ANDREW MORAVCSIK- “Taking Preferences Seriously; A Liberal Theory of International Politics.”
Moravcsik's purpose was to delink liberalism from ideology and relink it to theory. He accomplished this through a paradigmatic restatement and through theoretical pluralism. He fortified his argument by basing liberalism on Waltz's construction: the social actor, the state, and the international system. He based his theoretical pluralism on this construction, comprised of ideational liberalism, commercial realism, and republican realism. Ideational liberalism is the compatibility of social preferences across national, political, and socioeconomic lines. Commercial liberalism is incentives created by international interactions (trade). Republican realism centers around the outcomes in state policy based on the types of domestic institutions and practices. Moravcsik gives parameters for liberalism in order for it to fit into the realist (namely Waltz and Cohen) definition of theory. These parameters are superior parsimony, coherence, empirical accuracy, and multicausal consistency. Moravcsik includes three key assumptions. One, the primacy of societal actors, meaning that there is no automatic harmony of interests. Two, that states represent a subset of society. Three, that state behavior is determined by interdependent state preferences. Liberalist theory is based on the contention that there is variation in the means, rather than the ends, unlike realism. While Waltz criticized this belief as reductionist, it is not, because it allows for an explanation of goals as well as systemic outcomes. Ideational liberalism, commercial liberalism, and republican liberalism get to the basic premise of liberalist theory. The outcome of these three variants is that states are stronger together, and that liberalism is just as efficient as realism.