7 - From the Brink to ‘Triumph’: The Twentieth Century

Summary

Either the world will be governed by the ideology of modern democracy … or it will be ruled by the laws of force.

Adolf Hitler (1925) (Hitler 1939: 148)

The great dilemma which modern European democracy is facing today is: totalitarian fascist and national socialist authoritarianism on one side, and Marxist socialism and communism on the other side. How democracy will try to save its existence, accepting in this dilemma a new, modern shape– that is today its life-and- death question. This question is almost insoluble– and still, it can be resolved and it must be resolved.

Edvard Beneš (1939: 16)

THE FOUNDATIONS OF DEMOCRACY IN INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY

In The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Quentin Skinner suggests that ‘the clearest sign that a society has entered into the self-conscious possession of a new concept is … that a new vocabulary comes to be generated, in terms of which the concept is then articulated and discussed’ (Skinner 1978: x). An equivalent process has been explored thus far, examining the way the concept of democracy came to be articulated in modern international society. With the peace settlement at Versailles, ‘a new set of words, like democracy, freedom, and self-determination,’ Martin Wight notes, ‘acquired general currency, replacing the older set of words’ (Wight 1972: 27). Popular sovereignty was embedded in international society, and democratic government had come to be recognised as a legitimate form of constitution. It is for these reasons that the Versailles settlement is widely recognised as a foundational moment in the development of democracy in international politics (Armstrong 1993; Clark 2005; Clark 2009; Franck 1992; Hinsley 1982; Mayall 2000a; Mayall 2000b; Navari 2007; Wight 1972). Ian Clark accurately observes the significance of this moment: ‘It is not possible fully to appreciate the Versailles architecture without a clear focus on this cardinal principle of democracy as a proper concern of international society’ (Clark 2005: 116).

Democracy's position after Versailles was both central and ambiguous. James Mayall subtly conveys this point when noting that the settlement did not entrench ‘democracy itself, but democratic values, as the standard of legitimacy within international society’ (Mayall 2000b). The defeat of the Central Powers completed a process that was already well underway in the second half of the nineteenth century: popular sovereignty– democracy as forma imperii– supplanted monarchy as the foundation on which members of international society would be based.