Institute of Economic Affairs

Just to inform all NOL-readers out there, if you like the subject, please register and join the IEA webinar I’ll give next wednesday, 13.00 hours, London time.

Institute of Economic Affairs > Events
Time:
10/06/2020
13:00 – 14:00

Although it was never the subject of a book, Friedrich Hayek wrote a lot about international relations during his long career and had rather firm views on international order and how it could be achieved. In this webinar, these Hayekian views are presented in the context of the current COVID-crisis. What was Hayek’s opinion about the existence and the role of international governmental organizations, such as the World Health Organization?

Dr. Edwin van de Haar (www.edwinvandehaar.com) is an independent scholar who specializes in the liberal tradition in international political theory. He has been a (visiting) lecturer at Brown University, Leiden University and Ateneo de Manila University. Van de Haar is the author of Classical Liberalism and International Relations Theory. Hume, Smith, Mises and Hayek (2009), Beloved Yet Unknown. The Political Philosophy of Liberalism (2011, in Dutch) and Degrees of Freedom. Liberal Political Philosophy and Ideology (2015). Among others, he contributed to The Oxford Handbook of Adam Smith (2013) and a forthcoming book on The Liberal International Theory Tradition in Europe, while his articles on liberal ideas and liberal thinkers appeared among others in Review of International Studies, International Relations, International Politics, Independent Review and Economic Affairs.

Van de Haar got his PhD in International Politcial Theory from Maastricht Universit in 2008, and holds master degrees in international relations (London School of Economics and Political Science) and in political science (Leiden University).

Please visit: https://iea.org.uk/events/hayek-international-organization-and-covid-19/

Some initial thoughts:

Classical liberals will not be surprised by the repeated occurrence of violence and war in the Middle East and will understand the realities of the unstable region where Iran is an important player. Their analysis will view the regional balance of power in the context of the global balance of power. They will also take account of the history of US-Iranian relations […]

This is from fellow Notewriter Edwin, writing for the Institute for Economic Affairs in London. It was part of a nightcap a few days ago, but I thought I’d give it some more love with a post of its own.

Edwin likes to use the “balance of power” strategy to explain the classical liberal position (check out his now classic article in the Independent Review), but I don’t know how true this is. Traditionally, hasn’t the balance of power method been favored by conservatives like Metternich and Kissinger?

I know he’ll respond by telling me that I have a socially liberal view of IR because I favor more federation, but I don’t know how true this is either. Shouldn’t trade-offs and cooperation in the context of power take precedence in classical liberal theories of IR? What sounds more liberal to you, then: a strategy of balancing power between separate actors, or a strategy of finding trade-offs and binding actors together in a manner (federal) that maximizes those trade-offs?