Simmons, Beth A., Dobbin, Frank, & Garrett, Geoffrey. (2006). "Introduction: The International Diffusion of Liberalism". International Organization, 60(04), 781-810.
Here we examine the rise and spread of both economic and political liberalism. To understand the causes of this spread, our authors put fourth four distinct drivers and examine them qualitatively. These are the drivers of coercion, competition, learning and emulation. There are symposium articles that follow this article which explore these empirically. This abstract focuses solely on this article.
“Our principal objective is to shed light on the causal mechanisms that explain the timing and geographic reach of liberal innovations. What has caused these new policies to diffuse across time and space?”
They define economic liberalism as: “…policies that reduce government constraints on economic behavior and thereby promote economic exchange”. Political liberalism is also defined: “…policies that reduce government constraints on political behavior, promote free political exchange, and establish rights to political participation” (783).
The diffusion of ideas follows an s-curve. At first, there are a few people who are early adopters. Then, there is a rapid increase in adoption. Finally, there is a peaking out of the curve as all who could adopt have adopted.
Coercion: “Powerful countries can explicitly or implicitly influence the probability that weaker nations adopt the policy they prefer by manipulating the opportunities and constraints encountered by target countries, either directly or through the international and nongovernmental organizations…they influence” (790).
Competition: “…a more decentralized mechanism for policy diffusion than coercion” (792). In order to make claims about competition, theorists must be able to show that policies are being diffused by methods that are not just reducible to arguments about efficiency. This approach involves an information rich environment where actors mutually constitute the decisions of others, that relationships are horizontal and that policy interventions are mostly evaluated by short-medium-term effects.
Learning: “…refers to a change in beliefs or change in one’s confidence in existing beliefs, which can result from exposure to new evidence, theories, or behavioral repertoires” (795). Learning can be theorized as happening with individual rational actors or in broader communities.
Emulation: This approach is highly correlated to social constructivist approaches. “The distinguishing feature of social constructivism is its focus on the inter-subjectivity of meaning—both legitimate ends and appropriate means are considered social constructs” (799). This approach wonders how certain political policies and approaches became more broadly accepted as begin legitimate. Emulation can be seen as being caused by either epistemic communities (top-down) or through the emulation of peers through social psychology (horizontal).
The article then goes on to identify four different types of liberalism, which I will not elaborate on here. The article concludes by saying that these concepts are important and distinct (though the footnote points to a reference where they are unified). They then explain why each article is important in the symposium.
