Week 3 Readings: Liberalism Flashcards
What are the basic assumptions of liberalism?
“Core assumptions: 1) Anarchy exists 2) States are the principle actors, States are rational and self-interested. 3) Survival is paramount, States represent the demands of a subset of domestic individuals and social groups on the basis of whose interests they define ““state preferences”” and act according to this preference. 4) Both power and cooperation play a role in the calculations about state thinking and behavior.
Moravcsik: liberal IR theory’s fundamental premise is that state preferences derived from domestic and transational social pressures critically influence state behavior– can be restated in terms of three core assumptions
- 1) Nature of Societal Actors: Gglobalization generations differentiated demands from societal individuals and groups with regard to int. affairs (rests on a bottom up/pluralist view of politics).
- 2) Nature of State: essential characteristics of the state is its set of underlying preferences: the rank ordering among potential substantive outcomes or ““states of the world”” that might result from international political interaction.
- 3) The Nature of the International System: The pattern of interdependence among state preferences that shapes state behavior. (Links between state preferences/behavior and policy interdependence [that being the extent pursuing state prefrences imposes costs/benifits upon other states independent of transaction costs imposed by specific strat chosen to obtain them])”
What is the relationship between democracy and peace?
According to proponents of the Democratic Peace Theory the more liberal a nation is, the more likely they are not to attack another democracy. This does not include not attacking non-democracies.
soft power
“Soft power is the ability of an actor, such as a country, to influence others and achieve desired outcomes through attraction and persuasion rather than coercion or payment. Soft power is getting others to
want the outcomes that you want— co-opts people rather than coerces them.
- created by Joseph Nye
- can be broken into political values, foreign policies, and culture “
Democratic peace theory
“Two key claims:
1) Democracies are less likely to go to war with each other.
2) Democracies are not necessarily less likely to go to war with non-democracies.
It’s implied that this means these democracies are less likely to go to war with eachother than autocracies.
- Doyle Michael writes that there is no clear cut case of one democracy going to war against another, and that the theory is purely pertaining to liberal states.
- Jack Levy wrote ““comes as close as anything we have to an empirical law in international relations””
- Rosato writes about how internal democratic norms of peaceful conflict resolution are extended when interacting with other democracies.
- R also writes out examples of DPT failing: European Imperialism (Democracies waged 66 of 108 wars from 1815-1975 [against non democracies]), Cold war intervations (democratic for iran, guatamala, indonedia, Guyana, brazil, chile, Nicaragua– noted this was often due to economica goals of the US),
– Observes three reasons 1) Democracies remain in peace because they trust and respect one another, and don’t for non democracies because they know their counter parts will act on the basis of democratic norms 2) They argue Britain, france, and the US were not sufficiently liberal in the period under review 3) They do not claim that liberal norms are the sole determinant of decisions for war, factors such as power and contiguity matter as well.
– R argues that it was actually an imperial peace based on US power - proponents of the theory include Paine, Kant, and President Wilson”
What are the important differences among versions of liberalism?
“Moravcsik lists three variants of liberal thery focus:
- Ideational liberal theories that link state behavior to varied conceptions of desirable forms of cultural, political, socioeconomic order.
- Commercial liberal theories that stress economic interdependence, including variants of ““endogenous policy theory””.
- Republican liberal theories stress the role of domestic representative institutions, elites, and leadership dynamics
Each variaation has different views in the socially determened state preferences. *
“
What are the limits of liberalism in explaining international relations?
”* liberalism struggles to explain why democracies, despite their shared norms, engage in conflict with non-democracies, sometimes even contradicting their own liberal values in the process.
*difficulty in explaining how perceptions of a state’s democratic nature can shift depending on strategic interests, even leading to conflict between democracies.
* liberalism faces challenges in accounting for the role of power dynamics in shaping international relations.
* limited in explaining situations where domestic interest groups, even those advocating for peace, fail to influence foreign policy decisions.”
Commercial Liberalism Theory
“Emphasizes role of economic interdependence and free trade in promoting peace and cooperation between nations. (Web definition (readings [Moravcsik] are less specific):
- focuses on the interplay between aggregate incentives and distributional consquences within transnational market incentives.
- transnational market incentives: economic opportunities and constraints created by cross border markets “
Republican Liberalism Theory
“RLT emphasizes the ways in which domestic institutions and practices aggregate such pressures, transforming them into state policy.
- key variable is domestic political representation which helps determine whose social preferences dominate state policy.
- policy tends to be biased in favor of the governing coalitoons or powerful domestic groups favored by representative institutions (like rulers, armies, or bureaucracies) or societal groups who favor the state.
- Can help explain phenomena such as democratic peace, modern imperialism, and int. trade and monetary cooperation. “
How do the different forms of liberalism approach conflict?*
“*Commercial liberalism sees conflict arising from the interplay between aggregate incentives for cooperation and the distributional consequences of globalization
*Republican liberalism emphasizes the role of domestic political institutions in shaping a state’s approach to conflict
- Ideational liberalism focuses on how differences in core beliefs about national, political, and social identity can be a source of conflict or cooperation between states”
how do the different forms of liberalism approach cooperation
”- Commercial liberalism links cooperation to the incentives created by economic interdependence. This perspective suggests that states are more likely to cooperate when their economies are intertwined through trade and investment
- Republican liberalism connects cooperation to the nature of domestic political representation. Democracies, with their broader representation of societal interests and institutional constraints on leaders, are seen as more likely to engage in cooperation, particularly with each other
- Ideational liberalism emphasizes the role of shared identities and values in fostering cooperation. When states share core beliefs about political legitimacy, the nature of national identity, or the organization of socioeconomic life, it can facilitate cooperation by creating a sense of shared purpose and trust”
What defines the system in liberalism?
- Anarchy / security dilemma, states, cooperation as a possibility
What drives state behavior in liberalism?
Political culture, norms, processes (Democracy, economic interdependence, IOs)
What causes war in liberalism?
“-Incompatibility of political culture
- Leaders and interest groups”
How will states behave in liberalism
”- seek to spread liberal democracy and institutional cooperation
- Smaller states: seek to operate within systems that gives them a voice, security, and benefits”
Neo liberalism charted out with anarchy
