Lecture 2 liberalism

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the second half of the lecture on liberalism

and the first half, we kind of talked about some of the principles of liberalism and where it came

from and how it's different from realism. And this lecture is going to look at kind of the key ideas

of liberalism and how it fits into explaining peace and cooperation

into the in the international system. So I'll start off with this dude, Emmanuel Kant.

I know if any of you have heard of him, a very important German philosopher.

And he wrote a lot about morals, about other things, and one of his

most important books is a book called On the Perpetual Peace and on the Perpetual

Peace, really kind of interesting. He is shaped and all the ideas of

liberalism. And it has three main ideas. And each one of these ideas

represents a strand in today's liberal liberal thinking. Interestingly enough,

kind of each one of the liberal ideas is based on a different

strand of Emmanuel Cance ideas that came out hundreds of years

ago. So what you can say. What was his idea?

Basically, he's trying to understand how our peace and cooperation possible between countries, how

can we meet lead to peace? He's a philosopher. He wants to bring us to

kind of global peace and a better place. And he wants to know how is it possible what can be done

to achieve that, to achieve this kind of ideal world? He wants to get to. And

he has three answers. The first one is reciprocity. He says, look through reciprocity.

States can figure out agreements and create institutions which will create cooperation.

He had this dream of developing some kind of global world federation

of states, some kind of federation, kind of like the U.N., but more powerful

that would lead all states to common dialog, agree and basically agree with the make

agreements and ultimately not go to war anymore. And it's what's

really important here. This is based on self-interest. And again, this is something I've talked a lot about in the context of

liberalism. Liberalism is based on self-interest. It's not based on

kind of the identity solution that we talked about of me feeling or so

like close to other people wanting. You know, it's about me saying the best thing

for me is to prosper. To prosper, I need to cooperate with other countries. If they're better

off, we're better off. We're all better off. And everything works in for all

of you know, absolute gains are a result of my own personal self-interest.

OK. The second answer he gives is that peace depends

on the structure of government. So again, we talked about liberals being focused on domestic politics,

domestic politics matter. And what's really important here are is the regime

type dictatorship. Democracy can't doesn't talk about democracy, didn't really believe

in democracy, thought democracy is kind of going to lead to just like,

you know, he's an elitist in a way. He thought democracy is just getting to the more mob

rule. He didn't support that. They thought that some kind of

Republican government that represents the interests of groups within society,

that is. Accountable to society, even if it's mainly

the rich people in society is going to foster peace. If you're responsible

to promote the interests of the wealthy and the business interests, you're not just going to go to war randomly.

Unlike if you're just a king, that can do whatever they want. And there are no ramifications. You might act

differently. So the type of regime within a state shapes those state

preferences and state actions. And therefore, the more we have our

republics or democracies, the more peaceful the world is going to be.

A third answer he gives is the trade promotes well-being or trade promotes peace.

The more we have trade, the more people are well off there, more people are

economically well off. And this is going to enhance their economic

well-being. And people are not going to want to risk that with war. War is costly.

War can undermine economic relations. So self-interest

or economic self-interest requires that we have peace. So the more trade we have, the more interaction,

the more trade deals, the more interdependence we have, the more countries are dependent

on each other. Not in a power dynamic way, but, you know, you

produce that I produce that we treat. We trade those two products between each other. That is

going to reduce war. So now let's see. Take each one of these and see how this fits

in to contemporary liberal understanding of

international relations. So the first idea is that you have reciprocity.

Or what we call and pray. The most important strand of liberalism is the idea

that developed by Robert Keohane that we've mentioned before on your reading from him

is neo liberal institutionalism.

So basically the idea here is it's very simple. States can create

institutions that are advantages to advantages to everyone.

They create rules. They create institutions if everybody follows the rule. Everybody is better off trade

the environment, you know, peace. All these things can create be

created through institutions, institutions, monitor behavior. So, you know, we talked about the prisoner's

dilemma. How do we know if someone's cheating? You know, when we talked about the reciprocity

solution with a couple, we said, well, what happens if boxing and

ballet, if there's no boxing for a few weeks, how do we monitor that? Institutions are there to

monitor behavior. They are exactly there to set up accountability, to monitor

behavior, identify who's cheating and provide that information so we can

punish those who cheat and reward those who play the game. That's the idea of reciprocity

for this. States give up short term interests. So, you know, I could win really fast

if I cheat on everyone, but I'm in favor of long term well-being. And

we saw that in the iterated prisoners dilemma. In the short term, maybe cheating

works better in the long term. Tit for tat and positive relations is something that

works better. So I sacrifice small Short-Term. Individual gains for long

term gains are going to bring prosperity not only to me but to other countries and increase

the chances that everybody is going to participate. And no one is going to cheat. And this is important

because this is a form of rational behavior. Again, this is not based on us all becoming better

people or all kinds of normative assumptions. It is based on the fact that from my own

rationality, I want to achieve more wealth. I want to achieve growth. I want to be in a better

place to do that. I should cooperate. OK. Think about it like, you know,

if we all just play by the rules, we'll all be better off. That's something that we might do.

This is the idea that underlies the European Union. The European Union. Yes.

Countries like France or Germany might have benefited initially from taking advantage of other countries,

but they also realize that cooperation needs to Long-Term Gains for them and to everyone else,

and they cooperate. The World Trade Organization is another example going to be talking about

the World Trade Organization more in the coming weeks. But the World Trade

Organization, the main idea behind it is that it.

That what it does is that it says, look, if you follow the rules,

we are not going to tax or put tariffs on your goods and therefore,

everybody, you know. So maybe I have an interest if I'm a country to put tariffs

on goods coming from other countries, I can help my industries, but then they put tariffs on my goods

and then I can export less. I can export to less countries. I'll be successful

the export to these countries. So overall, I might be better off

with my own good, with within my own country, but worse off in international trade.

What the World Trade Organization says is, look, as long as you play the game, no one is going to tax your goods.

You can access all these different markets around the world. If you cheat, we're going to punish

you and you're not going to have access to those countries and you're going to lose. So this, again, is a form

of institution that creates that kind of idea. So really, it's

about putting an emphasis on long term self-interest gains versus short term self-interest

gains. So how are liberals and realists different from this perspective?

So they say they accept that states are unitary actors in that they all want to make themselves

wealthier and be successful. They're self-interested. They're rational. And we live in a anarchical

world. But. Liberals say, look, realist pessimism

doesn't follow from these assumptions. It doesn't automatically mean that we're not going to cooperate

and we're not going to be able to work together instead of that through self interest itself.

States can achieve cooperation and institutions are the key for this. They can

provide ways forward to make sure that everybody is gaining. While Moneta cheating

and allow to punish. So again, the WTO, if you cheat, you don't get the benefits that

other members of the organization get. A good example of this are arm controls. ARM

controls. So you know, the real us tell us we can never solve the security dilemma. Why?

Because states never know. The other side isn't going to cheat. But institutions allow us to overcome.

And the 1980s, we saw that the Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev,

and rather the present United States president, Ronald Reagan, signed

agreements to control arm development and to reduce the number of nuclear

weapons each country had because they were other they were institutions that were making

sure that both sides kept with the agreement. And

this reduces the uncertainty about the other side's intentions and about cheating.

And this allows to overcome the security dilemma, something that realists say we can never overcome,

the security dilemma. The benefits of free trade, again, that

is again something the benefits of free trade. Countries learn that they can benefit from free

trade more than they can just from cheating each other and therefore they

are going to cooperate more. So this brings

us back to the idea of reciprocity that really talked about in the first lecture. And basically,

if both sides reciprocate in terms of cooperation, conflict, both have an interest, cooperate,

both countries and both sides will have an interest to cooperate because in the long run, everybody will do

better if they cooperate. Wills's going into cycles of punishment and

cheating each other. We really saw that when we looked at the iterated prisoner's dilemma.

It's easy to monitor, especially with institutions. Institutions can monitor who's behaving, who's cheating

and who isn't. And it also creates a roadmap for future interactions. If I cooperate

now and I work with you on this institution, we can create other institutions and we can deepen our

the ways we cooperate over time. A good example of that is the European Union.

European Union starts in the 1950s as a coal union agreements about coal. Slowly they

realized, oh, this is working. So let's begin. We're about train. Let's make an agreement and common time.

Let's make agreement on common currency. Let's make agreements on borders. And slowly

cooperation turns into trust and create systems where countries

reciprocate with each other automatically. And this is important because future

reciprocity does not need to always be stated explicitly. And what liberals

will tell us is that when we have a pattern of reciprocity, emerging countries just

react positively to each other. They don't take advantage of each other necessarily, like

realists would predict. And let's look at two examples of this. Let's start off with the relationship between

China and the United States. Basically, let's

take if we in 1969, the relation between China and the United States had really been crappy

for about or bad. Sorry, that's an academic good for about 20 years and the

US had had a large economic embargo on China. China, of course, was a

communist country. They had Calvary with the Soviet Union. The United States, as part of their

anti-communist regime, did everything they can to put sanctions

on China to limit China and Bargo, China and China.

As a result, wasn't really able to develop economically in

part to it. And we see a lot of violence during that period of time. China supported North Vietnam

that killed a lot of American troops. And slowly Americans realize it's not in their

interest to continue this quarrel with China, not only because what's going on in Vietnam, but also if they

want to drive a wedge between China and the Soviet Union to communist

large communist countries. Maybe they can do that through creating better relations

with China and weakening that potential alliance between China and

Russia and President Nixon at the time and his

security advisor, Henry Kissinger. Basically, the side during this good of time to

relax the U.S. embargo on China and China responds in kind.

For instance, during this period of time, China had held three Americans

that had like drifted on a boat into Chinese territory, in Chinese territory,

territorial waters. And China decided in to reciprocate to American

America's reduction in its embargo. By releasing them.

And this continued in response, America. The United States made moves towards

China. China reciprocated. And this led to an ongoing process

of tit for tat positive, positive reciprocation. Ultimately,

here we see the prisoners being let out. The American prisoners being locked out of the Chinese jail.

This ultimately led to 1972 to Nixon visiting China

and creating relations with China. And we've seen how China has grown and the cooperation

we've had. Now, of course, we're going to have a negative period with China. But the positive

reciprocation we've had with China since the 1970s as a result

of this dynamic being created. Another example can be the tensions

between Russia and the United States. In 2009,

the Obama administration following Russian concerns over a missile

defense system that Europe had put in Eastern Europe to protect itself, even though it was a protective

when Russia saw this as a threat. Again, the potential security dilemma and

Obama said, you know what, we're going to cancel this program. Why did he do that? Well, this

was a period in which the United States wanted to impose sanctions on Iran. Iran was

an ally of Russia. And Russia was going to use its veto power in the U.N. Security

Council to stop any attempt to put serious sanctions on Russia. Obama

realized that he had to add that if he did something good for Russia, they might reciprocate.

So he canceled this missile defense system. And in return,

Russia voted in favor in the Security Council, despite didn't use its veto and voted in favor

of tighter sanctions against Iran. Again,

we see none of these were done. You do this. I do that. But what liberals will point

out that if you do positive things, other people do positive things that slowly. Reciprocity

is going to rule the day in a positive way.

So one day that we we focus on international relations

is what we call international regimes and national regimes are basically

it's not like regimes like we have in countries dictatorship, democracy, et cetera.

It is the idea that as we have all these institutions around that specific

issue area institutions and treaties. So that's a human. You have

all kinds of institutions, human rights treaties over human rights. The all those together create

a regime over that specific issue. So regimes are outcomes

of the actions of these institutions if they're treaties or just

like organizations, et cetera. So international regimes are sets of norms

and rules and procedures, sets of norms, rules and procedures around which actors

expectations converge in a certain issue area. They decide what is OK and what

isn't OK and how we should deal with us, what what behavior is going to be punished

and what behavior is going to be rewarded. From this perspective, it's the outcome

of international institutions. And national institutions can include, as I said, organizations,

treaties, agreements. And you can have in one issue and let's say the environment, a bunch of

different organizations and agreements and all of those together form the regime.

What are kind the overall rules? Well, the policy is the rules and norms that govern

behavior or what is acceptable behavior around the particular

issue area. And what they do is they allow us to set expectations for ourselves

and for other countries of how to act. So we know who broke the rules

and within that, so we can think about a lot of different issues where we have regimes in trade,

environmental regime, environmental regulation, human rights, they regimes

over the use of chemical or nuclear weapons and many other issues, immigration, et

cetera. They all kinds of regimes, which kind of are the, as I said, the outcomes of

these international institutions. So why do we need regimes? Why

do these regimes do, even though they're kind of a morphic, because they're just combat, they

just like the result of these all these institutions, basically all

these institutions together that form the regime. Help us to survive. It says solve the collective

goods problem and help us to facilitate cooperation. They make expectations

explicit of what states should do. They also increase transparency.

It makes cheating riskier. So in the international human rights reaching,

we have all kinds of parts of that raid. All kinds of organizations within that that monitor

state behavior. And they decide and they make sure that states have to report

what they're doing to these various bodies within the regime. And if they

cheat, they're more likely get punished. They also increase the flow of information.

So all these bodies rebel released reports regularly and they report. So Human Rights

Watch, for instance, will report about what various countries are doing to undermine human rights.

That gets that information get passed around. It allows to punish cheaters

that don't don't participate or trying to cheat the rules.

It also allows the coordination of state actions. States are a lot are able to

act in more coordination because through

these regimes they used to they you know, it allows to coordinate between all the

treaties and agreements and organizations and to figure out what is how

how to overcome disagreements about state between states, about how to proceed on the

southern issue area. So it also enables to negotiate differences.

But keep in mind that regimes and institutions in general rely

on self-interest. They offer in

the hands cost benefit opportunities for people that participate in them, basically countries

that participate in them are doing better and they're doing it. They're participating because they do better.

And the regime itself allows us to solve a lot of problems that

are shaped by short term self-interest, so allows us to overcome the problems of short

term self-interest that could cause cheating and could undermine cooperation.

So what do you really say about this? Three of us agree. Well, of course, realists disagree.

Realists have a very different than the standing of institutions and regimes, basically rather see institutions

and regimes through the prism of dominance. And what they say is read these regimes in

institutions are just instruments of power that strong states use. So we look at

all these human rights is just a tool for the United States. United States doesn't follow human

rights and it uses the human rights discourse to force other countries

to follow its rules. And then it uses that to oppress them

and undermine their their interests. So basically walked rareness

are going to tell us is that it's just a reinforces existing

power relations. It's just a way. It just proves realism. All these institutions

don't matter. They're just another manifestation of the power dynamics

in the international system. Not only that, they might also

reflect a temporary back balancing alliances that's dissolve

once the threat is removed. What do I mean by this? So, for instance, we might have an institution

or institutional cooperation between countries over an issue area, but it's because they see some kind

of X third country or whatever as a threat and they organizing and cooperating.

But once that threat disappears, when that country isn't a threat anymore with those deadlines is

going to disappear. So in order to kind of differentiate who's right about

this and you know, we're not going to get to a conclusive decision.

Kind of verdict on this. But let's look at NATO. NATO is a very, very interesting

organization. So and it allows us to kind of I think it allows us to do capital

experiment and compare liberal vs. realist thinking

about these kind of institutions. So basically, no was created

during the Cold War. It was an alliance between the United States and European countries primarily.

It's what we call a collective security agreement. He was there to counter the Eastern

Bloc, the Soviet Collective Security Agreement known as the Warsaw paxos, NATO Pact and the Warsaw

Pact. And basically, it allowed Western European

countries to kind of develop their economies, rely that the United States would provide them with security.

It allowed them to pool resources together. It allowed the United States to coordinate

with them on security issues. And many would say that having

NATO allowed the European Union to develop because Europe could focus on cooperation

with other European countries instead of trying to just focus on defense and then having all kinds of

security dilemmas emerge. So NATO was

created, as I said, against the backdrop of the Soviet Union and the threat of the

Soviet Union and the Cold War and weirdness. People like John Mearsheimer predicted

that at the end of the Cold War, we would basically see the collapse of NATO

and maybe even the European the European Union, since the common threat

of the Soviet Union was the reason for cooperation to begin with. And that ultimately

disappeared and therefore, countries like France and Germany would go back to being at odds

with each other. Once the common threat disappeared

and Mizushima said, look, this is just gonna just gonna get the old patterns of conflict history again for

four realize. History is flat. It's just kind of repeats itself.

And the Ashima said famously, We will soon miss the Cold War. The Cold War helped us

have that those peaceful relations and that cooperation within Europe. It's not about

reciprocity or what liberals would say. By contrast, liberals like

Robert Keohane and others basically said that things changed since World War 2.

We have more democracy. And not only that, states developed shared interests and

institutions like the EU and they realize that their benefits from

cooperating and working with each other. Countries like France and Germany realized that they were much better

off cooperating than fighting with each other. And also

and also the cooperation with the United States was beneficial to everyone. And therefore,

even if there might be some shakeup as a result in the Cold War, NATO is going

to survive. So these theories

basically argue that it's very unlikely that we're going to return to conflict and Sieff

organized institutions like NATO collapse three decades later, what can

we say? Well, EU and NATO have had shaky periods. We see that right now

with attention. I mean, the United States and NATO. But are we seeing dramatic

other. Did the power shifts or the end of the bipolarity and the Cold War generate huge

tensions among NATO allies? Probably not. Does NATO still exist?

Yes. And can new countries want to join NATO? Definitely, yes. So this

kind of proves the liberal case that it's not just about temporary alliance

formation for institutions themselves are what we call sticky. They create

interest for states to continue to want to cooperate with each other and work with each other

and promote their interests. So now we finished all about neo

liberal institutionalism, another strand of liberalism is what is known as the democratic peace.

We really talked about Democratic peace theory and this is the second track strand of

liberalism that comes out of Emmanuel Cance Wolke. Basically,

Emmanuel Cance. Focuses on Republicanism and the importance

of Republicanism we can focus on democracy in creating some form balances.

You have all kinds of institutions. It's not just the king in Republicanism. You have a parliament.

We have a judiciary. And that can create she is checks and balances. It's much harder to go

to war. You need in the United States. You need Congress to approve what the Senate approval.

You can't just do that automatically. So you have checks and balances making, putting,

restricting kings or leaders from just going to war. There's also

accountability. People have to be accountable if the war is a failure. Then while

the king would have just stayed in power. But now I, a president or prime minister, might have to step

down, make lose election. It might make them harder to continue to govern public

opinion. If it's regular public opinion, just the public or interest groups, all kinds

of actors have influence on policy and they might push against what

now? Public opinion can also push towards rebel. We see that after 9/11, public

opinion wanted the United States to do something. But public opinion can also reduce

the chances of war, especially when people are thinking, well, if we go to war, that's going to undermine my

economic well-being. It's going to be costly for the country. That's going to hurt education or

other aspects. In the 1980s, I asked theorist's actually believe

that democracies fight fewer wars than dictatorships, and therefore, if every country in the

world was a democracy, we would be better off that democracies

are just inherently more peaceful and less aggressive than dictatorships.

But this doesn't really fit with the evidence. If we look at the evidence, we see that the three most war prone

countries since 18:00 have been. Russia, Britain and France, Russia

never really a democracy, Britain. Most of the time was a democracy in France. So in that

time was democracy. So we see that var. regime does not. Does not

explain why countries are particularly war prone. So what

is true? Basically, we know that democracies only fight

non-democracies. They don't fight each other. We

know that democracies, we haven't had a case. We don't know why fully, but we know that there hasn't ever

been a case where two democracies have actually gone to war with each other. Is this a coincidence?

It seems not, but we still are not sure that we do have various possible explanations. There

are dozens of them. I'll just look in a few. One could be capitalism and interdependence.

Democratic states tend to be more capitalist and therefore rely

more on trade and are more interdependent. And therefore, because

of the economic cost of war, they might not go to war. Perhaps identity. Maybe democracies

share an identity, share something, some relationship with each others, share some kind of understanding

that makes them feel that they shouldn't go to war. There are other ways to solve their

deals. Maybe through institutions that they share, they're able to solve disagreements and

not go to war. Cities of democracies also don't see members of other

democracies as enemies. So if we say if the United States says, OK, we need to go to war with

Iran, the public might someday might be opposed to it. But the lobby will say, OK, we understand

it's this bad country, then another democracy, etc., etc.. But in contrast.

If in democracies, the people in democracies would be much harder to justify

a war with France or with Canada, even if we disagreed with them, because we just don't see the people

of those countries as our enemies, as people and we need to fight, then we should risk our children that we should

risk their children and go to war with. So if we look at the data,

we see that since 1972, there's been a dramatic increase in the number of democracies.

The green line represents the number of democracies, and we see that that is going up

dramatically. Green is for democracy. Beijing's partial democracy

and red is non democracy. And we see a dramatic tick. We see that partial

democracy is kind of staying the same. They stagnate, but they kind of go up and down. But they ultimately

they stagnate. Democracies are going up while the number of dictatorships

are actually going down. And liberals will say that is suggesting that we're heading towards

perhaps a more peaceful world. But let's hold our horses there. There are

issues. First of all, will this trend persist? Well, democracy is not

always five democracies. Are we going to see a change in that? Also,

we have to keep in mind that countries are becoming democracies and this is really important. Please

take a note on this. Countries are going through the process of democratization,

tend to be more war prone than both democracies and non-democracies.

So we repeat this. The most war prone countries are countries that are shifting from.

Non-democracy to democracy, why? Well, having democracy can lead to disruptions.

Leaders might want to show that they're strong, that they can lead their countries through things they might

be at odds with. Neighboring countries are not democracies, not putting threats against them.

And as a result of that, Prunty countries are going through democratization, tend to be the most

war prone of any kind of countries. So that's really important to think about. Democratic

institutions can also make cooperation more difficult, just like democracy

can help reduce war. When, you know, we might call

a democracy, you know, democratic institutions might call for or they might

make it harder for states to cooperate because members of that country

will double down on the issue or not be willing to compromise. So you have the leaders want to find a compromise.

Public opinion might not allow that to happen. The

last and final type of democracy, a type of liberalism

I want to focus on. Is what we call independence, liberalism or liberal commercialism.

And let's play the most straightforward type that we've really talked about quite a bit as as in leading up

to this slide. And basically it's belief that peace is always a possibility,

primarily because through a focus on commercial relations.

What do we mean by that? Basically, the premise is war is bad for business,

people are better off having peace because that allows

better economics, better trade, better economic relations,

people better off. Everybody is going to be more wealthy. And

war is costly. It disrupts supply chains, it disrupts business,

it disrupt trade, it disrupts all these things and undermines

economic well-being. Trade itself make states more in the

interdependent. It creates strong linkages between states both on an economic

level and the political level, states become more connected to each other. They connect

their, you know, so you start off with an economic agreement, but then you have companies from both countries

working with each other's politicians, working with each other, various agreements on other things that

kind of accompany the economic agreements. And that creates strong linkages. Not

only that today, no state can take it can go it alone. We don't have all talkies

or Takis. Our states are completely self-sufficient. We need to trade. One country produces

one good, another country produces another good. We trade. If we go to war, we're going to it could

be much harder to get access to those goods that we need. Therefore.

States are strongly engaged in trade, will promote global peace. So

if we think about it, if we want to integrate, if we want to have peace with North

Korea, we need to integrate North Korea into our system.

If we want to increase China, we need to integrate China into institutions and have more trade

with China. And ultimately, that is going to create a shift.

A good example of this is Egypt. So 1979, Egypt is at war with Israel.

Every few years, Egypt wages one. Israel often loses. And as a result, a lot

of companies didn't want to invest economically in Egypt. Egypt was in a very bad

position economically. It wasn't able to have that those strong trade

relations. And it was really in a bad position in 1979.

Egypt realizes this and signs that we move Israel, not because it changes ideology

about the Arab-Israeli conflict of our way of things about Israel, but realizing

that peace is better for it economically and it can do better than if it continues to wage

war. For one of the big theories of this approach is

writer for The New York Times, an economist by the name of Thomas Friedman. If you read The New York Times,

you've probably seen his articles at Thomas Friedman, had two theories where he's developed

this idea of interdependence and kind of also

connected to democracy. In 1996, he wrote an article. He says, no

two countries that both have a McDonald's have ever fought a war against each other. And

this is kind of the basic idea of this, that economic relations are basically going

to make war less feasible when we have multinational corporations

and work in all these countries. Now, this kind of collapse, because

they were McDonald's in non-democratic states of democracies, went always.

And in 2005, he kind of reiterated that in a new version that

was a bit more precise. He called the Dell theory and he says this The Dell theory

stipulates no two countries are both part of a major global supply chain like

Dell's will ever fight a war against each other as long as they are both part

of the same global supply chain. So, again, they every country is benefiting. Every country

that's in the supply chain is doing well. Why would they want to disrupt that with war? So

the more we have these strong, dense, globalized international relations, globalization,

basically and economic globalization, trade is basically what

is going to bring more peaceful relations between countries.

So I want to end this lecture, kind of bringing back all these ideas together,

and two scholars I ask cause from NYU found

a way to connect these three strands of liberalism together.

And in what they call the Kantian triangle, again, the manual count with his three ideas

and it connects everything together. So we have international organizations and reciprocity.

We have economic interdependence and we have democracy now. Each one

of these independently can lead to peace. What they say is that these things also reinforce

each other. The more we have democracy, the more we going to join international and organizations.

The more we have organized organizations, the more we're going to have trade and economic interdependence.

All of these are going to show the benefits of democracy, which are going to again, reinforce democracy. So

we have an ongoing dynamic in which democracy, economic interdependence

and international organizations reinforce each other. And each one independently

reinforces peace. And we basically have an ongoing dynamic where all three

types of liberalism reinforce each other and within them reinforcing

each other, they also individually reinforce peace and strengthen themselves.

And so that's it for today. Next week, we're going to be talking about constructivism.

I hope you found this interesting. And let me know if you have any questions.

Liberalism in International Relations:

• Liberalism focuses on the potential for peace and cooperation among states in the international system.

• Key ideas derived from Emmanuel Kant include:

  1. Reciprocity: States can create agreements and institutions for cooperation based on mutual self-interest.

  2. Government Structure: The type of regime (democratic vs. dictatorial) impacts state behavior; democracies are thought to be less likely to engage in warfare.

  3. Trade and Interdependence: Increased trade promotes economic well-being, making states hesitant to engage in costly wars.

• Theoretical frameworks like neoliberal institutionalism emphasize the role of international organizations in facilitating cooperation.

• The democratic peace theory suggests that democracies do not fight each other, primarily engaging in conflicts with non-democratic states.

• Economic interdependence through global supply chains is posited to lead to greater peace, as nations become linked economically.

The Prisoner's Dilemma

The Prisoner's Dilemma is a fundamental concept in game theory that illustrates the conflict between individual self-interest and collective benefit. In this scenario, two individuals are arrested and interrogated separately. Each prisoner can either choose to cooperate with the other (remain silent) or betray the other (confess). The outcomes are structured such that:

• If both stay silent, they receive a minor sentence (cooperation).

• If one betrays while the other remains silent, the betrayer goes free (defection), and the silent one receives a heavy sentence.

• If both betray each other, they receive moderate sentences. This situation creates a paradox where both prisoners would benefit from cooperating, but the rational choice leads them to betray each other, resulting in a worse outcome for both.

Liberal vs. Realist Perspectives

Liberals: Liberals view the Prisoner's Dilemma through the lens of potential cooperation. They emphasize that institutions can facilitate communication and enforce agreements. Liberals argue that states can recognize their mutual self-interest and choose cooperation, leading to better long-term outcomes. This perspective aligns with their belief in international organizations helping to manage interdependence and promote stability.

Realists: Realists, on the other hand, focus on the competitive nature of international relations. They see the Prisoner's Dilemma as a reflection of anarchy in the international system, where states cannot trust one another. Realists believe that self-interested actions will predominantly lead to betrayal, as states prioritize their security and power over cooperation. The realist perspective suggests that the security dilemma makes it challenging for states to cooperate, leading to a cycle of mistrust and conflict.

The Prisoner's Dilemma

The Prisoner's Dilemma is a classic scenario in game theory illustrating the conflict between individual self-interest and collective benefit. In this situation, two suspects are arrested and interrogated separately, with each faced with the choice to either cooperate with the other (remain silent) or betray (confess). The outcomes are as follows:

• Both cooperate (stay silent): They each receive a minor sentence.

• One betrays while the other cooperates: The betrayer goes free, while the cooperator receives a heavy sentence.

• Both betray each other: They each receive moderate sentences.

This setup creates a paradox where mutual cooperation yields a better outcome for both, yet rational self-interest often drives them to betray one another, leading to worse results.

Liberal vs. Realist Perspectives

Liberal View:

• Liberals emphasize the potential for cooperation, believing that institutions can facilitate communication and enforce agreements. They assert that recognizing mutual self-interest will lead states to choose cooperation over betrayal.

• This perspective promotes the idea that long-term benefits from cooperation outweigh the temptations of short-term gains from defection. Thus, the outcome could lead to ongoing collaboration and improved relations.

Realist View:

• Realists, in contrast, focus on the competitive and distrustful nature of international relations. They see the Prisoner's Dilemma as a reflection of the anarchic international system, where states cannot reliably trust one another.

• Realists argue that self-interested actions will predominantly lead to betrayal due to the priority placed on security and power. This can result in a cycle of mistrust and conflict, where cooperation is consistently undermined.

Summary of Differences

• Liberals believe institutions foster cooperation, leading to better outcomes through collective agreements.

• Realists foresee a mistrustful environment where betrayal is more common, resulting in conflict due to the anarchic nature of the international system.