Liberalism, Neoliberalism & International Politics

According to sociologists, since the 1970s, market-based economic policies have been institutionalized as a nearly global policy paradigm embodying first, liberalism, and later, neoliberalism. The purpose of this re port is to discuss the theories of liberalism and neoliberalism in studying international politics and to identify the limitations of these approaches. All such theories in the context of international relations are designed to solve the problems and puzzles of state behavior by offering "a causal account of a particular outcome or pattern of behavior in inter-state relations."

Liberal international relations theories have been characterized as normative rather than positive theories about how states do behave rather than how they should behave. A major problem with liberalism in this context is that focuses primarily on state-society relations, often without sufficient attention to the role of states as independent entities in their interactions with other states. Liberal theory assumes that the primary actors in their international system are individuals and groups acting in domestic and transnational civil society. This tends to ignore the role of the state per se and it assumes that governments represent some subset of individual and group actors.

Part of the problem, according to Anne-Marie Slaughter, is that liberalism does not give adequate attention to patterns of strategic interactions b