Australasian Political Studies Association Conference 2003
Hosted by the School of Government
University of Tasmania

Political Theory Stream

Liberalism - What’s in a Name?

Barry Hindess
Australian National University

Abstract:

Standard academic accounts of liberalism tend to present it, on the one hand, as concerned with relations between the state and its subjects and, on the other, as committed to the promotion and defence of individual liberty and/or private property. Even specialists in international relations and international political economy, who have no truck with the first of these elements, tend to endorse some version of the second. This paper disputes both. Accounts of liberalism in these terms have been advanced in more or less sophisticated forms, sometimes by supporters of liberalism and sometimes by its critics, and there can be no denying that liberals frequently have strong views about these issues. The argument, then, is not so much that such accounts are entirely false but rather that they are all seriously incomplete.

My discussion is particularly concerned to stress, along with international relations and international political economy, the cosmopolitan, supra-state aspects of the liberal tradition. However, if we are to fully grasp the character of this cosmopolitanism, it is also necessary to focus on liberalism’s governmental character, that is, on its concern with mundane problems involved in the government of populations. We shall see that this focus undermines the second element of the standard accounts noted above: the view that liberalism is committed to the promotion and defence of individual liberty and/or private property. I suggest not only that the adoption of this broader view of liberalism fosters a better understanding of the work of central figures in the liberal tradition but also, more importantly, that it provides a fuller and more powerful account of liberal governmental practice at both national and supra-national levels – and especially of many recent developments which, for want of a better name, tend to be grouped together under the label of neo-liberalism.