We were discussing the theory of democratic peace in class today. And however I almost fell asleep - partying all night and then listening to a professor who likes to hear himself talk appeared not to be the perfect combination – I thought of this topic as very interesting. So why not write about it and find out what my fellow bloggers think?
Compared with their actions toward other kind of states, democracies in the modern world are unlikely to engage in militarized disputes with each other. When they do get into disputes with each other, they are less likely to let the disputes escalate. They rarely fight each other even at low levels of lethal violence, and never (or almost never) go to war against each other.
So if we think about it, this means that the more democratic each state is, the more peaceful their relations are likely to be. And the more democracies there are in the world, the wider the zone of peace will be. Does this then mean that we, the ‘democratic’ Western World, have the right and maybe even the duty to make authoritarian states democratic? Do we have to “fight them, beat them, and then make them democratic?”
The Bush Administration was the first government who really declared itself as being prepared to put this statement into action. Military intervention of Iraq and the subsequent war was said to be legitimized by the intention to expand the zone of peace.
But do we have the right to claim that ‘we’ are democracies and ‘they’ are not? And is the Western type of democracy first desirable, and second universalisable? Can it and should it be implemented worldwide?
Hi Hanna - well, I do think the democratic peace theory has held up fairly well over the years, even though there is still a lot of debate about why democracies tend not to fight other democracies. One argument is that the world’s democracies—or at least Western-style liberal democracies—tend to be culturally similar. Another is that the governments in these countries have more input from their citizens, and that ordinary people stand to lose more from war. Either way, forcibly “converting” countries to democracy won’t work, because democracy-promotion has such a bad record at creating sustainable, deeply-rooted democratic systems. Bush and co. were apparently motivated by the democratic peace thesis, but I don’t think they really understood it!
Excellent topic, Hanna. I’ve been mulling over this a lot lately.
I definitely don’t think democracy can be forced. In fact, I think it has a negative effect since forcing countries to adopt democracy usually only results in them adopting the “facade” of voting and elections. What makes a democracy what it is (or what Westerners define it to be) are the underlying institutions, but these take a long time to change. I also feel that just because it has worked for us, doesn’t mean that it should work for everyone in the same way since, as Elsje points out, Western-style democracies are culturally and institutionally similar.
Oh… you go right at the toughest questions… I think in the west we love to understand ourselves as universal individuals, and not cultural beings, as the rest of the world. Therefor we are very often blind towards the tribal qualities of our own societies, and when we try to export “democracy”, what we actually try to impose is something different…
What do I want to say? That all countries deserve to be democratic, but that they will not look like the west when doing so.
Thanks for your comments! I think we have similar opinions about this topic. And Daniel summarized it very well in his last sentence, so thank you!