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Liberalism Notes

Liberalism focuses on explaining international cooperation between states and non-state actors. Key liberal assumptions include: states and non-state actors shape international politics; economic interdependence moderates state behavior; issues beyond security like economics and environment matter; domestic-level factors influence states' actions; and the goal is discovering how collaboration and peace can be achieved. Sociological liberalism views transnational relations between groups as creating new forms of human society alongside and competing with states, proposing a "cobweb model" of these relationships to better represent actual human behavior than state boundaries alone.

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Mazhar Hussain
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Liberalism Notes

Liberalism focuses on explaining international cooperation between states and non-state actors. Key liberal assumptions include: states and non-state actors shape international politics; economic interdependence moderates state behavior; issues beyond security like economics and environment matter; domestic-level factors influence states' actions; and the goal is discovering how collaboration and peace can be achieved. Sociological liberalism views transnational relations between groups as creating new forms of human society alongside and competing with states, proposing a "cobweb model" of these relationships to better represent actual human behavior than state boundaries alone.

Uploaded by

Mazhar Hussain
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Liberalism

Realists are primarily interested in power and the balance of power— explanations of political and
economic competition, war, and other conflicts that are so prevalent in international relations.
Liberals, by contrast, are primarily interested in explaining the conditions under which
international cooperation or collaboration becomes possible.
Underlying the liberal image of international relations are four key assumptions.
First, states as well as non-state, transnational actors are important entities in world politics.
Second, many liberals see economic or other forms of interdependence or interconnectedness
among both state and non-state actors as tending to have if not a pacifying, then at least a
moderating effect on state behavior.
Third, for liberals the agenda of international politics is extensive. The liberal rejects the notion
that the agenda of international politics is dominated only by military-security issues. The
distinction between high and low politics is falsely drawn. Economic, social, and environmental
issues also matter.
Fourth, as opposed to structural realists with their “top-down” view on how anarchy and the
distribution of capabilities affect state behavior, many liberals take an “inside-out” view that
examines how factors at the state-society and individual levels of analysis affect international
relations and outcomes.
Fifth, the key analytical task is to discover under what conditions international collaboration, if
not peace, might be achieved.
Sociological Liberalism
Many sociological liberals hold the idea that transnational relations between people from different
countries help create new forms of human society which exist alongside or even in competition
with the nation-state. In a book called World Society John Burton (1972) proposes a ‘cobweb
model’ of transnational relationships. The purpose is to demonstrate how any nation-state consists
of many different groups of people that have different types of external tie and different types of
interest: religious groups, business groups, labour groups, and so on. In marked contrast, the realist
model of the world often depicts the system of states as a set of billiard balls: i.e., as a number of
independent, self-contained units (Box 4.4). According to sociological liberals such as Burton, if
we map the patterns of communication and transactions between various groups we will get a more
accurate picture of the world because it would represent actual patterns of human behaviour rather
than artificial boundaries of states (see web link 4.14). Burton implies that the cobweb model
points to a world driven more by mutually beneficial cooperation than by antagonistic conflict.

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