Many who discuss global democracy think in terms of a Reform-Act model of democracy, with the ideal being ‘one person one vote for all affected by the decisions’ as in, for example, a second popularly apportioned chamber of United Nations. Politically, that is dismissed as wildly unrealistic. Remember, however, the Reform Acts came very late in process of democratization domestically. Among early steps that eventually led to full democratization of that sort domestically were: (a) limiting the arbitrary rule on the part of the sovereign; and (b) making the sovereign accountable to others (initially a limited set of others, which then expanded). Globally, there are moves afoot in both those directions. Crucially, once those pieces are in place, the circle of accountability basically only ever expands and virtually never contracts.

This article has two core objectives: first to challenge the conventional understanding of liberal international theory (which we do by focussing specifically on classical liberalism) and second, to develop much further postcolonialism’s conception of Eurocentrism. These twin objectives come together insofar as we argue that classical liberalism does not always stand for anti-imperialism/non-interventionism given that significant parts of it were Eurocentric and pro-imperialist. But we also argue that in those cases where liberals rejected imperialism they did so not out of a commitment to cultural pluralism, as we are conventionally told, but as a function of either a specific Eurocentric or a scientific racist stance. This, in turn, means that Eurocentrism can be reduced neither to scientific racism nor to imperialism. Thus while we draw on postcolonialism and its critique of liberalism as Eurocentric, we find its conception of Eurocentrism (and hence its vision of liberalism) to be overly reductive. Instead we differentiate four variants of ‘polymorphous Eurocentrism’ while revealing how two of these rejected imperialism and two supported it. And by revealing how classical liberalism was embedded within these variants of Eurocentrism so we recast the conventional interpretation. In doing so, we bring to light the ‘protean career of polymorphous liberalism’ as it crystallizes in either imperialist or anti-imperialist forms as a function of the different variants of Eurocentrism within which it is embedded. Finally, because two of these variants underpin modern liberalism (as discussed in the Conclusions) so we challenge international relations scholars to rethink their conventional understanding of both classical- and modern-liberalism, as much as we challenge postcolonialists to rethink their conception of Eurocentrism.

Most Realists today oppose far-reaching global reform on the grounds that it represents unrealistic and potentially irresponsible ‘utopianism’. An earlier generation of mid-century Realists, however, not only supported serious efforts at radical international reform but also developed a theoretically impressive model for how to bring it about. They considered the possibility of post-national political orders and ultimately a world state as desirable long-term goals, but only if reformers could simultaneously generate the thick societal background (or what they called ‘supranational society’) required by any viable order ‘beyond the nation state’. As they fail to engage constructively with proposals for global reform, present-day Realists betray their own intellectual tradition. By reconsidering the subterranean legacy of Realist reformism as advanced by mid-century international thinkers (e.g. E.H. Carr, John Herz, Hans Morgenthau, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Frederick Schuman), the essay provides a revisionist reading of the history of twentieth-century international theory, while also highlighting its significance for ongoing debates about global reform.