PowerPoint Presentation
Liberalism, Peace &
Cooperation
What do International Relations
Theories Try to Achieve?
Explain laws which identifies probable associations
etween issues, events and actors (Waltz).
Help to abstract, generalize and to connect (Hollis and
Smith).
Speculate about relations between states (Wright).
Using observation to test hypotheses about the world
(empirical theory).
Represent the way the world ought to be (normative
theory).
Provide ideological critique of the present which opens up
alternative future paths to change, freedom and human
autonomy (critical theory).
Reflections upon the process of theorizing, including
questions of epistemology and ontology.
Two Broad Types of Theories
Explanatory Theories – that try to explain
events, issues and the behaviour of actors in the
global system.
Constitutive Theories – which reflects upon the
very process of theorizing; that is, these
theories are concerned with the social and
political purposes of knowledge, the cognitive
interests and assumptions of the observer and
the way in which the principal actors construct
their images of the political world.
What do Theories of International
Relations Differ About?
The first difference is the object of analysis and the
scope of the inquiry – that is, the level of analysis
debate.
The second difference is the purpose of social and
political inquiry – that is, what is the underlying
eason behind the theoretical undertaking?
A third difference is about the appropriate
methodology for the study of IR.
A fourth difference centres on whether each theory
sees IR as being distinct from, or related to, other
areas of intellectual endeavour.
Theory and Reality
Theory makes sense of reality. It also precedes and
shapes reality. In other words, there is a real
historical world in which things happen; and
theory is made through reflection upon what has
happened.
‘Theory’ and ‘reality’ are also not antonyms or
inary opposites because theoreticians are active
agents in research which is conditioned by their
own historical experiences. These experiences
cannot be artificially separated from their work
ecause they are embedded in the theoretical
worlds they construct.
Classical Liberalism
At the beginning of the 20th century, the question of how to prevent war
was of paramount importance due the revolution in the nature of
warfare
ought about by the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the
modern ‘nation-state’ and the massive destruction and human suffering
caused by the First World War XXXXXXXXXX).
After the First World War, Liberalism (also known as Idealism or
Utopianism), became the dominant paradigm in IR and was led
ardently by the charismatic American President Woodrow Wilson.
For the Classical Liberals, the ‘condition of anarchy’ under which the
international system operates together with the ‘culture of secret
diplomacy and authoritarian governance’ in Europe were the root
causes of World War I.
The Classical Liberals argued that war was not a product of human
nature, but the result of misunderstandings by politicians who had lost
control of events leading up to hostilities in 1914. If ‘secret diplomacy’
could be replaced by ‘collective security’ and if autocratic rule could be
eplaced by democracy, then war would be seen as a senseless and
destructive tool of international statecraft.
Cont.
Thus a new theory emerged on the question of war – that peace
could only be preserved by a system of collective security, to be
implemented specifically through international organizations,
and by democratization of autocratic states.
The distinctive character of Classical Liberalism, according to
Hedley Bull, was its belief in the following:
that the system of international relations that had given rise to
WWI was capable of being transformed into a fundamentally
more peaceful and just world order;
that under the impact of the awakening of democracy, the growth
of the ‘international mind’, and the development of the League of
Nations would transform the world;
and that it was the responsibility of enlightened men of peace, as
students of international relations, to assist this march of
progress to overcome the ignorance, the prejudices, the ill-will,
and the sinister interests that stood in its way.
The Liberal Security Orde
The Idealists’ solution to war: democratize Europe’s
authoritarian states, and create international institutions based
on ‘collective security’.
It was assumed that democratization would help to prevent war
in two ways: (i) eliminate secret diplomacy by making foreign
policy more open and transparent and subject to public scrutiny;
(ii) provide a democratic ‘peace dividend’.
International institutions would help to prevent war by
ameliorating the conditions of anarchy that underpins the
international system, through the practice of ‘collective security’
– if one state
eaks
eaches international peace by attacking
another state, then other states would collectively come to the
defence of the attacked state.
An international system based on international law, collective
security and democracy would also help promote free trade and
disarmament between peaceful states. It would also help end
colonialism and promote national self-determination.
League of Nations
Classical Liberals therefore created the League of Nations
after the end of WWI in order to institutionalize the
principles of collective security.
It was expected that the League of Nations would provide a
forum for transparent diplomacy and the pacific settlement
of inter-state disputes.
The League, however, failed to prevent the out
eak of the
Second World War in 1939.
In the aftermath of the Second World War, the Classical
Liberalism paradigm in IR became largely discredited even
though the successor to the League, the United Nations
(UN), enjoyed a much greater degree of success in the
practice of transparent diplomacy and collective security.
Neo-Liberalism
In the aftermath of the Second World War, international relations came
to be dominated by Realism or Realist Theory. Classical Realists
focused on human nature, state interests, and power politics in the
context of an anarchical international system. The onset of the Cold
War seemed to vindicate the position of Classical Realists.
By the 1970s, however, it was quite clear that the prediction of the
Classical Realists that states are constantly in a state of wa
conflict was
simply not true/accurate. There was steadily growing evidence that in
spite of the possibility of wa
conflict, states cooperated with each other
and that peaceful interactions between states and between states and
other actors were growing rapidly. Neo-liberalism attempted to explain
the increasing amount of interaction between states, and between other
actors in a globalizing world.
This lead to a revival of liberal institutionalism theory (UN, ASEAN),
egime theory (Human Rights), democratic peace theory (EU
integration), free market/trade theory (GATT, WTO), and
interdependence theory (Globalization theory).
Liberalism, Peace & Cooperation
What do International Relations Theories Try to Achieve?
Two Broad Types of Theories
What do Theories of International Relations Differ About?
Theory and Reality
Classical Liberalism
Cont.
The Liberal Security Orde
League of Nations
Neo-Liberalism
Feminism, Gender and International Relations
Feminism, Gender and
International Relations
Dr Jane Hutchison
• In theory and practice, International Relations is deeply
gendered.
• Consider the UN Security Council …
• It excludes women through masculinity - ‘a way of ordering the world’
that upholds the principle of men’s superiority and power and
authority over women.
• ‘Though men in general gain the patriarchal dividend, specific groups
of men gain very little of it’ (Connell).
• Although feminists are always concerned with the position of women,
their analytical focus is on gender as a form of power that links to
sexual difference.
Gender
• Gender is a way of categorising people and activities
to produce and legitimate the power and authority of
men.
• Gender does this by constructing sex difference in
terms of binaries.
• Binaries set up oppositions – in meaning and often in
value.
Sex and Gender
• Sex is biology, gender is a social construction.
• Gender is not a flow on from sex (male and female bodies).
• Gender constructs a world of binary difference – male/female,
civilisation/nature, strong/weak, rational/emotional,
protecto
protected –posited as natural/incontestable.
• Sex binaries are not the basis of gender difference; gender constructs
sex as (naturally) binary.
• Masculinity positions men in the social order (as non-feminine).
• Masculinity is not singular – ‘hegemonic masculinity’ promotes the
subordination of women (Connell).
Gender and the Military
Gender and the Military
1) Men are natural wa
iors – stronger,
aver, protectors?
Feminists respond:
- Men are not necessarily better suited to combat than women.
- Men are not ready-made soldiers and can experience ‘post-
traumatic stress disorder’.
- There are women soldiers – the masculinism of the military ‘is
most clearly captured by the very need to continually establish
that women can also be combatants and should also be allowed
to be’ (Kinsella 2005, 254).
2) Male bonding is important, so it is important not to mix the sexes.
3) A masculinist logic – the ostensibly natural facts about men ‘are
themselves produced through discourses of gender which give sex and
sex difference meaning’ in relation to suitability for combat (Kinella
2005, 253).
Military training promotes a particular form of heightened masculinity
that naturalises the exclusion of women – and fails to see the men’s
esulting psychological and social
eakdowns (PTSD).
Combats and Citizens
• The foundational texts of International Relations were not
indifferent to relations between men and women.
• Instead, they explicitly exclude women from the political
arena – on the basis that their inclusion would disrupt the
authority of men which is the foundation of the social order.
• Thomas Ho
es and Hugo Grotius
Thomas Ho
es
• As a liberal, Ho
es considered men and women are equal in ‘the
state of nature’ (his thought exercise to justify the imposition of
political authority, in an absolute form).
• Life is the state of nature is ‘nasty,
utish and short’ (anarchy)
• As mothers, women should have authority over their children, but for