By focusing on the more optimistic viewpoint of absolute gains and providing evidence of its existence via international organisations, liberals see a world where states will likely cooperate in any agreement where any increase in prosperity is probable. One of the more interesting illustrations of liberalism comes from the foreign policy of the United States during the early twentieth century.
During this period, the United States was liberal, but according to the dominant historical narrative, also imperialistic see Meiser So, there appears to be a contradiction. If we take a closer look we see that the United States was more restrained than commonly believed, particularly relative to other great powers of that era.
One simple measure is the level of colonial territory it accrued compared to other great powers. By , the United States claimed , square kilometres of colonial territory, compared to 2,, for Belgium, 2,, for Germany and 32,, for the United Kingdom Bairoch , In fact, the bulk of American colonial holdings was due to the annexation of the Philippines and Puerto Rico, which it inherited after defeating Spain in the Spanish-American War of The United States exhibited such restraint because, as suggested by liberal theory, its political structure limited expansionism.
Examining US—Mexico relations during the early twentieth century helps illustrate the causes of this American restraint. In the spring of , the United States invaded the Mexican city of Veracruz because of a dispute over the detention of several American sailors in Mexico. The initial objectives of the American war plan were to occupy Veracruz and neighbouring Tampico and then blockade the east coast of Mexico until American honour was vindicated — or a regime change occurred in Mexico.
Wilson did not actually follow any of the advice he received. Instead, he reduced his war aims, halted his forces at Veracruz and withdrew US forces within a few months. Wilson exercised restraint because of American public opposition, his own personal values, unified Mexican hostility and the military losses incurred in the fighting. This potentially endangered foreign ownership of mines and oilfields in Mexico.
Interventionists wanted to turn Mexico into an American protectorate — or at least seize the Mexican oil fields. This coalition moved the country toward intervention while Wilson was distracted by peace negotiations in Europe and then bedridden by a stroke.
The path to intervention was blocked only after Wilson recovered sufficiently to regain command of the policy agenda and sever the ties between the interventionists.
Wilson had two main reasons for avoiding the more belligerent policy path. First, he saw the Houses of Congress with the support of some members of the executive branch attempting to determine the foreign policy of the United States, which Wilson viewed as uncon- stitutional.
In the American system, the president has the authority to conduct foreign policy. His assertion of authority over foreign policy with Mexico was therefore a clear attempt to check the power of Congress in policymaking. Second, Wilson was determined to maintain a policy consistent with the norm of anti-imperialism, but also the norm of self-determination — the process by which a country determines its own statehood and chooses its own form of government.
Both of these norms remain bedrocks of liberal theory today. US relations with Mexico in this case show how institutional and normative domestic structures restrained the use of violent power. These institutional restraints can break down if the political culture of a society does not include a strong dose of liberal norms. For example, anti-statism a belief that the power of the government should be limited and anti-imperialism a belief that conquest of foreign peoples is wrong are liberal norms.
A society infused by liberal norms has an added level of restraint above and beyond the purely institutional limitations on state power. A liberal citizenry will naturally oppose government actions that threaten individual liberty and choose represen- tatives that will act on liberal preferences. The institutional separation of powers in the United States allowed Wilson to block the interventionist efforts of Congress and others. The liberal norm of anti-imperialism restrained American expansion through the mechanisms of public opinion and the personal values of the president of the United States.
Institutions and norms worked symbiotically. International opinion put additional pressure on American political leaders due to increasing trade opportunities with Latin American countries throughout the early s. Precisely as liberal theory details, the absolute gains and opportunities offered by trade, together with preferences for self-determination and non-interference, acted as a restraint on US expansionism toward Mexico in this most imperial of periods in world history.
A core argument of liberalism is that concentrations of unaccountable violent power are the fundamental threat to individual liberty and must be restrained. The primary means of restraining power are institutions and norms at both domestic and international level.
At the international level institutions and organisations limit the power of states by fostering cooperation and providing a means for imposing costs on states that violate international agreements. Economic institutions are particularly effective at fostering cooperation because of the substantial benefits that can be derived from economic interdependence.
Finally, liberal norms add a further limitation on the use of power by shaping our understanding of what types of behaviour are appropriate. When everyone is treated equally under the law, there cannot be any special favour or discrimination imposed through law.
Every single person is important. Liberals believe that people must decide for themselves and not be told what to do all the time. In other words, your right to swing your arms freely stops where you start hitting someone. This belief in individual liberty underlies all the other principles listed already. In addition, liberalism demands tolerance of various opinions and, most difficult of all, of opinions that are different from our own. Liberals take the idea of individual freedom and individual rights also into the area of economics.
In fact, historically speaking, the concept of property rights was the very basis of individual freedom and individual rights. Firstly, there is the principle that people can own property. At its most basic, this means that each person owns him or herself and therefore cannot be owned by someone else, that is, no one can be a slave.
Such a free person can own other property: clothes, books, furniture, land, houses, cars and even ideas, so-called intellectual property. This is only possible in an economically free environment. Economic freedom consists of a number of ingredients, the most important being personal choice, voluntary exchange, freedom to enter and compete in markets and protection of people and property from aggression by others. With economic freedom, consumers can choose what they consider the best for themselves while individuals are free to set up businesses or engage in lawful international trade and companies are free to compete in a fair manner.
When people are free and free markets exist, everyone benefits. The overall effect is an increase in wealth and well-being.
Empirical studies show that the wealthiest countries are countries with high levels of economic freedom while the poorest states are usually those with little or no economic freedom. They also show a positive correlation in which countries with higher levels of economic freedom enjoy higher employment rates.
Governments can reduce economic freedom through high taxation and regulation which narrow the scope for individual choice and voluntary exchange. They can also undermine economic freedom by limiting entry into certain occupations and business activities. On the contrary, a state that pursues a liberal market policy that favours economic freedom will try to keep barriers to local and international trade such as duties and tariffs at the minimum or even at zero percent where appropriate. It also treats citizens equally when it comes to trade benefits and economic opportunities.
Eventually, economic freedom and market economy benefit not only traders and corporations but also consumers. In a free market environment, producers or suppliers have to compete on quality, price and service to win customers who have the freedom to choose from a wide variety of choice. The term is essentially the combination between liberalism and democracy.
By Peter W. It is based on a number of assumptions including that people act out of enlightened self-interest and that they are not only autonomous agents but also prudent rational agents. In contemporary American society many liberals came to argue for more government intervention and their ideas came to be accepted by legislators and by the Supreme Court , when the Court sustained one act of New Deal legislation after another, asserting that individual citizens must be protected against overpowering economic groups and from disasters they have not brought on themselves.
More and more laws were passed to provide for old-age and survivors insurance, unemployment insurance, federal control of various financial interests, minimum wages, supervision of agricultural production, and the right of labor unions to organize and bargain collectively.
This all amounted to a radical change from the original ideas of European Liberals on the role of government. Despite the metamorphosis in the philosophy of liberalism since the midth century, almost all modern liberals agree that their common objective is enlargement of the individual's opportunity to realize full potentialities. This has become a hallmark of liberalism today. This is an idea consonant with the ideas of John Rawls. The most widely discussed theory of distributive justice in the past three decades has been that proposed by John Rawls in his seminal work, A Theory of Justice.
Rawls Rawls proposes the following two principles of justice:. Why is it that people are thought to have a right to what they have not worked to earn for themselves? Why is it that there is a law hat requires those who do work to provide for those who do not work or are unable to work? We find the answers to those questions in the works of those who defend the welfare state. Goodin in. Robert Goodin passionately and cogently defends the welfare state from current attacks by the New Right.
But he contends that the welfare state finds false friends in those on the Old Left who would justify it as a hesitant first step toward some larger, ideally just form of society. Reasons for Welfare, in contrast, offers a defense of the minimal welfare state substantially independent of any such broader commitments, and at the same time better able to withstand challenges from the New Right's moralistic political economy.
This defense of the existence of the welfare state is discussed, flanked by criticism of Old Left and New Right arguments that is both acute and devastating. In the author's view, those possessing discretionary control over resources that they require best justify the welfare state as a device for protecting needy--and hence vulnerable--members of society against the risk of exploitation.
Its task is to protect the interests of those not in a position to protect themselves. Communitarian or egalitarian ideals may lead us to move beyond the welfare state as thus conceived and justified.
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