Evaluating Realism and Liberalism: Which School of Thought Better Explains World Politics?

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.211220.197How to use a DOI?

Keywords

realism; liberalism; economic interdependence; democratic peace theory; international institutions

Abstract

Realism and liberalism are two of the most competitive and applicable international relations theories that frequently provoke scholar confrontations. The two world-wars that took place last century prone to be a realist military expansion by Germany. The establishment of United Nations, instead, tends to become a liberal organization that promotes cooperation and palliate the occurrence of inter-state war. This paper primarily examines which of these two mainstream international relations theories better explains world politics. This paper mainly argues that realism better demonstrates world politics because regardless of how optimistic the three liberal variant theories (Economic interdependence, Democratic Peace Theory, International Institutions) have depicted the world, conflict is always possible to occur and each of these three variants is internally flawed with examples substantiating the deficiencies. Compared with liberalism, realism is a more reliable theory that accurately demonstrates the reality of world politics.

Copyright

© 2021 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL.

Open Access

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Guanzhuo Chen
AU  - Chenlei Zhu
AU  - Xiaoze Zhang
AU  - Chuqing Qiao
AU  - Yuning Han
PY  - 2021
DA  - 2021/12/24
TI  - Evaluating Realism and Liberalism: Which School of Thought Better Explains World Politics?
BT  - Proceedings of the 2021 4th International Conference on Humanities Education and Social Sciences (ICHESS 2021)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 1146
EP  - 1153
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.211220.197
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.211220.197
ID  - Chen2021
ER  -