What is...Liberalism?

This first edition of the new VOICES series "What is…?" focuses on liberalism as a concept in International Relations (IR). Liberalism in its many contexts - be it in political tradition, in economic ideology, social understandings, or polemical attacks - elides a single definition. In this episode, Vineet Thakur (Leiden) talks with Prof. Beate Jahn (Sussex), who has devoted much of her academic career to the study of liberalism, about the empirical and methodological potential of the concept for research in IR. Prof. Jahn argues that the consistent failures of liberalism, for example in peacebuilding operations, are inherent in its contradictions. Indeed, war, imperialism, and economic depression are very much features, not anomalies, of the liberal system. For this, and more on liberalism, listen to Prof. Jahn in this episode.

[Prof. Beate Jahn:](http:// https://profiles.sussex.ac.uk/p102133-beate-jahn)

Jahn, Beate (2021): Critical theory in crisis? a reconsideration