3. Liberalism

Abstract

This chapter examines the liberalist approach to the theory and practice of international politics. It begins with an overview of liberalism’s main characteristics, including its description of international politics as evolving, becoming more imbued with interdependence, cooperation, peace, and security. It then considers the major liberalist schools of thought, namely: commercial or economic liberalism, human rights liberalism, international organization or institutions liberalism, and democratic liberalism. After explaining liberalism’s position on human rights and democracy, the chapter explores democratic peace theory. It concludes with a discussion of the Arab Spring as an example of recent developments that have put the liberalist perspective under great strain.

Power Politics in Asia’s Contested Waters

“…Technically, democracies constitute a pluralistic security community: even with no superior ruling authority, these states would have no fear of being attacked by each other (Morgan 2010). Technically, democracies constitute a pluralistic security community: even with no superior ruling authority, these states would have no fear of being attacked by each other (Morgan 2010).…”

“…And analysts agree that democracies readily go to war with non-democracies, so it cannot be their pacifism that creates the democratic peace (Morgan 2010). Newborn democracies often display aggressive, expansionist behaviour and national pugnacity.…”

The globalization of higher education as a societal and cultural security problem

“…It has expanded to encompass structural neorealist and neoliberal institutionalism from international relations that focus on the state and often use economic analysis (see Katzenstein, 1996), most often assuming rational actors, and game theory used for deterrence theory (Zagare, 2013). While liberalism focused most intently on the nation-state, it did include other actors in states’ security affairs, such as NGOs, multinational corporations, government bureaucracies and a broad range of relevant interest groups, political parties and elites—a ‘commercial’ liberalism that operates within a free trade framework, assuming that greater trade will contribute to greater freedom and ultimately security (Morgan, 2010). Neoliberalism has brought a cultural–institutional view of state action based on the view of ‘regimes as particular combinations of principles, norms, rules, and procedures’, used to explain how regimes may begin when an international hegemonic state molds the ‘international order’ to its own interests, developing their own dynamics (Katzenstein, 1996: 19).…”