Whose Democracy; Which Peace? Contextualizing the Democractic Peace
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Whose Democracy; Which Peace? Contextualizing the Democractic Peace John MacMillan Brunel University, Uxbridge, Middx. UB8 3PH, UK. E-mail: [email protected]
‘Whose Democracy; Which Peace?: Contextualising the Democratic Peace’ is a critical analysis of the key foundational texts of the orthodox Democratic Peace position. The essay analyses Michael Doyle’s ‘Kant, Liberal Legacies and International Affairs’ (1983) and Bruce Russett’s Grasping the Democratic Peace (1993) in terms of four major questions that have exercised and divided the wider liberal internationalist tradition. Besides illustrating the richness of this wider tradition, the essay finds that the orthodox Democratic Peace position presents not only a selective account of liberalism and democracy in international relations but one that corresponds most closely to the conservative strand of liberal internationalism. This finding is interpreted in terms of disciplinary, methodological and sociological factors. At the same time as establishing the subjectivity of the orthodox Democratic Peace position, the essay also highlights the empirical credibility and theoretical insights of the left- and radical-strands of the liberal tradition. As such, it is no longer possible to maintain the existence of one authoritative version — or scientifically authenticated — version of the Democratic Peace, but the existence of several actual and possible accounts of the relationship between liberalism/democracy and peace/war. International Politics (2004) 41, 472–493. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ip.8800092 Keywords: democracy; peace; democratic peace; liberalism
The Democratic Peace and the Wider Liberal Tradition Central to the liberal tradition in International Relations have been efforts to understand and address the problem of war and the bases of peace (see Taylor, 1957; Howard, 1981; MacMillan, 1998). While for much of the post-1945 period liberalism — as ‘idealism’1 — had lost credibility as a major explanatory and prescriptive approach in mainstream academic International Relations, particularly in the security realm, the emergence of the Democratic Peace research agenda in the late 1970s and early 1980s has done much to revive academic interest. Fundamental to the credibility and success of the Democratic Peace is its social-scientific grounding and positivistic methodologies. However, for many in the discipline, the positivistic social-scientific credentials of the research agenda means that the Democratic Peace offers a
John MacMillan Whose Democracy; Which Peace?
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singularly authoritative or objective reading of the liberal tradition. It is as if method has elevated the account of liberalism or democracy in international relations above the fray of ‘regular’, self-consciously normative or ideological contestation between different liberal or democratic positions on politics and foreign policy. This, however, is a myth, for the Democratic Peace itself presents a selective and subjective account of the liberal legacy in international relations and, cu
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