Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-21T18:59:52.143Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Liberal internationalism: from ideology to empirical theory – and back again

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2009

Beate Jahn
Beate Jahn*
Affiliation:
Department of International Relations, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9SN, UK
*
E-mail: B.Jahn@sussex.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article shows that Andrew Moravcsik’s ‘nonideological’ formulation of a liberal theory of international relations is itself deeply ideological – both in terms of his own criteria and in terms of a broader conception of ideology. The source of this outcome lies in Moravcsik’s mistaken conception of ideology. While ideological knowledge is indeed particular rather than general, it shares this feature with all political knowledge. In the political sphere, it is therefore not general knowledge that transcends the limits of ideology but rather an explicit engagement with these limits. A nonideological study of liberalism would thus require an historical account of the origins and development of liberalism in the context of its struggle with internal and external competitors. While such a study would not constitute a liberal theory of international relations in general, it would provide a general theory of liberal international relations – and would thus be highly relevant in the context of a liberal world order.

Keywords

liberal internationalismideologypositivismLocke
Type
Original Article
Information
International Theory , Volume 1 , Issue 3 , November 2009 , pp. 409 - 438
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Althusser, L. (1984), Essays on Ideology, London, UK: Verso.Google Scholar
Anderson, M.S. (1961), Europe in the Eighteenth Century 1713–1783, London, UK: Longmans.Google Scholar
Armitage, D. (2004), ‘John Locke, Carolina, and the “Two Treatise of Government” ’, Political Theory 32(5): 602–627.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arneil, B. (1996), John Locke and America. The Defence of English Colonialism, Oxford, UK: Clarendon.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bacon, F. (1996), Francis Bacon. A Critical Edition of the Major Works, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Boucher, D. (2006), ‘Property and propriety in international relations: the case of John Locke’, in B. Jahn (ed.), Classical Theory in International Relations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 156–177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Castoriadis, C. (1998), The Imaginary Institution of Society, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Doyle, M.W. (1997), Ways of War and Peace, New York, USA: W.W. Norton and Company.Google Scholar
Dunn, J. (1969), The Political Thought of John Locke. A Historical Account of the Arguments of the ‘Two Treatise of Government’, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Freeden, M. (1996), Ideologies and Political Theory. A Conceptual Approach, Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Gramsci, A. (1971), Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. by Q. Hoare and G.N. Smith, New York, USA: International Publishers.Google Scholar
Gray, J. (1986), Liberalism, Minneapolis, USA: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Hoffmann, S. (1995), ‘The crisis of liberal internationalism’, Foreign Policy 98: 159–177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ivison, D. (2003), ‘Locke, liberalism and empire’, in P.R. Anstey (ed.), The Philosophy of John Locke: New Perspectives, London, UK: Routledge, pp. 86–105.Google Scholar
Jahn, B. (2007a), ‘The tragedy of liberal diplomacy: democratization, intervention, statebuilding I’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 1(1): 88–106.Google Scholar
Jahn, B. (2007b), ‘The tragedy of liberal diplomacy: democratization, intervention, statebuilding II’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 1(2): 211–229.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laslett, P. (1994), ‘Introduction’, in P. Laslett (ed.), John Locke, Two Treatise of Government, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–133.Google Scholar
Lebovics, H. (1986), ‘The uses of America in Locke’s second treatise of government’, Journal of the History of Ideas 47(4): 567–581.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Locke, J. (1959), An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (2 Vols., collated and annotated by Alexander Campbell Fraser), New York, USA: Dover.Google Scholar
Locke, J. (1994), Two Treatise of Government, ed. by P. Laslett, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Long, D. (1995), ‘The Harvard School of liberal international theory: a case for closure’, Millennium 24(3): 489–505.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacPherson, C.B. (1962), The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke, Oxford, UK: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Mannheim, K. (1960), Ideology and Utopia, London, UK: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Marks, R.B. (2007), The Origins of the Modern World. Fate and Fortune in the Rise of the West, Lanham, USA: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Marx, K.Engels, F. (1970), The German Ideology, ed. by C.J. Arthur, London, UK: Lawrence and Wishart.Google Scholar
McNally, D. (1988), Political Economy and the Rise of Capitalism. A Reinterpretation, Berkeley, USA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Montesquieu, C.L. de S. (1949), The Spirit of the Laws, New York, USA: Hafner.Google Scholar
Moravcsik, A. (1992), ‘Liberalism and International Relations Theory’, Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, Working Paper 92-6.Google Scholar
Moravcsik, A. (1993), ‘Preferences and power in the European community: a liberal intergovernmentalist approach’, Journal of Common Market Studies 31(4): 473–524.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moravcsik, A. (1997), ‘Taking preferences seriously: a liberal theory of international politics’, International Organization 51(4): 513–553.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perelman, M. (2000), The Invention of Capitalism. Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation, Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Rapaczynski, A. (1987), Nature and Politics: Liberalism in the Philosophies of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, Ithaca, USA: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Richardson, J.L. (1997), ‘Contending liberalisms: past and present’, European Journal of International Relations 3(1): 5–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richardson, J.L. (2001), Contending Liberalisms in World Politics. Ideology and Power, Boulder, USA: Lynne Rienner.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, M.J. (1992), ‘Liberalism and international reform’, in T. Nardin and D. Mapel (eds), Traditions of International Ethics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 201–224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tuck, R. (1999), The Rights of War and Peace. Political Thought and the International Order from Grotius to Kant, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tully, J. (1982), A Discourse on Property. John Locke and his Adversaries, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tully, J. (1993), An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke in Contexts, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Waltz, K. (1979), Theory of International Politics, New York, USA: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Ward, L. (2006), ‘Locke on the moral basis of international relations’, American Journal of Political Science 50(3): 691–705.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Washbrook, D. (1997), ‘From comparative sociology to global history: Britain and India in the pre-history of modernity’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 40(4): 410–443.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wokler, R. (2006), ‘Ideology and the origins of social science’, in M. Goldie and R. Wokler (eds), The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 688–709.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wyatt-Walter, A. (1996), ‘Adam Smith and the liberal tradition in international relations’, Review of International Studies 22: 5–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zacher, M.W.Matthew, R.A. (1995), ‘Liberal international theory: common threads, divergent strands’, in C.W. Kegley Jr (ed.), Controversies in International Relations Theory. Realism and the Neoliberal Challenge, New York, USA: St. Martin’s Press, pp. 107–150.Google Scholar