Week 1

Liberalism & Peace Studies

 Liberalism
• The liberal tradition in thinking about security dates as far back as the
philosopher Immanuel Kant.
* importance of republican constitution in producing
peace
* Perpetual Peace (1795): In this essay, Kant
proposed a peace program to be implemented by
governments.

• Liberal security has been elaborated by different schools within a

developing tradition of liberal thought.

• According to Andrew Moravcsik liberalism is: Ideational, commercial

and republican

• According Michael Doyle liberalism is: International, commercial and

ideological
 Traditional or Kantian Liberalism
• Kant argued that moral behaviour resulted from moral choices
and that these were guided by an inner sense of duty (when
individuals behaved according to duty, they were being normal)

• According to Kant, the only justifiable form of government was

republican government. Republican government is a condition of
constitutional rule where even monarchs rule according to the
law.

• The only laws that deserved the name of “law” were those one
could wish everyone (including oneself) obeyed.

• For Kant, republican states are “peace producers”. They are more
inclined to peaceful behaviour than other sorts of states.

• A state built on law is less likely to endorse lawless behaviour in

international relations.
 Traditional /Kantian Liberalism
• Being republican is not sufficient to ensure world peace.
The situation of international relations, its lawless
condition, unstable power balances and especially the
ever-present possibility of war puts the republican state
at risk.

• It is duty of the republican state to work towards

law-regulated international relations.

• According to Kant, the concept of the “balance of

power” is a peacekeeper. States are naturally pushed
into watching one another and adjusting their power
accordingly, usually through alliances (a view shared by
Realists)
 Kant’s peace program
1. The civil constitution of every state should be
republican.

2. The law of nations shall be founded on a federation of

free states.

3. The law of world citizenship shall be limited to

conditions of universal hospitality.

“The federation of free states”——> provide collective

security system
“universal hospitality”——-> creates a sense of
cosmopolitan community.
 Douce (Beneficent) Commerce

LIBERAL ECONOMIC THOUGHT

• “Commercial liberalism” focuses on incentives created

by opportunities for trans-border economic
transactions.

• Trade is generally a less costly means of accumulating

wealth than war, sanctions or other coercive means.

• The origins of modern commercial liberalism lie in the

19th century. ——-> the developing liberal critique of
mercantilism
• Adam Smith——-> “Wealth of Nations”: the hidden hand
besides increasing wealth promotes a lessening of
economic hostilities.

• David Hume——-> International division of labour and

trade benefited all participants

• David Ricardo——> Created the theory of comparative

advantage.

• The 19th century commercial liberals developed these

ideas into doctrine. Trade among states like trade among
individuals was mutually beneficial (unlike mercantilism)
 Commercial Liberalism

• During the 20th century, the initial successes of

Nazism and the Soviet model, led the commercial
liberals to focus on government involvement in the
economy and on protectionist ideologies.

• 20th century commercial liberals spoke less of

economy than the ideology. They targeted ideas of
economic closure and planning that derived from
‘scientific socialism’ & ‘economic nationalism’

• Attacks on ideology came to conclude some liberal

ideas, particularly the idea that peace could come
through the abolition of sovereignty , a favourite
liberal idea of the late 1930s and 1940s.
 Commercial Liberalism

• The notion that economic openness produces a more

peaceful international posture has become the subject of
close empirical examination.

• The more diversified and complex the existing

transnational commercial ties and production structures,
the less cost-effective coercion is likely to be.

• Erik Gartzke(2005)move beyond economic

interdependence to the issue of economic freedom
within states——> economic freedom is about 50 times
more effective than democracy in reducing violent
conflict.
• Commercial liberals focus on limiting the power of
governments to impose trade restrains, primarily through
international regulation. Foreign exchanges were to be
open, tariffs were to be reduced to the minimum and
quotes and other quantitative restrictions positively
forbidden.

• Globalization ——-> “a peace producer”

• Global networks particularly in economics create

demands by powerful players for predictability in
interactions and thus for rules of the game that become
elements of international law.
 Key points
• Liberalism is basically optimistic about improving
international politics and making it safer.

• It describes international politics as evolving,

becoming more imbued with interdependence,
cooperation, peace, and security.

• While seeing states as the most important actors it

also highlights other kinds of actors-IGOs, NGOs,
major private economic entities, and international
regimes
• It depicts states’ behaviour as mainly the result of the
perceptions, preferences, and decisions of elites and
officials, which are often related to the nature of each
state’s political system.

• Thus the character of international politics can change

depending on the nature of its members, their objectives,
and their decisions on what to do, how to interact.
 The Democratic Peace Thesis

• The democratic peace thesis is the argument that liberal

states do not fight wars against other liberal states.

• Michael Doyle ——> article: “Philosophy and Public Affairs”

(1983)

• There is a difference in liberal practice towards other liberal

societies and liberal practice towards non-liberal societies.

• COW (Correlates of War Project), founded by David Singer

at Michigan University.

• The route to peace is to encourage democratic systems, the

universal respect for human rights and the development of
civil society.
• Bruce Russet——> “Grasping the Democratic Peace”
book write-in 1993.

Liberal institutions would tend to inhibit all wars, whereas

liberal states have fought robust wars against non-liberal
states.

Liberal states trust liberal states but equally they distrust

non-liberal states.

• From the security point of view, the recommendations of

democratic peace theory are clear: In the final analysis,
security depends on encouraging liberal institutions and a
security policy must have as its long-term aim the spread
of liberalism.
 Neoliberal Institutionalism
• Neoliberal institutionalism concentrates on the role of
international institutions in mitigating conflict.
• Robert Keohane (1984) & Robert Axelrod (1984): paled
central role in defining this field.

• Institutions cannot absolve anarchy, they can change the

character of the international environment by influencing
state preferences and state behaviour.
• Question by Axelrod: “Under what conditions will
cooperation emerge in a world of egoists without central
authority?”

• Answer: When agents returned good for good, this

initiated a potential spiral of cooperative behaviour. If this
practice were repeated, egoistic agents would gradually
learn to trust one another.

• Transaction cost: institutions can serve as means of

providing information, reducing transaction cost, ad
altering the payoffs associated with cooperation.
 Peace Studies
• It is a field of study that developed after the Second
World War.
• Its early development in the 1950s was hugely
conditioned by the East-West nuclear arms race and the
very real threat of a catastrophic nuclear war

• The early years

Peace studies only became established as a formal field of
study, with its own institutions and journals, in the post
1945 period.
The early focus was less on peace itself and more on the
systemic analysis of war.
 Lewis Richardson (British) & Quincy Wright (American):
pioneers of the large-scale quantitative study of war.

Wright was an international law specialist

“A Study of War”——> published in 1942. the

product of 15-year interdisciplinary research project.
Wright used anthropological data and scaling
techniques to hypothesise a definitive relationship
between aggression and levels of civilisation.
 Theo Lentz : Us psychologist. He saw positivist
scientific method as sound but subject to abuse.
Through a process of ‘democratization’ and
expansion he thought science could divorce itself
from prejudice and transcend social and political
barriers.

“Towards a Science of Peace”: War is made in the

minds of men.
 Peace Research as a Science

• The belief in the possibility of putting science and positivist

social science to work in the cause of peace was a minority
position in the 1950s. A lot of scientific research was
servicing a weapons industry undergoing rapid technological
advancement due to the strategic rivalries of the Cold War.

• Bernard Russell- Albert Einstein Manifesto (1955): called upon

scientists to alert the public to the danger of weapons of
mass destruction and for world leaders to seek the peaceful
resolution of conflicts.
• reflection of normative sentiments

• Journal of Conflict Research—-> first publish in

1957.
• Centre for Research on Conflict Resolution—->
established in 1959 at University of Michigan.

• these are interdisciplinary in structure.

• new social scientific techniques (adapted from the fields

of economics, social psychology and sociology)
 Peace Research in Europe
• The International Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO) was
established as part of Oslo University in 1959.

• The first Chair was Johan Galtung, US-trained, Norwegian

sociologist.

• He overcame considerable official political

reluctance-particularly over the inclusion of the seemingly
unscientific word ‘peace’- to garner the financial support of the
Norwegian government.
• Five years later, Stockholm International Peace
Research Institute (SIPRI) was founded in Sweden.

• The fact that Norway and Sweden were social democratic

welfare states beginning to develop distinctly
internationalist dimensions to their foreign policies no
doubt also helps explain why they were the first states in
the world to support the establishment of institutionalised
peace research.

• Journal of Peace Research: published in 1964 by

Scandinavian peace research community.
from peace research to peace studies
• It was Galtung who set its tone and helped
distinguish it from conflict studies. Under
Galtung’s direction, the peace research expanded
dramatically and rapidly.

• Contemporary peace studies face the challenge

of distinguishing themselves clearly from other
academic fields, especially international relations
and critical security studies.

• Ultimately, a commitment to pacifism constitutes

the defining hallmark of peace studies today.
 John Galtung’s Conception
• Peace is the absence/reduction of violence of all
kinds.

• Peace is nonviolent and creative conflict

transformation.

• Peace work is work to reduce violence by peaceful

means.

• Peace studies is the study of the conditions of

peace work.
 What is peace studies now?
1. Addressing Underlying Causes: Peace studies are focused on tackling
the root causes of direct violence. It extends beyond the mere absence of
war to foster societies characterized by greater peace.

2. Interdisciplinary Approaches: Recognizing the complex nature of

violent conflict, peace studies emphasize the need for interdisciplinary
approaches.

3. Promoting Non-violent Transformations: Peace studies advocate for

peaceful dispute resolution and seek non-violent methods to transform
potentially or actually violent situations.

4. Multi-level Analysis: Peace studies adopt a multi-level analysis,

examining individual, group, state, and inter-state dynamics. This approach
aims to overcome the institutionalized divide between studies of 'internal'
and 'external' dimensions, which are often deemed inadequate for
understanding contemporary conflict patterns.
5. Global outlook: The adoption of a global and
multicultural approach, which locates sources of
violence globally and regionally as well as locally,
and draw on conceptions of peace and non-violent
social transformations from all cultures. (peace
studies centres in East and South Asia, Africa and
Latin America)

6. Analytical and normative: An understanding

that peace studies is both an analytic and a
normative enterprise.
7. Theory and practice: There is clear distinction
between peace studies and peace activism but on the
other hand peace researchers very frequently engage
systematically with non-government organisations,
government departments, and intergovernmental
agencies.

8. Multi-level analysis: The embracing of a

multi-level analysis at individual, group, state, and
inter-state levels in an attempt to overcome the
institutionalised dichotomy between studies of
‘internal’ and ‘external’ dimensions that are seen to be
inadequate for the prevailing patterns of conflict.
 Positive and negative peace

Galtung’s definition in an article written in 1964 in

Journal of Peace Research:

• negative peace —> being the absence of war

and actual physical violence

• positive peace —> defined as the integration of

human society
 Structural Violence
• Four years after the publication of the first issue of the
Journal of Peace Research the peace research
community became embroiled in an internal conflict
that was played out, in part, within the journal itself.

• At a series of conferences held in 1968 and 1969, a

group of young European peace researchers
questioned the broad direction the field was taking.
• Similar division occurred in USA (division between
peace and conflict research) Galtung wrote an article
in 1969 and proposed a reconstruction of the
conceptual fundamentals of peace research that
clearly moved it closer to the emergent radical
position, while maintaining a pacifist taboo on
violence.

• Galtung’s revision did not directly address the

question of the relationship between peace research
and policy making, but it did take up the demand that
peace research should focus more on the social
origins of conflict and address the question of invisible
conflict.

• Violence is present when human beings are being

influenced so that their actual somatic and mental
realisations are below their potential realisations.