Leftist Internationalisms

This volume offers a new perspective on the political history of the socialist, communist and alternative political Lefts, focusing on the role of networks and transnational connections. Embedding the history of left-wing internationalism into a new political history approach, it accounts for global and transnational turns in the study of left-wing politics. The essays in this collection study a range of examples of international engagement and transnational cooperation in which left-wing actors were involved, and explore how these interactions shaped the globalization of politics throughout the 20th century. In taking a multi-archival and methodological approach, this book challenges two conventional views - that the left gradually abandoned its original international to focus exclusively on the national framework, and that internationalism survived merely as a rhetorical device. Instead, this collection highlights how different currents of the Left developed their own versions of internationalism in order to adapt to the transformation of politics in the interdependent 20th-century world. Demonstrating the importance of political convergence, alliance-formation, network construction and knowledge circulation within and between the socialist and communist movements, it shows that the influence of internationalism is central to understanding the foreign policy of various left-wing parties and movements.

This volume offers a new perspective on the political history of the socialist, communist and alternative political Lefts, focusing on the role of networks and transnational connections. Embedding the history of left-wing internationalism into a new political history approach, it accounts for global and transnational turns in the study of left-wing politics. The essays in this collection study a range of examples of international engagement and transnational cooperation in which left-wing actors were involved, and explore how these interactions shaped the globalization of politics throughout the 20th century. In taking a multi-archival and methodological approach, this book challenges two conventional views - that the left gradually abandoned its original international to focus exclusively on the national framework, and that internationalism survived merely as a rhetorical device. Instead, this collection highlights how different currents of the Left developed their own versions of internationalism in order to adapt to the transformation of politics in the interdependent 20th-century world. Demonstrating the importance of political convergence, alliance-formation, network construction and knowledge circulation within and between the socialist and communist movements, it shows that the influence of internationalism is central to understanding the foreign policy of various left-wing parties and movements.

This volume offers a new perspective on the political history of the socialist, communist and alternative political Lefts, focusing on the role of networks and transnational connections. Embedding the history of left-wing internationalism into a new political history approach, it accounts for global and transnational turns in the study of left-wing politics. The essays in this collection study a range of examples of international engagement and transnational cooperation in which left-wing actors were involved, and explore how these interactions shaped the globalization of politics throughout the 20th century. In taking a multi-archival and methodological approach, this book challenges two conventional views - that the left gradually abandoned its original international to focus exclusively on the national framework, and that internationalism survived merely as a rhetorical device. Instead, this collection highlights how different currents of the Left developed their own versions of internationalism in order to adapt to the transformation of politics in the interdependent 20th-century world. Demonstrating the importance of political convergence, alliance-formation, network construction and knowledge circulation within and between the socialist and communist movements, it shows that the influence of internationalism is central to understanding the foreign policy of various left-wing parties and movements.

This study provides an original conception of liberalism that accounts for its internal contradictions and explains the current crisis of liberal internationalism. Examining the disjuncture between liberal theory and practice, it offers a firmer grasp on the historical role of liberalism in world politics.

A sweeping account of the rise and evolution of liberal internationalism in the modern era For two hundred years, the grand project of liberal internationalism has been to build a world order that is open, loosely rules-based, and oriented toward progressive ideas. Today this project is in crisis, threatened from the outside by illiberal challengers and from the inside by nationalist-populist movements. This timely book offers the first full account of liberal internationalism’s long journey from its nineteenth-century roots to today’s fractured political moment. Creating an international “space” for liberal democracy, preserving rights and protections within and between countries, and balancing conflicting values such as liberty and equality, openness and social solidarity, and sovereignty and interdependence—these are the guiding aims that have propelled liberal internationalism through the upheavals of the past two centuries. G. John Ikenberry argues that in a twenty-first century marked by rising economic and security interdependence, liberal internationalism—reformed and reimagined—remains the most viable project to protect liberal democracy.

The political history of modern Europe may be seen in terms of continuous interaction between rivalling forms of internationalism and diverse kinds of nationalism. This book distinguishes, analyses and presents the different kinds and varieties of internationalist and nationalist ideology that have played significant parts in the international politics of the region, particularly since the Second World War. It indicates the origins of each pattern of thought, traces its development, brings out its relationship with other strands of thought and outlines its major political influences. The emphasis is on internationalist support for and nationalist opposition to the principal regional international organizations.

Internationalism and Its Betrayal was first published in 1995. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. A new world order, proclaimed Western leaders after the cold war, could extend liberal democracy and human rights around the globe. Yet the specter of nationalism once again haunts the world, threatening to extinguish the spirit of internationalism. Although internationalism is typically understood to be diametrically opposed to nationalism, Micheline Ishay argues to the contrary, maintaining that internationalism often incorporates an individualist element that manifests itself as nationalism during critical periods such as war. For example, the new liberal internationalism invoked after the cold war is now revealing its limits-as reflected by the UN's inability to interfere promptly to stop ethnic and nationalist conflicts in Bosnia, Rwanda, and elsewhere. Internationalism and Its Betrayal explores the tensions and contradictions between ideas of nationalism and internationalism, focusing on the major political thinkers from the early modern period into the nineteenth century. Ishay examines the writings of Vico, Grotius, Rousseau, Kant, Paine, Robespierre, Burke, Fichte, de Maistre, and Hegel. She speaks to an audience of individuals interested in the spread of democracy, students of human rights and international relations, historians of the French Revolution, and political theorists. Micheline Ishay was born in Tel Aviv, and raised in Israel, Luxembourg, and Brussels, Belgium. She is currently assistant professor at the Graduate School of International Studies at Denver University, where she is also serving as director of the human rights program and executive director of the Center on Rights Development. She is coeditor of The Nationalism Reader (1994). Craig Calhoun is professor of sociology and history and director of the University Center for International Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the editor of the Contradictions of Modernity series for the University of Minnesota Press.

David Long provides a comprehensive analysis of Hobson's writings on international relations.