Peter Wilson

Idealism in international relations

Book section

Original citation:
Originally published in Dowding, K., Encyclopedia of power. Thousand Oaks, USA: SAGE
Publications, 2011, pp. 332-333.
2011 SAGE Publications
This version available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/41929/
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Idealism in International Relations

(For K. Dowding (ed.), Encyclopedia of Power, Sage 2011)
In general parlance on international matters, idealism is a term applied to any idea, goal, or practice
considered to be impractical. Thus eradicating nuclear weapons is considered idealistic, as is
substituting open for secret diplomacy, entrusting international security to the UN, creating an
African Union on the model of the EU, or the global eradication of poverty and injustice. The bases
of such judgments are rarely made explicit, but they usually rest on a pessimistic reading of human
nature along with an historical judgment on the difficulty of peaceably achieving radical change in
world affairs.

In the professional study of international relations (IR), the term is generally employed in two ways:
one broad, one narrow. The broad understanding sees idealism as a perennial doctrine or disposition
towards world affairs which can be witnessed in all historical periods where independent political
communities exist in a condition of anarchy i.e. in the absence of central government. Idealism is an
optimistic doctrine which seeks to transcend the international anarchy, and create a more
cosmopolitan and harmonious world order. The narrow understanding sees idealism as intimately
tied to the inter-war period (1919-1939). It is a doctrine that dominated the first phase of IR
theorising, emphasising the growing interdependence and unity of mankind, and bound-up with the
experiment in internationalism that was the League of Nations. It received a visceral attack in E. H.
Carrs The Twenty Years Crisis (1939).

There is no agreed definition of idealism. Indeed the term is often employed in a rhetorical way,
particularly by realist thinkers, in order to discredit radical or reformist ideas they dislike. As a
consequence various approaches and bodies of thoughtcosmopolitanism, internationalism,
liberalismhave frequently been lumped together and labelled idealism, despite considerable
differences between and diversity within them.

According to most accounts, idealists emphasise the power of reason to overcome prejudice and
counteract the machinations of sinister forces. They believe that the spread of education and
democracyincluding increasing democratic control of foreign policywill empower world public
opinion, and make it a powerful force that no government can resist. They view war as a disease of
the international body politic, contrary to the interests of all bar a few special interests and
unrepresentative governments. Arms manufacturers and merchants have frequently been targets of
their wrath. Left-internationalists have also attacked large business corporations for their aggressive
pursuit of profit and disregard of general human welfare. Idealists emphasise the importance of
universal bodies such as the League and the UN in galvanising and organising world public opinion.
Through such means, they contend, it will be possible to eliminate crude power from international
relations, substituting research, reason and discussion in place of national armies and navies.
Importantly, idealists tend to stress the existence of a natural harmony of interests between all
peoples underlying the superficially conflicting interests of their states and/or governments. While
accepting that the different peoples exhibit different codes of behaviour, cultural norms, values,
habits and tastes, they contend that human beings are fundamentally uniform. Regardless of ethnic,
social, cultural and religious background, all human beings desire the same things in terms of
security, welfare, recognition and respect. All are bound by a common morality with its bedrock in
basic human rights and the Kantian principle that human beings should be respected as ends in
themselves and never treated as mere means. Many idealists share the belief of Mazzini that there is
no essential incompatibility between nationalism and internationalism. There is a natural division of
labour between nations. Each nation has its special task to perform, its special contribution to make
to the well-being of humanity. If all nations were to act in this spirit, international harmony would
prevail. This doctrine provided the philosophical basis for President Woodrow Wilsons campaign
to put national self-determination at the heart of the 1919 peace settlement.

In the inter-war period these beliefs gave rise to numerous policy prescriptions, nearly all of which
sought to regulate the power of the independent nation state by investing increasing power and
political authority in international organisations. The international anarchy of competing nationstates was seen as the underlying cause of the catastrophe of World War One, and thus the principle
of sovereignty and the institution of the balance of power needed to be regulated and, in the view of
some of the more radical idealists, abolished if the same was not to happen again. Collective
security, compulsory adjudication of disputes, national disarmament, open diplomacy and
international colonial accountability were the most cherished policy prescriptions of inter-war
idealists. Some went further, calling for the creation of an international police force and complete
international oversight of armaments production.

One of the main criticisms Carr levelled at the idealists (or utopians as he preferred to call them)
was that they underestimated the role of power in international politics and overestimated the role,
actual and potential, of law, morality and public opinion. He was particularly scathing of the idea
that reason and discussion could take the place of armies and navies. Change did not come about, he
claimed, through reasonor at least not reason as conceived by the utopians. Power was a decisive
factor in every political situation, and one could no more abolish power than abolish politics. Power,
whether used, threatened, or held silently in reserve, was an essential factor in international change,
and change would only be brought about by whom or in the interests of whom power could be
wielded.

Realists today often criticise the intellectual descendents of inter-war idealiststhose e.g.
advocating global governance, cosmopolitan democracy, and much greater power for the UNon
much the same grounds. They ignore the power and self-interestedness of the independent nation
state, the reign of instrumental (cf. abstract) reason in international politics, and the emotional
appeal of national sovereignty.

Peter Wilson
LSE

See also: Anarchy in International Relations; collective security; E. H. Carr; interdependence;

League of Nations, Realism; United Nations.

Further Reading
Carr, E. H. (2001). The Twenty Years Crisis, 1919-1939: An Introduction to the Study of
International Relations. Reissue ed. M. Cox. London. MacMillan.
Long, D. & Wilson, P. (1995). Thinkers of the Twenty Years Crisis: Inter-War Idealism Reassessed.
Oxford. Clarendon Press.
Ashworth, L. (1999). Creating International Studies: Angell, Mitrany and the Liberal Tradition.
Aldershot. Ashgate.
Wilson, P. (2003). The International Theory of Leonard Woolf: A Study in Inter-War Idealism. New
York. Palgrave.