Chapter 5: Liberalism By Diane Panke and Thomas Risse

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Chapter 5 LiberalismBy Diane Panke and Thomas
Risse
International Relations Theories Discipline and
Diversity
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Learning outcomes

• After this lecture you should be able to
• Know the defining features of second image
  liberalism
• Understand the four main variants along two
  vectors (rationalism / constructivism agents
  and structures)
• Debate how well the variants of liberalism
  understand the Iraq war, from both a US and
  German perspective
• Know why proponents of liberalism continue to
  think it offers a convincing account of
  contemporary dynamics in world politics

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Classical Liberalism

• All classical liberal theories of IR rest on the
  assumption that domestic actors or structures
  strongly influence the foreign policy identities
  and interests of states
• Liberal theories focus on the second image -
  explanations that are located at the level of the
  state
• Perhaps the most famous second image argument put
  forward by classical liberals is the idea of the
  democratic peace (DP).
• Origins of democratic peace Resisting the view
  that war is caused by defective human nature or
  the absence of a central authority, Immanuel Kant
  in the 18th century argued that regime-type was
  the crucial variable

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Debating the Democratic Peace

• DP theory starts from a dual empirical puzzle
• democracies rarely go to war against each other
• democracies are not per se more peaceful than any
  other regime type
• Jack Levy, in 1982, argued that the DP was

the only law we have found so far in
international relations

• Questions to consider
• What does it mean to talk about the DP as a
  law?
• Are there other laws in international relations?

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Variants of Liberalism

• Although the DP is the best known of the second
  image theories, there are a multitude of liberal
  approaches
• This diversity is best captured by thinking along
  two vectors
• Firstly, distinguishing between liberal
  explanations that rest on rationalism and those
  that rest on constructivism
• Secondly, distinguishing between the priority
  accorded to structures or agents

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Upper-left box Actor-Centred Rationalist
Liberalism

• The core claim of this version of liberalism is
  that domestic actors influence how states define
  their foreign policy interests
• Societal actors compete with each other for
  access to and influence upon decision-makers
• Such aggregation processes require that national
  decision-makers are responsive to interest group
  lobbying
• Once preferences have been formulated
  domestically, rationalist and actor-centred
  liberalism brings constraints at the
  international level back in

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Upper-right box Actor-Centred Constructivist
Liberalism

• In constructivist accounts, domestic actors and
  state actors participate in processes of mutual
  persuasion and arguing
• Constructivist liberal approaches focus on which
  argument of which societal group will ultimately
  be convincing
• They emphasise actors who can change norms, such
  as norm entrepreneurs, and epistemic communities

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Lower-left box Rationalist DP Interdependence
Theories

• To explain this outcome, rationalist DP theories
  (following Kant) highlight how citizens in
  general will oppose wars because they bear the
  costs of wars
• Governments, being rational actors, avoid
  starting wars in order to maximise their chances
  of success on election day
• Rationalist accounts also use cost-benefit
  analysis to show why it does not pay for
  democracies to fight each other

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Lower-right box Constructivist DP Theories

• The basic argument of constructivist DP theory is
  that liberal states do not fight each other
  because they perceive each other as friendly
  rather than hostile
• An important dimension to this causal argument is
  that states learn that fellow liberal states are
  peaceful
• Democratic norms matter as they emphasise public
  debate, rational argument, and processes by which
  conflicts can be resolved without recourse to the
  threat or use of force

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Case Study The Iraq War 2004 Probing Liberal
Hypotheses

• ?
• How do these four variants of liberalism explain
  the actions of two key states who took different
  views of the conflict the US government and the
  German government

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Rationalist Constructivistactor-centred

• In explaining US behaviour, this version would
  expect to find a powerful coalition of business
  interests in favour
• Germanys opposition might be explained in terms
  of Chancellor Schroders opportunistic reading of
  domestic public opinion
• Both these explanations are incomplete without
  ideological and ideational factors

• Focuses attention on the ideational and normative
  reasons for the decision to go to war, as well as
  the opposition against it
• The now familiar story of the rise of the
  neoconservative movement fits this account
• So does the ideological aversion to war that is
  embedded in Germanys collective identity

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Rationalist Constructivist DP Theory

• This account of liberalism rests on one strong
  general finding (democracies almost never wage
  war on each other) but is weak in explaining
  particular instances
• The 2003 Iraq War falls outside the dyadic DP
  theory as it was a war between democracies and an
  authoritarian state
• The stance of Germany public opinion is
  consistent with the Kantian belief that citizens
  are generally war-averse, the manner in which
  George W. Bush was relatively free to go to war
  suggests that it is not difficult to build a
  domestic coalition

• Since none of the learning mechanisms are present
  in relation between democracies and authoritarian
  states, it is likely that self/other dynamics
  will exacerbate the problem
• Constructivists arguments are at work in the
  social construction of enmity
• The association of Saddam Hussein with brutal
  totalitarianism did not play out in the same way
  in Germany for historical reasons

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Conclusion

• The variety of liberal theories on offer today
  are an indication of the healthy state of second
  image approaches
• This suggests that the examination of the nature
  of states and domestic politics, and their
  interaction with international processes, is set
  to remain central in IR theorising and research