Universidad de La Sabana

Teora de las relaciones internacionales

Paula Andrea Uribe Cepeda
201522901

8 session learning log

Although that realism was regarded as the dominant theory of international

relations, liberalism has a great demand to be an historical alternative (Dunne,
2014). The currents of liberal thought take place in the theory of contemporary
international relations, where the republican liberalism argues that liberal
democracies tend to be more peaceful than other forms of government and the
regulatory liberalism holds that the law and international institutions promote
international accommodation (Siegel, 2011).

Liberalism as a social science international relations theory, contains three

important liberal assumptions, explaining that it on the contrary of realism is
not committed with the ambitious and parsimonious structural theory. It
continues being a source of strength primarily as a guide for policy choice.The
first assumption, talks about the development of an appropriate
methodological guide in order to finished with the lack of microfoundations,
which reduces the empirical knowledge about the validity of liberal demands.
The second assumption consist in that whole governments represent certain
segments of the national society, whose interests are reflected in state policy.
Liberals analyze the institutions as representative mechanisms of social
interests, where the main agent between population and the state is the
representation in state politics and the third and final liberal assumption, is that
the levels of conflict and the behavior of states, reflect the nature and
configuration of the state preferences (Moravesik, 1992).

Basically, the liberal theory analyzes international relations as patterns in

conflict and converging state preferences, which imposes a fundamental
constraint on the behavior of states, focusing on the formation of national
preference and on the other hand, the realist theory explains the state
behavior and the international results as a consequence of differentiations in
external political constraints in terms of the resources that drive the states.

Dunne, T. (2014) Liberalism, in Baylis, J., Smith, S., Owens, P. (eds) The
globalization of world politics - an introduction to international relations, sixth
edition. Oxford: OUP, pp. 113-125.

Moravesik, A. (1992) Liberalism and international relations theory. Center for

European studies, Harvard University, pp. 1 56.
Siegel, C. (2011) Classical liberalism. Preservation Institute, Berkley. California
University, pp. 1 248.