TAKING PREFERENCES SERIOUSLY - A LIBERAL THEORY OF INTERNATIONAL-POLITICS

This article reformulates liberal international relations (IR) theory in nonideological and nonutopian form appropriate to empirical social science. Liberal IR theory elaborates the basic insight that state-soc iety relations-the relationship between governments and the domestic a nd transnational social context in which they are embedded-are the mos t fundamental determinant of state behavior in world politics. In the liberal view state-society relations influence state behavior by shapi ng ''national preferences'' - the fundamental social purposes that und erlie state strategies-not, as realism argues, the configuration of na tional capabilities and not, as institutionalist regime theory maintai ns, the configuration of information and institutions. This article co difies this basic liberal insight in the form of three core analytical propositions, derives from these propositions three variants of liber al theory, and demonstrates that the existence of a coherent liberal t heory has significant theoretical, methodological, and empirical impli cations. These implications include the existence of significant omitt ed variable bias in recent realist and constructivist studies, and the analytical priority of liberal theory, which emerges as the most fund amental among major LR theories because it defines and explains the co nditions under which realist and institutionalist, as well as construc tivist, factors matter.