Liberal Theories of International Relations - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages The apparent peaceful behavior of democracies was only an extension of the domestic ideal into the international sphere. At the end of the Cold War, with the fall of communist Soviet Union (USSR), the ideological triumph of liberal democracy (and its implications for IR) was celebrated with much gusto, with some going so far as to claim that the event signified the “end of history” (Fukuyama 1992). Liberal states were deemed to be internally more stable and externally most peaceful.
 Such a description, however, is not an accurate reflection of the true nature of democracies in the international sphere. As two seminal studies on the democratic-peace thesis note, democracies are equally aggressive as any other régime type in their relations with authoritarian states (Doyle 1995: 100) and young democracies tend to be more war prone than other states (Mansfield & Snyder 2005). In fact, even this explanation remains somewhat inadequate; take, for instance, the dyad of India and Pakistan, two countries with a long history of confrontations. The last armed conflict between the two states in 1999 occurred when a democratic government led either state. This shows that there may be contextual reasons for states go to into war, and their internal configurations may not matter in this regard.
 The optimism of liberal international theory at the end of the Cold War was buoyed to a large extent by the hopes attached with the resurgence of the United Nations (UN) and the collective security system. In fact, the success of the multilateral venture at Iraq in 1991 reinforced these hopes. ...Download file to see next pagesRead More