After Liberalism?

The Future of Liberalism in International Relations

R. Friedman, K. Oskanian, R. Pachedo Pardo, R. Friedman, K. Oskanian, R. Pachedo Pardo, Kenneth A. Loparo, R. Friedman, K. Oskanian, R. Pachedo Pardo, Ramon Pacheco Pardo

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137303769
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In this collection, leading international scholars provide their perspectives on the continuing role of the liberal paradigm, both as a theoretical approach to international relations, and as an ordering principle of international politics.

Part I

Liberalism and International Relations Theory

1

Liberalism – In Theory and History

Beate Jahn

Introduction

Liberalism’s standing in the discipline of International Relations (IR), as well as in world politics, is, by most accounts, characterised by constant ups and downs, exalted expectations, and embarrassing failures. Hence, liberalism’s “triumph” (Fukuyama, 1989) at the end of the Cold War and its subsequent rapid demise is only the latest instance of this history which has given rise to the question of what, if anything, comes “after liberalism”? Yet, I will argue in the following pages that the narrative of a “rise” and “fall” of liberalism fits, at best, the fate of liberal theory within IR, but certainly not the fate of liberalism as a political project.

In the first section of this chapter, I will show that liberalism is widely misconceived in IR. Confronted with its rich, varied, and, at times, contradictory manifestations, scholars tend to focus on particular aspects of liberalism. This practice results in a variety of liberal approaches and theories that, however, provide only partial conceptions of liberalism. And it is in light of these partial conceptions that liberalism indeed appears to go through constant ups and down.

In the second section of this chapter, I will therefore try to recapture the core of liberalism by bridging the very divisions that lead to these partial conceptions. To this end, I will return to John Locke’s pre-disciplinary formulation of protoliberal principles, which explicitly theorise the connections between their core aspects and their political dynamics. This Lockean account of liberalism and its political dynamics, moreover, is broadly substantiated by the historical development of liberalism.

Viewed through the lens of this alternative concept, recent history shows neither a “rise” nor a “fall” of liberalism. Instead, the shifts that undoubtedly characterise this period simply indicate liberalism’s adjustment to the power political opportunities and constraints provided by the international system. In short, they are shifts in form rather than substance. What comes “after liberalism”, I therefore conclude, is simply a different register of liberalism.

Liberalism – Divided

During the 1990s, a wide range of policies was prominently associated with liberalism. Among them were the liberalisation, deregulation, and privatisation of the international economy, the development of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the transformation of former communist into capitalist states – in short, neoliberal economic policies. Proactive democracy promotion, as well as the widespread attempt to establish liberal market democracies as solution to failed, conflict-ridden, or even simply authoritarian states played an important role in the foreign policies of liberal states, of NGOs, and of international organisations and institutions, and gave rise to the notion of “liberal peacebuilding”. Liberalism was also associated with the proactive protection of human rights, not least in the form of humanitarian intervention as well as with plans to reform international law and international organisations in accordance with “a world of liberal states” (Clark, 2009; Keohane, 2003; Slaughter, 1995).

In contrast to this spread of liberal norms, practices, and institutions, power politics generally associated with realism characterised the prior Cold War period. Capitalism, free trade, and free market principles were confined to the Western sphere of influence and tempered, domestically and internationally, by considerations of political stability. Democracy promotion was equally restricted and generally trumped by power political considerations; hence extensive alliances with authoritarian states and interventions in support of sympathetic rather than democratic regimes predominated. Human rights were generally subordinated to the principle of sovereignty. In short, the “rise” of liberalism was associated with the increase in policies explicitly designed to spread liberal norms, practices, and institutions. And it was the retreat from these policies towards the end of the 1990s and a more explicit turn towards traditional power politics after 9/11 that seemed to indicate a “fall” of liberalism.

On closer inspection, however, liberalism cannot unequivocally be identified with these policies. While democracy is today widely seen as a core characteristic of liberalism, liberals were historically passionately opposed to democracy. Meanwhile, calling the recent policies of economic liberalisation, deregulation, and privatisation, “neoliberal” indicates some continuity with the laissez-faire policies of classical liberalism. And yet, the Cold War settlement of large parts of the world economy was also characterised as (embedded) liberalism. And even though liberal states are today associated with the protection of individual freedom and respect for human rights, the very same norms coexisted historically with the practice and justification of slavery.

These examples show, firstly, that liberalism is historically linked to a much wider range of policies, institutions, and norms than is recognised in the contemporary conception. Secondly, there is no doubt that liberalism is a dynamic historical phenomenon, which changes over time and from place to place. Thirdly, different liberal norms, institutions, or policies may well stand in tension to each other. And this provides a challenge for the definition of liberalism. Indeed, the fact that liberalism is “quite diverse”, has not “evolved in a singular linear fashion”, and is “marked by levels of disagreement and variation” is widely interpreted to stand in the way of an encompassing definition which would “paper over significant differences” (Tansey, 2008: 90–91). Consequently, scholars tend to focus on the one or other aspect of liberalism.

Broadly four different – albeit not exclusive but often complimentary – lines of division provide the basis for solutions. These are temporal lines of division, political and spatial lines of division, the distinction between theory and practice as well as that between substantive issue areas. The temporal solution holds that early conceptions of liberalism were immature and often still mistaken in the interpretation and application of liberal principles. With regard to the tension between liberalism and democracy, for instance, it is argued that early liberals did not yet realise – but subsequently learned over time – that extending equal political rights to all citizens was not only logically required by liberal principles and that it “need not lead to the outright plunder of the rich and the destruction of a productive economy and a civilised society” (Plattner, 2008: 60, 68). Contradictory historical evidence is thus interpreted as a (potentially even necessary) step on the road to contemporary mature liberalism, which “contains within itself the seeds of its own democratisation” (Plattner, 2008: 60). Liberal opposition to democracy is thus recognised as part of the history of liberalism, yet clearly distinguished from the proper contemporary identification of liberalism with democracy. Instead of undermining the assumption that liberalism and democracy necessarily imply each other, historical counterevidence here simply demonstrates its progressive development and learning capacity.

The second strategy of accounting for the rich and contradictory norms and practices of liberalism distinguishes between a liberal and a non-liberal context. Here it is argued that policies on the part of liberal actors that appear to contradict liberal principles – such as protectionism or the use of force to extract economic benefits as in the case of slavery or colonialism – have their roots in an uncompetitive, monopolistic, undiversified, in short illiberal, environment that lacks economic interdependence and encourages rent-seeking behaviour (Moravcsik, 1997: 529–530). Similarly, the democratic peace thesis argues that the aggressive behaviour of liberal or democratic towards non-liberal states has its roots in the “illiberal” nature of the latter (Doyle, 1996). The distinction between liberal and non-liberal contexts thus recognises that liberal actors may engage in “illiberal” practices. And yet, the latter do not enter into the definition of liberalism because they are triggered by “illiberal” environments. Consequently, an end to such “illiberal” behaviour even of liberal states requires the transformation of “illiberal” into liberal environments.

In a similar vein, the distinction between the domestic and international context is frequently used to explain contradictory practices. Liberalism’s performance in the international sphere is characterised, Stanley Hoffmann argues, by ambition, insolence, rapine, brutality, racism, intolerance; no liberal state has ever behaved as liberal abroad as at home (1987: 397). The reason for this systematic tension is sought in the fact that liberalism is essentially a domestic political project – concerned with the freedom of the individual and its participation in government – which is only subsequently extended into the international sphere where it encounters very different kinds of demands (1987: 395). While unsavoury policies are thus seen as part and parcel of liberalism, they are generated by an international environment that is “inhospitable to liberalism” (Hoffmann, 1987: 405). In this view, the solution to the weak international performance of liberalism lies either in a proper development of liberal principles for the international sphere – as prominently undertaken in John Rawls’ “Law of Peoples” (2001) – and/or in a “domestication” of the international system itself; that is, in developments that bring it into closer resemblance to the domestic sphere. This usually includes either the demise of the sovereign state as asserted in globalisation theories and/or an international sphere dominated by (more or less disaggregated) liberal states, which removes the incompatibility between the domestic liberal principles and the demands of international politics (Beitz, 1979; Slaughter, 1995).

Thirdly, contradictory evidence is explained by a distinction between liberal principles and norms on the one hand and liberal practice on the other. Thus, liberalism can be divided into a “radical” and an “elitist” strand with “radical liberalism” embodying the core liberal norms and principles and “elitist liberalism” embodying the betrayal of those principles in practice (Richardson, 2001: 205). Again, the distinction between liberal norms and policies, or theory and practice, recognises contradictory evidence, but it defines liberalism on the basis of liberal norms and principles only which therefore provide a solution to deviant and corrupt practices.

Last, but not least, contradictory dynamics have given rise to a distinction between the substantive dimensions of liberalism, with different theories focusing either on its political, or its economic, or its normative dimension. Neoliberal economic policies, for example, are widely regarded as potentially undermining policies of democracy promotion because of their social costs (Bermeo, 2009: 259; Przeworski, 1992). Democracy, in turn, often appears to stand in contradiction to liberal norms – hence, the recent “rise of illiberal democracy” (Zakaria, 1997) or suggestions to sequence the introduction of liberal institutions and democracy (Paris, 2004). Hence, liberal theories tend to focus on either one of these – political, economic, normative – dimensions of liberalism. Andrew Moravcsik, for example, identifies ideational, commercial, and republican liberalism (1997: 515); Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye speak of commercial, democratic, regulatory, and sociological liberalism (Nye, 1988: 246); Jackson and Sorensen of sociological, interdependence, institutional, and republican liberalism (2003: 108); Tim Dunne speaks of internationalism, idealism, institutionalism as well as their respective “neo”-variations (1997: 150–154); Michael Doyle of liberal imperialism, pacifism, and internationalism (1997: 206); Mark Zacher and Richard Matthew distinguish between republican, commercial, cognitive, sociological, and institutional liberalism (1995: 122–137), to mention but a few of these theories. Republican liberalism focuses on political institutions and regimes; commercial, interdependence and pacifist liberalism focus on the economic sphere while ideational and cognitive liberalism focus on ideas, norms, and culture. Though avoiding direct tensions between the political, economic, and normative aspects, these theories end up providing competing and partial conceptions of liberalism. Thus, the “democratic peace” is variously explained through the representative nature of democracy (Doyle, 1996); through the extension of liberal norms of nonviolent conflict resolution into the international sphere (Russett, 1996); or through mutual interests and cooperation fostered by economic interdependence (Barbieri, 2002).

In sum, these approaches to the problem of liberalism’s rich and varied nature manage to account for contradictory evidence, but they do so by externalising its less savoury aspects which are variously seen as generated by an immature past that has long been superseded, by external – illiberal and international – contexts, by an imperfect practice, or by an economic instead of political, political instead of normative, and normative instead of economic conception of liberalism. The results are partial and unsatisfactory accounts of liberalism. First of all, these accounts fail to chime with the general use of the term “liberal” and its application to particular actors. Though liberalism is undoubtedly intimately linked to the political institution of democracy today, democratic institutions are not sufficient for a state to be generally recognised as liberal – Russia being a case in point (Zakaria, 1997). Similarly, neither liberal norms and principles nor the existence of private property and free markets alone – as in China – constitute a liberal state.

Secondly, on closer inspection it turns out that contradictory evidence cannot neatly be divided along temporal and spatial lines or between theory and practice. Thus, while empirical liberal theory is right to claim that liberal practice has to play a crucial role in its definition, normative liberals correctly assert that without reference to liberal norms and principles, the emancipatory potential of liberalism is lost (Long, 1995; Moravcsik 1997: 514). Similarly, the distinction between historical and contemporary liberalism fails to account for the prominent role of supposedly “historical” features of liberalism – such as arguments for imperialism – in contemporary liberal thought and practice (Cooper, 2002; Ignatieff, 2003). The distinction between domestic and international liberalism obscures the fact that some of the less savoury practices of liberalism – such as human rights violations – occur in the domestic and not just in the international context (Roberts, 2004). The assumption that intraliberal relations are particularly conducive to the realisation of liberal principles overlooks the fact that these principles themselves may well constitute a specifically liberal barrier to liberal practice, such as the vertical integration of international law (Alvarez, 2001: 202). These distinctions thus capture neither liberal actors nor liberal practices and norms satisfactorily.

And yet, it is these partial conceptions of liberalism that underpin the story of the “rise” and “fall” of liberalism during the 1990s. Proactive policies of democracy promotion appear to indicate a “rise” of liberalism only if we exclude liberalism’s un- or even anti-democratic record from the definition. If we take this record into account, Cold War alliances with dictators may well fit into liberal foreign policies, just as post-Cold War arguments that liberalism can exist perfectly well in the absence of universal franchise (Sartori, 1995; Vanberg, 2008). Neoliberal economic policies during the 1990s only indicate a “rise” of liberalism if the political regulation of the economic sphere – whether through Keynesian policies or the Bretton Woods institutions of the Cold War – are excluded from the definition of liberalism. Finally, the pitching of liberal norms and principles against the principle of sovereignty during the 1990s can only be interpreted as indicating a “rise” of liberalism if the crucial role of the principle of sovereignty in liberal policies – for instance its reassertion in the Responsibility to Protect (Bellamy, 2005: 33) – is disregarded.

Hence, a more consistent and encompassing conception of liberalism is required in order to assess the nature of recent changes. The development of such a concept of liberalism, however, faces the challenges that have led to the less than satisfactory approaches discussed above. For all their shortcomings, these approaches nevertheless show that liberalism is a complex cultural phenomenon in the Weberian sense: “a complex of different elements associated in historical reality which we unite into a conceptual whole from the standpoint of their cultural significance” (Weber, 1984: 47). In other words, we attach the conceptual term “liberalism” to the historical coming together of different elements that in combination play a significant role in shaping our cultural f...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• Part I: Liberalism and International Relations Theory
• Part II: Liberalism and American Hegemony
• Part III: The Diffusion of Liberalism
• Conclusion
• Index