Despite the debate, the possibility of a democratic peace gradually replacing a world of constant war – as described by realists – is an enduring and important facet of liberalism. A third point is that while democracies are unlikely to go to war with one another, some scholarship suggests that they are likely to be aggressive toward non-democracies – such as when the United States went to war with Iraq in 2003. Second, we cannot be sure whether it is truly a ‘democratic’ peace or whether some other factors correlated with democracy are the source of peace – such as power, alliances, culture, economics and so on. This means there are few cases of democracies having the opportunity to fight one another. First, democracy is a relatively recent development in human history. Statistical analysis and historical case studies provide strong support for democratic peace theory, but several issues continue to be debated.
Second, democracies tend to see each other as legitimate and unthreatening and therefore have a higher capacity for cooperation with each other than they do with non-democracies. First, democratic states are characterised by internal restraints on power, as described above. There is a two-part explanation for this phenomenon. It asserts that democratic states are highly unlikely to go to war with one another. This allows for checks and balances in the use of power.ĭemocratic peace theory is perhaps the strongest contribution liberalism makes to IR theory. A second important limitation on political power is the division of political power among different branches and levels of government – such as a parliament/congress, an executive and a legal system.
Liberal politics definition free#
The primary institutional check on power in liberal states is free and fair elections via which the people can remove their rulers from power, providing a fundamental check on the behaviour of the government.
Liberal politics definition how to#
For liberals, therefore, the core problem is how to develop a political system that can allow states to protect themselves from foreign threats without subverting the individual liberty of its citizenry. Occupation and control require large bureaucracies that have an interest in maintaining or expanding the occupation of foreign territory.
Not only do expansionist wars strengthen the state at the expense of the people, these wars also require long-term commitments to the military occupation and political control of foreign territory and peoples. Wars of territorial expansion, or imperialism – when states seek to build empires by taking territory overseas – are especially disturbing for liberals. For this reason, political systems rooted in liberalism often limit military power by such means as ensuring civilian control over the military. This power can be used for fighting foreign states, but it can also be used to oppress its own citizens. The primary concern is that war requires states to build up military power. Liberals are particularly troubled by militaristic foreign policies. While these are issues of domestic politics, the realm of IR is also important to liberals because a state’s activities abroad can have a strong influence on liberty at home. Therefore, the main concern of liberalism is to construct institutions that protect individual freedom by limiting and checking political power. A political system characterised by unchecked power, such as a monarchy or a dictatorship, cannot protect the life and liberty of its citizens. Consequently, liberals emphasise the wellbeing of the individual as the fundamental building block of a just political system. Liberalism is based on the moral argument that ensuring the right of an individual person to life, liberty and property is the highest goal of government. Most notably, liberalism has been the traditional foil of realism in IR theory as it offers a more optimistic world view, grounded in a different reading of history to that found in realist scholarship. When compared to realism, it adds more factors into our field of view – especially a consideration of citizens and international organisations. Liberalism contains a variety of concepts and arguments about how institutions, behaviours and economic connections contain and mitigate the violent power of states.
However, liberalism – when discussed within the realm of IR theory – has evolved into a distinct entity of its own. Liberalism is a defining feature of modern democracy, illustrated by the prevalence of the term ‘liberal democracy’ as a way to describe countries with free and fair elections, rule of law and protected civil liberties. This is an excerpt from International Relations Theory – an E-IR Foundations beginner’s textbook.
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