Varieties of Liberalism
LIBERALISM
Varieties of Liberalism: Liberal thinking on international relations can be dimly perceived in the various plans for peace articulated by philisophers from the sixteenth century onwards.Such thinkers rejected the idea that conflict was a natural condition for relations between states,one which could only be tamed by the careful management of power through balance of power policies and the construction of alliances against the state which threatened international order.In 1517 Erasmus first iterated a familiar liberal theme;war is unprofitable.To overcome it,the kings and princes of Europe must desire peace,and perform kind gestures in relations with fellow sovereigns in the expectation that these will be reciprocated.Other early liberal thinkers placed an emphasis upon the need for institutional structures to constrain international ‘’outlaws’’.Towards the end of the seventeenth century,William Penn advocated a ‘’Diet’’ of Europe.Indeed,there are some remarkable parallels between Penn’s ideas and the institutions of the European Union today.Penn envisaged that the number of delegates to the Parliament should be proportional to the power of the state,and that lagislation required a kind of ‘’qualified majority voting’’ or as Penn put it,the support of 75 percent of the delegates. These broad sketches of ideas from some of the progenitors of liberal thinking in international relations show how,from Penn’s plans for a ‘’Diet’’ in 1693 to the Treaty on European Union in 1992,there are common themes underlying Liberalism;in this instance,the theme is the importance of submitting the separate ‘’wills’’ of individual states to a general will agreed by states acting collectively (se efor example,Kant’s third definitive article in Box 8.2).Yet it would be wrong to suggest that the development of liberal thinking on international affairs has been linear.Indeed,it is often possible to portray current political differences in terms of contrasting liberal
Varieties of Liberalism: Liberal thinking on international relations can be dimly perceived in the various plans for peace articulated by philisophers from the sixteenth century onwards.Such thinkers rejected the idea that conflict was a natural condition for relations between states,one which could only be tamed by the careful management of power through balance of power policies and the construction of alliances against the state which threatened international order.In 1517 Erasmus first iterated a familiar liberal theme;war is unprofitable.To overcome it,the kings and princes of Europe must desire peace,and perform kind gestures in relations with fellow sovereigns in the expectation that these will be reciprocated.Other early liberal thinkers placed an emphasis upon the need for institutional structures to constrain international ‘’outlaws’’.Towards the end of the seventeenth century,William Penn advocated a ‘’Diet’’ of Europe.Indeed,there are some remarkable parallels between Penn’s ideas and the institutions of the European Union today.Penn envisaged that the number of delegates to the Parliament should be proportional to the power of the state,and that lagislation required a kind of ‘’qualified majority voting’’ or as Penn put it,the support of 75 percent of the delegates. These broad sketches of ideas from some of the progenitors of liberal thinking in international relations show how,from Penn’s plans for a ‘’Diet’’ in 1693 to the Treaty on European Union in 1992,there are common themes underlying Liberalism;in this instance,the theme is the importance of submitting the separate ‘’wills’’ of individual states to a general will agreed by states acting collectively (se efor example,Kant’s third definitive article in Box 8.2).Yet it would be wrong to suggest that the development of liberal thinking on international affairs has been linear.Indeed,it is often possible to portray current political differences in terms of contrasting liberal