ir2501 theories of international relations lecture 5 classical liberalism

IR2501THEORIES OF

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Lecture 5

CLASSICAL LIBERALISM

MEANING OF LIBERALISM

• Multiple & changing meanings

• Different ‘National’ traditions

• Liberty/Equality Paradox

Intellectual Roots:Enlightenment

• Primacy of Reason

• Scientific Revolution

• Progressive View of History

• Individualism

• Secularism

• Capitalism

KEY FIGURES

• Thomas Paine

• Voltaire

• Jean-Jacques Rousseau

• Francis Hucheson

• David Hume

• Adam Smith

Chief Features of Liberalism

• Individual freedom (libertarian and communitarian impulses)

• Political participation (Democracy: Republican and parliamentary variants)

• Private property (market-based order)

• Equality of Opportunity (liberal paradox: minimalist versus interventionist state)

Liberal Internationalism

• Two legacies of modern liberalism:

• 1. pacification of foreign relations among liberal states

• 2. international imprudence: liberal states have fought numerous wars with non-liberal states

Kant’s Perpetual Peace

• Acceptance of three “definitive articles” of peace

• First Definitive Article requires the civil constitution of the state to be republican

• Republican: a political society that has solved the problem of combining moral autonomy, individualism, and social order

Perpetual Peace (Continued)

• Second Definitive Article: liberal republics will progressively establish peace among themselves by means of the pacific federation (ever-expanding separate peace)

• Third Definitive Article establishes a cosmopolitan law to operate in conjunction with the pacific union (Cosmopolitan law will be limited to conditions of universal hospitality

Sources of the Three Definitive Articles

• Constitutional law

• International law

• Cosmopolitan law

Democratic Peace

• Two Basic claims:

• 1. Liberal polities demonstrate restraint in their relations with other liberal polities (the so-called separate peace)

• 2. Liberal polities are imprudent in relations with authoritarian states.

• (Doyle 1986)