CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2021
| Author | Pontius, Adam Meehan |
|---|---|
| Title | A world safe for whose democracy? Woodrow Wilson, ontological security, and the anxiety of settler states |
| Summary | Woodrow Wilson remains an imposing figure in the history of liberal internationalism. Recent turns toward re-examining the role of racism in international politics however has reopened questions about the significance of Wilson’s views on race and progressive liberalism: how do these two aspects of his thought and politics hang together? In this thesis I contend that the story of historical progress, race, and liberalism for Wilson was fundamentally an identity narrative. Using an ontological security lens, I interpret Wilson’s larger political project as an attempt to manage the anxiety resulting from the United States’ ambiguous role as an early settler state in an international society defined by European empire. I develop an ontological security theoretical framework based on the assumption that all politics, but international politics especially, is defined by a constitutive condition of anxiety. This framework enables me to find continuity in Wilson’s scholarship, politics, and statecraft. I illustrate how Wilson depended on a notion of historical progress to animate both his liberalism and his views on race and national identity. Wilson drew on this notion of historical progress to both shape American identity to his vision of a nation grounded in shared English civilization, and re-order international politics to make that vision more secure. I contribute to the emerging conversation on anxiety in ontological security scholarship by developing a framework to understand the role of anxiety in the history of settler states. Through this framework I also contribute to the larger conversation (re)interpretating historical liberalism by illustrating how Wilson’s identity politics and progressive politics constituted each other. |
| Supervisor | Kurowska, Xymena |
| Department | International Relations MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2021/pontius_adam-meehan.pdf |
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