Whose Democracy; Which Peace? Contextualizing the Democractic Peace

Abstract

‘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.