ABSTRACT
Liberal institutionalism presumes that domestic and international institutions play central roles in facilitating cooperation and peace between states. Liberal institutionalism presented as a corrective to conventional international relations theory, which held that powerful states dominate world politics. This chapter explains how the theoretical approach has developed in response to the conceptual, and the real, worlds. It explores major critiques of liberal institutionalism from realists, Marxists, constructivists, non-liberal governments, feminists, developing countries, and the general publics in North American or European liberal democracies. The European undertaking gave credence to liberal and functionalist notions, and it also inspired a new line of "neo-functionalist" thinking about regional integration. Realism's tenets seemed to explain the failure to prevent a second large-scale war among industrialized countries, and its assumptions appeared to fit the burgeoning Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. The chapter concludes with open questions about the survival of the contemporary world order—and the liberal institutionalism that has animated it.
