‘Wahn, Wahn, Überall Wahn’: A reply to Jahn’s critique of liberal internationalism

Abstract

The central claim of liberal international relations (IR) theory, which clearly distinguishes it from other IR paradigms, is this: variation in 'preferences' is the fundamental cause of state behavior in world politics. Paradigms like realism or institutionalism stress the variation in capabilities and information, while treating preferences as constant or exogenous. Liberalism reverses this perspective: variation in ends, not means, matters. Why does liberal theory place so much emphasis on variation in state preferences? From the liberal perspective, globalization is a universal condition of world politics. Individuals and groups are the fundamental actors in politics, even though what we are trying to explain is the behavior of states. Individuals and groups are embedded in domestic and transnational society, which creates diverse incentives for them to interact across borders-economically, socially, and culturally. This in turn creates private demands on the state from influential subsets of the population-'selectorates'-to further or block such activity. These demands are transmitted through representative institutions. The result is a distribution of varied state preferences across the international system. This variation in preferences captures the essential 'social embeddedness' of world politics. Preferences give each state an underlying stake in the international issues it faces. At one extreme, where the magnitude of globalization is

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