ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the idealist aspect of the first ‘great debate’3 in IR in which idealism and liberalism opposed realism and its inherency orientation, to offer an ambitious, ethically oriented account of peace through liberalinternationalism and governance. It focuses on its implications for the conceptualisation of peace that led to a discussion of ethics, interdependence and transnationalism. This pointed to the blurring or domestication of international politics, though this rests on what occurs inside states.4 Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, liberal thought represents one of the largest bodies of work on peace that exists in IR theory, drawing on earlier idealist thinkers such as Zimmern, Bailey and Noel-Baker, and functionalists and pluralists such as Mitrany and Burton and, most famously, the approach of Woodrow Wilson at Versailles after the First World War, as well as that of famous advocates such as Bertrand Russell.5 Normative positions on state behaviour in an international context, as opposed to interest and power-oriented ontologies, point to an ambitious peace, which is universal though perhaps unachievable.
