liberalism (IR)

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

a major theoretical tradition in international relations that emphasises the potential for cooperation, peace, and governance among states and other international actors through shared institutions, economic interdependence, democracy, and international law; IR liberalism draws on Enlightenment ideas about human reason, individual rights, and political progress to argue against the realist view that power politics and conflict are inevitable features of international life; key strands include commercial liberalism — the argument that economic interdependence reduces the incentives for war — republican liberalism — the democratic peace theory that democracies do not fight each other — and institutional liberalism — the argument that international institutions reduce transaction costs, enable cooperation, and create norms that constrain state behaviour; neoliberal institutionalism, associated with Robert Keohane, accepts the realist assumption of self-interested rational states but argues that international institutions enable cooperation by managing information problems, reducing uncertainty, and creating expectations of reciprocity that make defection costly

Examples

• Liberal IR theory predicts that the spread of democracy will reduce the frequency of interstate wars.
• Keohane's neoliberal institutionalism argues that international regimes can sustain cooperation even in the absence of hegemonic leadership.