ULUSLARARASI İLİŞKİLER TEORİLERİ I - Deneme Sınavı - 4

• International relations can be divided into three categories such as “traditional theories, global society theories and neo-Marxist theories” as Holsti accepted.
• It can be named differently such as “realism, pluralism and globalism” (Viotti andKauppi, 1993).
• Barry Buzan identified the theories of international relations as “conservatism, liberalism and radicalism”.
• Indeed, realism, liberalism and Marxism are the fundamental divisions which are very common in different studies.
• On the other hand, Shimko used the basic division of realism and liberalism and further elaborated it with the division as Machiavellianism, Grotianism and Kantianism.

• Realists accept states as rational actors; that behave in accordance with
  certain rules and national interests to realize their objectives and to sustain
  themselves through national capacity (Viotti and Kauppi, 1993: 35; Grieco,
  1995: 153; Buzan, 1996: 54; Senarclens, 1991: 11-12).
• According to all realists, basic agenda of IR are security issues, thus political and military issues are primary topics and top issues in the hierarchy among the topics of the agenda. 
• One of the important premises of realism (particularly neo-realism) is the anarchical structure of the international system.
• There is no central authority to govern the relations among states. In such an international environment, naturally providing security becomes the main concern of states.
• States have to deal with their own security problem that is called as the rule of “self help”

Also, realism, philosophical roots of which depends on Machiavelli and Hobbes, depicted the international politics as a struggle for power and interest.

• Another epistemology is rationalism which is represented by certain philosophers belonging to Cartesian School such as Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza.
• This thought was developed by the scientific revolutions of Newton, Kepler and Galileo.
• Rationalism reached to the top with Hegel.
• Rationalism has adopted deduction as a scientific method that depends on the reason and intuition as well as a source of knowledge rather than observation and experiment and it is called as a
  priori knowledge. 

• Jean-François Lyotard, Roland Barthes, Judith Butler, Gilles Deleuze, Luce Irigaray, Paul Feyerabend, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Richard Rorty are among the writers that made valuable contributions to post-modernism.
• Thomas Kuhn and Richard Rorty, contemporary representatives of pragmatism, also point out that a paradigm can only be valid as long as it can solve the problem. For Kuhn, survival of a paradigm depends on its problem-solving capacity.

There are six key concepts of classical liberal philosophy that are commonly mentioned by the liberal writers, these are; individualism, freedom, natural law, spontaneous order, rule of law and limited state

Freedom is the area where the individual is free to act, without violating the rights of others. The classical liberals emphasize the importance of protection from intrusion and interference by others.

Freedom is comprised of all personal liberties known as “personal security under the law” (protecting life of an individual), the freedoms of private property and contract, religious belief, intellectual inquiry and expression. Liberalism strongly argues for the protection of a large private sphere for the individual, whereas living together with others necessitates compliance with general rules which are required to maintain justice and order, both in domestic and international spheres

Free market is the most widely used spontaneous order in liberal studies, as a type of regularity in human affairs and a product of evolution of social practices. Thus, it is an outcome of human experience and collective result of trial and errors.

The related assumptions are based on the “laissez faire” (non-intervention) understanding so that state acts as an arbiter in disputes between individuals and ensures the conditions under which individuals can enjoy their rights.

In this connection, classical liberals accept that order is possible as a result of customs, traditions and societal institutions. Smith’s explanation of the free market and his famous example the invisible hand denotes such understanding. Free market then is all about the bartering and division of labor inherent to humans. The self interest of the humans have resulted in a system whereby other individuals could also find products and services for their consumption. The relationship between liberty, economic growth and progress were thought as the unintended consequences of the human action and evolved into the capitalist system.

By the same token, classical liberals valued sovereignty of nations, and humanitarian intervention was not their concern. They believed that the developed countries could be models for less free countries through international trade and cultural exchange. States communicate and negotiate through diplomacy and this maintains the stability. In the Grotian view, diplomacy is the bond between members of international society that converge around common norms and goals that is international law (rule of law at international level). Due to the anarchical nature of the international system that lacks a central authority, international law is enforced by the states themselves and the different interpretations of rules may lead to conflicts. Generally, states recognize that it is in their interest to conform to international law. According to classical liberalism, international law must be restricted to the international protection of individual rights. This has been the ground for the establishment of the international governmental organizations since the nineteenth century.

Ernst Haas was the one putting forward the assumptions of "neofunctionalism".

The most well-known liberal internationalist Wilson in the aftermath of the WWI argued for a system of collective security to maintain peace, based on rule of law, instead of the old balance of power mechanism.

Robert Keohane listed three strands of classical liberal theory as (1) commercial liberalism about the pacific effects of trade, (2) democratic liberalism about pacific effects of republican governments, (3) regulatory liberalism about rules and institutions for relations between countries. Joseph Nye has added a fourth one (4) sociological liberalism about the effects of transnational ties on national attitudes and interests.

The term interdependence (mutual dependence) entered the liberal terminology and was followed by the term transnationalism, which further supported liberalism’s pluralistic nature as regards international actors. The rise of the multinational corporations (MNCs) in world politics and their business transactions across the national boundaries of sovereign nation states increased the interest towards international political economy. The transgovernmental coalitions of the MNCs began to have steering role in economics and were closely related with politics as studied by Nye and Keohane.