Essay
What are the basic Liberal principles as an International Relations theory?
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International Relations essay about Liberalism
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IR ESSAYStream: ES4
Module: IR, Semester 2
Modul Code:
Question: What are the basic Liberal principles as an International Relations theory?
Question Block 3: Liberalism
Question Number: 1
, What are the Basic Liberal Principles as an International Relations
Theory?
Liberalism is one of the most dominant international relations theories and mostly holds an
optimistic view on the International Order. Liberalism seeks to project values of order,
liberty, justice, and toleration into international relations (Dunne, 2017)
The aim of this essay is to answer the following question: What are the basic liberal
principles as an International Relations theory? The identified core concepts of Liberalism as
an international relations theory are firstly, democratic peace, secondly economic
interdependence, and lastly international cooperation. Besides the Liberal perspective this
essay will explore the perspective of the international relation theory “Realism” which
contrarily to liberalism, holds a generally pessimistic view on the in their eyes “anarchic
international order.”
Firstly one of the most important concepts of Liberalism within international relations is the
so-called democratic peace theory of which proposes that liberal democracies are unlikely to
go to war with other liberal democracies. The concept first appeared around the end of the
18th century, one of the pioneers of this theory is influential liberal writer Emmanuel Kant.
Kant argued that if the decision to go to war were taken by people rather than a prince, the
occurrence of conflicts would severely decrease ( (Dunne, p. 120)). War is mostly in the
interest of the elite part of society not in the interest of regular civilians. Other liberal writers
share this point of view. Moravcsik states that, “while a situation in which entire societies
benefit from aggression is conceivable, it is presumed that such situations are much rarer in
than those in which there is conflict between the interest of small groups in two societies”
(p. 19) The democratic peace theory receives a lot of critiques however. For example, the
realist perspective claims that it is only a matter of time until there will yet another war
between democratic nations and that there has not yet passed enough time to prove the
democratic peace theory to be valid or that liberal democracies still show aggression
towards authoritarian regimes. Though even if Democracies are still likely to got to war with
nondemocratic nations, there still is some validity to the democratic peace theory. Doyle
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