The Paradox of Liberalism in a Globalising World

Abstract

Liberalism inherently involves a profound paradox that has shaped its trajectory in the modern world over more than two centuries and is ever more relevant in a new century of what has come to be called globalisation.1 Understanding this paradox is increasingly applicable in an international political economy dominated by financial crises, austerity, and the shrinking of the welfare state — not to mention the challenges of multiculturalism, democratisation, the changing face of the use of force and violence, and the proliferation of transnational governance processes and webs of power. The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have been characterised by a fundamental restructuring of liberalism itself, but the outcome of this shift is yet to be determined, shaped as it will be by multilayered, cross-cutting political processes and the as yet embryonic political action of key strategically situated groups.