3 - Are Liberal Internationalists Still Liberal?

Summary

Verdirame argues that liberal internationalism has undergone a largely undetected yet profound transformation in the last decades. As a result of an often unquestioning embrace of the political and legal ideology supranationalism and of globalization, liberal internationalists have slouched towards cosmopolitanism. Yet, cosmopolitanism is a view of the international political order that is at odds with liberal internationalism properly understood. Today’s liberal internationalists, like cosmopolitans, regard world government as both an aspiration and an inevitability. The idea of self-government, which was central to the liberal internationalism of the UN Charter, plays little or no role in this world view. This transformation of liberal internationalism is more evident in Europe, where supranationalism is not merely an ideology but the defining legal and political principle of the EU.