The Optimistic Foundations of Liberalism in International Politics
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Liberalism's optimistic view of international politics is based on three core beliefs, which are common to almost all of the theories in the paradigm. First, liberals consider states to be the main actors in international politics. Second, they emphasize that the internal characteristics of states vary considerably, and that these differences have profound effects on state behavior. Furthermore, liberal theorists often believe that some internal arrangements (e.g., democracy) are inherently preferable to others (e.g., dictatorship). For liberals, therefore, there are "good" and "bad" states in the international system. Good states pursue cooperative policies and hardly ever start wars on their own, whereas bad states cause conflicts with other states and are prone to use force to get their way. Thus, the key to peace is to populate the world with good states.
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Third, liberals believe that calculations about power matter little for explaining the behaviour of good states. Bad states might be motivated by the desire to gain power at the expense of other states…. In an ideal world, where there are only good states, power would be largely irrelevant. Among the various theories found under the big tent of liberalism, the three main ones mentioned earlier are influential. The first argues that high levels of economic interdependence among states make them unlikely to fight each other. The taproot of stability, according to this theory, is the creation and maintenance of a liberal economic order that allows for free economic exchange among states. Such an order makes states more prosperous, thereby bolstering peace, because prosperous states are more economically satisfied and satisfied states are more peaceful. Many wars are waged to gain or preserve wealth, but states have much less motive to initiate war if they are already wealthy. Furthermore, wealthy states with interdependent economies stand to become less prosperous if they fight each other, since they are biting the hand that feeds them. Once states establish extensive economic ties, in short, they avoid war and can concentrate instead on accumulating wealth.
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The second, democratic peace theory, claims that democracies do not go to war against other democracies. Thus, a world containing only democratic states would be a world without war. The argument here is not that democracies are less warlike than non-democracies, but rather that democracies do not fight among themselves. Finally, some liberals maintain that international institutions enhance the prospects for cooperation among states and thus significantly reduce the likelihood of war. Institutions are not independent political entities that sit above states and force them to behave in acceptable ways. Instead, institutions are sets of rules that stipulate the ways in which states should cooperate and compete with each other. They prescribe acceptable forms of state behaviour and proscribe unacceptable kinds of behaviour. These rules are not imposed on states by some leviathan, but are negotiated by states, which agree to abide by the rules they created because it is in their interest to do so. Liberals claim that these institutions or rules can fundamentally change state behaviour. Institutions can discourage states from calculating self-interest on the basis of how their every move affects their relative power position, and thus they push states away from war and promote peace.
