Abstract
Liberalism at the international level has always been vague and ambiguous. It seems to have been initially associated with Woodrow Wilson’s championship of political democracy, the related idea of self-determination and the possibility of a more peaceful and morally acceptable world in which security is managed by collective procedures within international institutions. This Wilsonian orientation, which is generally identifiable by support for a stronger United Nations, persists to a substantial extent, and has often been called ‘liberal internationalism’. It tends to be combined with a projection onto the global stage of such domestic features of a liberal democratic state as elections, separation of powers, due process, human rights, and the Rule of Law. The liberal orientation extended to international-relations often advocates gradual increases in international cooperation by way of institutional arrangements. This international reliance on liberalism in its domestic setting is rarely coupled with a long-range comprehensive plan that culminates in the establishment of a liberal global state.
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Notes
1. Ann-Marie Slaughter, ‘International Law in a World of Liberal States’, European Journal of International Law, Vol. 6, No. 4 (1995), especially p. 6; and idem, The Real New World Order’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 5 (1997), pp. 183–97. See also Andrew Moravcsik, ‘Liberalism and International Relations Theory’ (Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, Working Paper, No. 92–6, 1992). The aptness of the analogy between domestic political structures and world order thinking has been a matter of continuous controversy. The main various positions are usefully analysed in Hidemi Suganami, The Domestic Analogy and World Order Proposals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
3.These Kantian ideas have been influentially presented and assessed for their contemporary relevance by Michael W. Doyle, ‘Liberalism and World Polities’, American Political Science Review, Vol. 80, No. 4 (1986), especially pp. 1155–62.
4.See Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson, Globalization in Question: The International Economy and the Possibilities of Governance (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996).
6.It is important to appreciate that liberal internationalism was generally subordinated to a realist view of the state and its modes of perceiving and deciding, and should be conceived as mainly a normative commentary of marginal relevance to the conduct of statecraft. That is, in the security domain of war/peace relations realism always provided the underpinning for liberal internationalism. Also, as Henry Kissinger is fond of pointing out, the United States was alone among major states to being susceptible to liberal internationalist posturing, often, he argues, at the expense of a clearheaded pursuit of national interests. See, for example, Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), especially pp. 804–35. For a bold 1990s attempt to reassert the old geopolitics see Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Geostrategic Imperatives (New York: Basic Books, 1997).
16. For a critical assessment of the UN overreach in the Gulf Crisis, see Richard Falk, ‘Reflections on the Gulf Experience: Force and War in the UN System’, in Tareq Y. Ismael and Jacqueline S. Ismael (eds.), The Gulf War and the New World Order (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida, 1994), pp. 25–39.
30. See Richard Falk, ‘The Extension of Law to Foreign Policy: The Next Constitutional Challenge’, in Alan S. Rosenbaum (ed.), Constitutionalism: The Philosophical Dimension (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1988), pp. 205–21. On why this cannot happen with the jurisprudential confines of international law, see Anthony Carty, The Decay of International Law (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986).
32. Antonio Cassese and Edmond Jouve (eds.), Pour un droit des peuples (Paris:Berger-Levrault, 1978).
36. For one graphic account of the negative impact of Cold War priorities on the internal struggles in southern Africa, see Victoria Brittain, Hidden Lives, Hidden Deaths (London: Faber, 1988).
See Jeremy Brecher and Tim Costello, Global Village or Global Pillage: Economic Reconstruction from the Bottom Up (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1994), and Smitu Kothari, ‘Where Are the People? The United Nations, Global Economic Institutions and Governance’, paper given at UN Fiftieth Anniversary Conference, The United Nations: Between Sovereignty and Global Governance? (Melbourne, Australia, 2–6 July 1995).
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© 2002 Millennium
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Falk, R. (2002). Liberalism at the Global Level: Solidarity vs. Cooperation. In: Hovden, E., Keene, E. (eds) The Globalization of Liberalism. Millennium. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230519381_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230519381_5
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