I'm glad to see you came back for the liberalism three big things narrated PowerPoint let's get right into it the big things we're looking at here are first the definition of the word liberal because it has so many different meanings and then what liberals think about cooperation and where cooperation takes place in the international system this is a really important slide the reason this slide is important is because inevitably at least one person if not several people this semester are going to really mistake what liberal we're talking about when we use it as a term for international relations when you think of the word liberal assuming that you are living in America you almost certainly think of liberal meaning like Democrats and different Democratic political positions maybe you think of Barack Obama Bernie Sanders Hillary Clinton there's all sorts of people you could think about when you think of the word liberal if you live overseas you actually probably have a very different thing that comes to mind with the word liberal because it means something very different particularly in Europe the word liberal has many many meanings and the one we're going to use here in international relations is actually different from all of them so I for your benefit you really want to divorce the word liberal in your mind from all of its previous meanings so let's talk about these different meanings we can make it clear what we mean here in economics when we talk about liberal we're actually talking about free-market ideology so liberalism the original term liberalism was first used by Adam Smith in the idea of liberating the economy from government control originally in the mercantile system the government was very active in picking winners in controlling government controlling businesses and in controlling the flow of gold and silver so Adam Smith comes along and says no no no free markets are better we must liberate the economy from government control now this is particularly bruh and the liberalization of the economy is basically directly opposite the way we think of economics in American politics where that's a very conservative economic position liberal economic positions tend to be more in favor of government regulation of the economy so liberal in American politics is associated with you know policy positions like pro-choice the legalization of marijuana increase of the minimum wage more just generally more government interaction with the economy and more government spending and more taxes on the wealthy so that is a second meaning of the word liberal that's very different from the first one and in fact if you were in most European countries talking about a liberal in politics you'd be most likely to be referring to the kind of thing that we would think of as a conservative in America very confusing but finally we get to liberal as an international relations theory which is mostly unrelated to all the rest of the slide so you really should not think of the word liberal in any of the baggage that you brought to class with it when thinking about liberalism and international relations theory and the ultimate proof that I would give for this is that George W Bush former president considered one of the most conservative presidents we've ever had in American history his foreign policy was at times very liberal in its thinking whereas Obama one of the more liberal presidents in terms of American political ideology often exercised a very realist foreign policy thinking so let's get into what liberal actually means as an international relations theory if the view of humanity from realism was all about people are self-interested and inherently untrustworthy I guess realist must have had some really bad relationships in the past and have some you know them burned by some exes you've got liberals who tend to think that people are fundamentally good and that the state of nature would not necessarily be a negative thing liberals therefore believe that cooperation is not only possible but it should be encouraged and that the focus is not on relative power and relative gains but on absolute power and absolute gains so the cliche here would be a rising tide lifts all boats that there are ways to make everyone better off even if it makes some countries and more better off than others as long as everyone is better off cooperation will work within the broad stream of liberal thoughts there is a particular group and they are the most relevant for international relations and they're called neoliberal institutionalists that just rolls right off the tongue right so in the same way that the neorealists are the new realists the neoliberals are the new liberals and their focuses all about institutions so what is an institution well if you hear the word institution you might think about something like a hospital or a prison or a college it's not sure what it says about colleges that they come to mind along with hospitals and prisons but that is usually what students think of when they hear the word institution and the reason they think of that is because those are things that are durable and permanent and that tend to outlive the people who are inhabiting them any one point in time you are eventually hopefully sooner rather than later going to go on and graduate or complete your studies at your institution of choice and once you have done that the college will remain I will hopefully someday retire not for a while but someday I will retire and you know the college will continue to exist without me because it is the College the institution of the college that persists within government we have things like the legislature the office of the executive whether that's a president or a prime minister or the courts those are all institutions in international relations things like the United Nations our international institutions the United Nations is a series of committees and organizations and rules and procedures that persist even if a country comes or goes joins or leaves even if different governments take control of a country or lose power neoliberal institution lists are really big fans of institutions so they're not just bands of cooperation but they're fans of cooperation that take place with in the confines of these institutions and the reason for that is because they are willing to concede in a way that regular liberals are not that self-interest is an important part of any functioning of a system that yes people are self-interested in countries are self-interested but they point out that the prisoner's dilemma which we came across earlier can in fact be I can in fact be to everyone that managed to stay silent and to cooperate if they know that they're going to be playing it again with the same people so if you remember you and your buddy that have robbed that 7-eleven if you know that as soon as you get out you and your buddy are going to commit a different crime because you just really love crime and Slurpees as established last time it may be therefore in your interest to stay silent because the matrix of calculation has changed because you know this is going to be happening again so similarly if two countries that don't really trust each other sign an arms agreement where they agree to limit the number of weapons that they develop each side has an incentive to cheat because if they secretly just get a few more arms they're going to have an advantage in any military conflict that might take place but if they know that they're also going to be engaging in agreements with this country on economics on social issues on sports on cultural things scientific agreements then suddenly it may be in their interest to cooperate because they're going to be playing this game again in fact this is a little digression but an interesting one there was a competition that was held a couple decades ago and they've redone it to periodically and found the same results where they basically said anyone who wants to submit a computer program to try and win this competition can do so the way the competition worked is they would pit any two programs against each other any two strategies for playing repeated prisoners dilemmas against each other and see which strategy finished with the most points so if you were to play a thousand games of the prisoner's dilemma with someone else over and over which strategy would end up with you doing the best and what they found was that the winning strategy was always something some variant of a thing called tit for tat the idea here was that in this strategy you would cooperate with your partner until they did so until they defected or they ratted on you and then you would continue to defect or rat on them until they started cooperating again and we see this happen in the international system as well that generally speaking many countries most countries are in fact willing to cooperate and if a country violates that cooperation by cheating there is a punishment it's usually not a severe punishment that means you'll never work with them again but it's enough to say we're not going to trust you again until you give us a reason to and then we will go back to trusting you so this is just a very different view of how a state should operate in the international system