, liberal institutions and policies
have not mitigated or eradicated these issues-in some
cases they have made them worse. One response is to
say that liberalism itself is part of the reason why such
pathologies exist in the world; free trade, as we know,
generates hierarchies of wealth and power which international
institutions seem better at reflecting rather
than dismantling; in the area of international security,
Questions
almost every organization or treaty is built on structural
inequalities that might be defensible ifthose institutions
were effective but often they are not. Another response
is to say that the problem with the institutions of governance
in global politics today is not too much liberalism,
but not enough liberalism. In other words, like the
great nineteenth-century reformers, today's advocates
of a liberal world order should return to the core values
and beliefs of the tradition. In so doing, they will
insist that international institutions must be reformed,
that decisions are better when they are made democratically,
that good governance requires public services for
all, that rights are irrelevant unless responsibilities are
taken seriously, and that economic and social justice is
critical to peaceful change on a regional and global scale.
Do you agree with Stanley Hoffmann that international affairs are 'inhospitable' to
liberalism?
2 What arguments might one draw on to support or refute this proposition?
3 Was the language of international morality, used by liberal idealists in the inter-war period,
a way of masking the interests of Britain and France in maintaining their dominance of the
international system after the First World War?
4 Should liberal states promote their values abroad? Is force a legitimate instrument in
securing this goal?
5 How much progress (if any) has there been in liberal thinking on international relations
since Kant?
6 Is the ascendency of democratic regimes explained by the superiority of liberal institutions
and values?
7 Is liberalism too wedded to a state-centric view of international relations?
8 Is there a fundamental tension at the heart of liberalism between liberty and democracy?
If so, how is this tension played out in the international domain?
9 Are liberal values and institutions in the contemporary international system as deeply
embedded as neo-liberals claim?
1 0 I s the liberal order i n crisis today, as G. John Ikenberry and G. S0rensen argue? Are
emerging global powers a threat to the liberal order?
Further Reading
Brown, C., Nartin, T., and Rengger, N. (eds) (2002), International Relations in Political Thought:
Texts from the Ancient Greeks to the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press). See especially the readings from classical liberal thought in sections 7, 8, and 9.
Chapter 7 Liberalism
Doyle, M. (1 997), Ways of War and Peace (New York: W. W. Norton). Doyle classifies liberalism
into the following strands: liberal pacifism, liberal imperialism, and liberal internationalism.
-- (201 2), Liberal Peace: Selected Essays (Abingdon: Routledge). An excellent collection of
Doyle's writings on liberalism, including the two part essays 'Kant, liberal legacies, and
foreign affairs'.
Dunne, T., and Flockhart, T. (eds) (201 3), Liberal World Orders (Oxford: Oxford University Press/
British Academy). Critical reflections on liberal world orders by leading I R scholars, including
Emanuel Adler, Richard Devetak, Stefano Guzzini, john Hobson, Kim Hutchings, and Chris
Reus-Smit.
Hoffmann, S. (1 987),janus and Minerva: Essays in the theory and Practice ofInternational
Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press): An excellent account of liberalism and its troubled
relationship to international relations.
Ikenberry, G.j. (2009), 'Liberal Internationalism 3.0: America and the Dilemmas of Liberal
World Order', Perspectives in Politics, 71 (1 ): 71 -87. A pivotal case for the reform of the
post-1 945 order, by an influential liberal thinker.
Jahn, B. (ed.) (2006), Classical Theory in International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press). Includes a number of critical essays on liberal thinkers such as Kant, Mill,
and Smith.
Mazower, M. (201 2), Governing the World: The History ofan Idea (New York: Penguin Press).
This book is a brilliant study of liberal internationalist policies and programmes. It traces
governance back to the early nineteenth century and shows how many of the flaws in the
current global order have causes that reach far back into history.
S0rensen, G. (201 1 ), A Liberal World Order in Crisis: Choosing Between Imposition and Restraint
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). A good account of the division within liberalism
between advocates of 'imposition' and advocates of 'restraint'.
Walt, S. (1 998), 'International Relations: One World, Many Theories', Foreign Policy, 1 1 0: 29-46.
Not only does this contain a useful short overview of liberalism, it highlights the imperfect
application of liberal theory in practice.
Online Resource Centre
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