INTRODUCTION TO INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
LIBERALISM- OVERVIEW
• Liberalism is a theory of both government within states and good
governance between states and peoples worldwide. Unlike realism, which
regards the ‘international’ system as an anarchic realm, liberalism seeks to
protect 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 protect and nurture
these values.
• Liberals disagree on fundamental issues such as the causes of war and
what kind of institutions are required to deliver liberal values in a
decentralised, multicultural international system.
• An important cleavage within liberalism, which has become more
pronounced in our globalised 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.
• The idea behind ‘collective security’ system was the central thought behind
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 responsive to aggression’.
LIBERALISM- OVERVIEW
• Liberalism is a theory of both government within states and good
governance between states and peoples worldwide. Unlike realism, which
regards the ‘international’ system as an anarchic realm, liberalism seeks to
protect 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 protect and nurture
these values.
• Liberals disagree on fundamental issues such as the causes of war and
what kind of institutions are required to deliver liberal values in a
decentralised, multicultural international system.
• An important cleavage within liberalism, which has become more
pronounced in our globalised 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.
• The idea behind ‘collective security’ system was the central thought behind
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 responsive to aggression’.
