ABSTRACT
Drawing on both idealism and realism to support the delivery of a universal norm of peace to willing and unwilling recipients, liberal universalism has become a foundational orthodoxy for the contemporary dominant conceptualisation of the liberal peace. Rationalism has only marginally been modified by reflectivism in this context, as Keohane famously pointed out,2 implying an Oakshottian connection between rationality and the search for peace.3 This is founded upon the framework offered by realism, which through parsimonious selection of which variables in IR are of significance, projects an order based upon the victor’s peace and the specific order and value system projected through the security architecture this promotes. This is modified by the liberal assumption that commonalities outweigh differences and so forms a basis for a dominant and institutionalised universalism capable of toleration.4 This indicates that the ‘ideal form’ of one universal concept of peace has actually been implicitly converted into an explicit and realisable normative and discursive form – combining a victor’s peace, a liberal peace, or peace as structural emancipation, a peace with normative dimensions in international society, a peace that is socially constructed, a peace with economic dimensions, a peace based upon regionalisation or globalisation – rather than relegated to a utopian and impractical notion.
