International Relations. A self-Study Guide to Theory

tary liberalism and sociological liberalism, just to mention the most im-
portant strands. To briefly illustrate the differences: whereas republican liber-
alism makes a statement about democratic states being more peaceful and 
more cooperative in their foreign policy than non-democratic states, sociolog-
ical liberalism points to the impact of communication flows and cultural pat-
terns on state’s ability to cooperate. The latter was pioneered by Karl Deutsch 
(1953, 1957). Others point to the impact of transnational relations on the co-
operative behavior of states and analyze how transnational relationships pres-
sure governments into seeking cooperative solutions to problems in interna-
tional politics (for example, Keohane/Nye 1970). We will come back to these 
different strands in Step 2. 
Whereas, for a long period of time, neorealist and neoinstitutionalist theory 
dominated IR and liberal thinking was marginalized, there has been a “renais-
sance” of liberal theory since the 1990s. The real-world background to this 
“renaissance” of liberal approaches is the end of the Cold War and the “implo-

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161 
sion” of communist regimes in Middle and Eastern Europe. No “event” in in-
ternational politics has revealed the importance of societal actors (inside the 
state) for the conduct of international politics more strongly (Risse-Kappen 
1994). The failure of neorealism and neoinstitutionalism to predict the break-
down of the Eastern bloc resulted in the empowerment of those approaches that 
attempt to explain international politics by looking “inside the state”. 
Credit for bringing liberal theory back into the center of IR theory belongs, 
in particular, to Andrew Moravcsik. His theoretical project is the reformulation 
of liberal theory in a non-ideological and non-utopian way, making it a system-
atic theory of international politics (1993, 1997). His intention was to put liber-
al theory as an empirical social science on a par with neorealist and neoinstitu-
tionalist theory within IR (1997: 513). For the purpose of our book, Moravc-
sik’s “new liberalism” (Moravcsik 2008; Schieder 2013) is of particular interest 
as it represents the most advanced attempt to formulate a “scientific” liberal 
theory of IR (please recall our discussions in Units 2 and 3 on what counts as 
“scientific” theory in International Relations). Additionally, Moravcsik’s work 
leaves behind the “level-of-analysis problem”, constructing a liberal theory that 
– while starting with the domestic level in the “classic” liberal way – also pro-
vides a systemic explanation of international politics. This liberal theory thus 
draws level with neorealist and neoinstitutionalists explanations of international 
politics (Moravcsik 2008). With this reformulation, liberal theory enters the 
stage of general, scientific theoretical approaches to International Relations. 
New liberalism thus becomes a fascinating “candidate” within the group of 
theoretical approaches that form the center of our book. 
The terms “new liberalism” or “new liberal theory” will be used through-
out the chapter. They refer to new liberalism as a general, scientific theoreti-
cal approach, as developed by Andrew Moravcsik.
Step 1: 
New liberalism as a “positive” IR theory: assumptions about 
actors and structures 
New liberalism has been reformulated in line with the idea of IR as a positive 
social science (Moravcsik 1997: 514). The basis of Moravcsik’s theory is the 
clear distinction between liberal philosophers or classical liberal publicists, 
and liberal social scientists (Moravcsik 2008: 236). It begins with the basic 
liberal insight already mentioned in the introduction: the liberal claim of the