Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Tables, figures and boxes
- Contributors
- Preface and acknowledgements
- Guide to online instructor resources
- Introduction: The origins and changing agendas of international relations
- Part 1 Theories of International Relations
- Chapter 1 International Relations theory in an age of critical diversity
- Chapter 2 Liberalism
- Chapter 3 Realism
- Chapter 4 Marxism and critical theory
- Chapter 5 Feminism
- Chapter 6 Postmodernism
- Chapter 7 Constructivism
- Chapter 8 Postcolonialism
- Part 2 International history
- Part 3 The traditional agenda: States, wars and law
- Part 4 The new agenda: Globalisation and global challenges
- References
- Index
- Figure and text acknowledgements
Chapter 2 - Liberalism
from Part 1 - Theories of International Relations
Published online by Cambridge University Press: aN Invalid Date NaN
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Tables, figures and boxes
- Contributors
- Preface and acknowledgements
- Guide to online instructor resources
- Introduction: The origins and changing agendas of international relations
- Part 1 Theories of International Relations
- Chapter 1 International Relations theory in an age of critical diversity
- Chapter 2 Liberalism
- Chapter 3 Realism
- Chapter 4 Marxism and critical theory
- Chapter 5 Feminism
- Chapter 6 Postmodernism
- Chapter 7 Constructivism
- Chapter 8 Postcolonialism
- Part 2 International history
- Part 3 The traditional agenda: States, wars and law
- Part 4 The new agenda: Globalisation and global challenges
- References
- Index
- Figure and text acknowledgements
Summary
Liberalism is at the heart of modern ‘Western’ history, politics, and international relations. Central to understandings of liberty, freedom, democracy, rights and the rule of law, liberalism has animated debates on abolition and empire, war and peace. This chapter provides an account of liberalism as a contested phenomena that originated at least in the eighteenth century and has had profound international political consequences ever since. To tell this story, the chapter begins by considering how to make sense of the contestations surrounding liberalism, before examining how and why liberalism matters to International Relations at key moments of its development as a discipline: in the age of empires, the inter-war years, during the Cold War and ‘new’ world which ensued, and now in this epoch of endless war.
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- An Introduction to International Relations , pp. 34 - 45Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024