Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T08:46:59.310Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Democratic Peace: Progress and Crisis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2017

Christopher Hobson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

When work on the democratic peace first emerged it contributed to the revitalization of liberal thought and represented an important contribution to International Relations (IR). Yet innovation has been replaced by stagnation. Coding and correlation are debated ad infinitum, while little attention is given to growing economic inequality, voter alienation, a decline in traditional parties, rising populism and a wide array of related trends that raise serious doubts about the health of democracies at the center of the zone of peace. Yet if democratic institutions are not functioning as they are meant to, and norms of compromise are disappearing domestically, what hope can there be that these will facilitate cooperative behavior between democracies? Rather than promoting peace, could it be that capitalism in its contemporary neoliberal form is undermining or hollowing out democracy? The static understanding of democracy adopted by this research means that such questions have been largely overlooked. In response, I focus on two major changes impacting established democracies and consider their significance for democratic peace arguments: the decline of democratic institutions and culture, as well as how neoliberalism is reshaping the relationship between democracy and capitalism. In developing this argument, I propose that the template that the democratic peace research program offers for studying the world is emblematic of—and contributing to—a troubling contracting of our political vision. An excessive concern with methodological rigor, combined with a narrow understanding of what qualifies as valid research, has resulted in a body of scholarship that is remarkably sophisticated but has surprisingly little to say about democracy and its place in the world.

Type
Articles
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , September 2017 , pp. 697 - 710
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barkawi, Tarak. 2015. “Scientific Decay.” International Studies Quarterly 59(4): 827–29.Google Scholar
Barkawi, Tarak and Laffey, Mark. 1999. “The Imperial Peace: Democracy, Force and Globalization.” European Journal of International Relations 5(4): 403–34.Google Scholar
Barkawi, Tarak and Laffey, Mark. eds. 2001. Democracy, Liberalism, and War. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.Google Scholar
Bartels, Larry. 2008. Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Berman, Sheri. 2012. “The Past and Future of Social Democracy and the Consequenecs for Democracy Promotion.” In The Conceptual Politics of Democracy Promotion, ed. Hobson, Christopher and Kurki, Milja. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Blais, André and Rubenson, Daniel. 2013. “The Source of Turnout Decline: New Values or New Contexts?” Comparative Political Studies 46(1): 95–117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bohman, James. 2006. “Beyond the Democratic Peace: An Instrumental Justification of Transnational Democracy.” Journal of Social Philosophy 37(1): 127–38.Google Scholar
Brown, Wendy. 2015. Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution. New York: Zone books.Google Scholar
Chernoff, Fred. 2004. “The Study of Democratic Peace and Progress in International Relations.” International Studies Review 6(1): 49–78.Google Scholar
Coggan, Philip. 2013. The Last Vote: The Threats to Western Democracy. London: Allen Lane.Google Scholar
Cohen, Roger. 2016. “The Death of Liberalism.” New York Times, April 14. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/14/opinion/the-death-of-liberalism.html;, accessed September 4, 2016.Google Scholar
Cole, David. 2016. “The Supreme Court’s Billion-Dollar Mistake.” New York Review of Books. Available at http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2015/01/19/citizen-united-billion-dollar-mistake/; accessed April 10, 2016.Google Scholar
Dafoe, Allan, Oneal, John R., and Russett, Bruce. 2013. “The Democratic Peace: Weighing the Evidence and Cautious Inference.” International Studies Quarterly 57(1): 201–14.Google Scholar
Della Porta, Donatella. 2013. Can Democracy Be Saved? Participation, Deliberation and Social Movements. Cambridge: Polity. Available at http://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9780745670416.Google Scholar
Flinders, Matthew. 2016. “The Problem with Democracy.” Parliamentary Affairs 69(1): 181–203.Google Scholar
Foa, Roberto Stefan and Mounk, Yascha. 2016. “The Democratic Disconnect.” Journal of Democracy 27(3): 5–17.Google Scholar
Fukuyama, Francis. 2014. “America in Decay: The Sources of Political Dysfunction.” Foreign Affairs 93(5): 5–26.Google Scholar
Gartzke, Erik. 2007. “The Capitalist Peace.” American Journal of Political Science 51(1): 166–91.Google Scholar
Geis, Anna, Brock, Lothar, and Müller, Harald, eds. 2006. Democratic Wars: Looking at the Dark Side of Democratic Peace. Basingstoke, UK; New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geis, Anna, Müller, Harald, and Schörnig, Niklas. 2013. The Militant Face of Democracy: Liberal Forces for Good. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gilens, Martin. 2012. Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Gilens, Martin and Page, Benjamin I.. 2014. “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens.” Perspectives on Politics 12(3): 564–581.Google Scholar
Gowa, Joanne. 2011. “The Democratic Peace after the Cold War.” Economics and Politics 23(2): 153–71.Google Scholar
Gray, Mark and Caul, Miki. 2000. “Declining Voter Turnout in Advanced Industrial Democracies, 1950 to 1997: The Effects of Declining Group Mobilization.” Comparative Political Studies 33(9): 1091–1122.Google Scholar
Harrison, Ewan. 2010. “The Democratic Peace Research Program and System-Level Analysis.” Journal of Peace Research 47(2): 155–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayes, Jarrod. 2012. “The Democratic Peace and the New Evolution of an Old Idea.” European Journal of International Relations 18(4): 767–91.Google Scholar
Hegre, Håvard. 2014. “Democracy and Armed Conflict.” Journal of Peace Research 51(2): 159–72.Google Scholar
Held, David. 1995. Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Hobson, Christopher. 2011. “Towards a Critical Theory of Democratic Peace.” Review of International Studies 37(4): 1903–22.Google Scholar
Hobson, Christopher. 2015. The Rise of Democracy: Revolution, War and Transformations in International Politics since 1776. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Hobson, Christopher. 2016. “Democracy: Trap, Tragedy or Crisis?” Political Studies Review, November 21. Available at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1478929916663756?journalCode=pswa.Google Scholar
Hobson, Christopher, Smith, Tony, Owen, John M., Geis, Anna, and Ish-Shalom, Piki. 2011. “Between the Theory and Practice of Democratic Peace.” International Relations 25(2): 147–84.Google Scholar
Ish-Shalom, Piki. 2013. Democratic Peace: A Political Biography. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Kenworthy, Lane and Pontusson, Jonas. 2005. “Rising Inequality and the Politic: 449–71. Available at http://www.journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1537592705050292); accessed September 6, 2016.Google Scholar
Keohane, Robert. 2015. “Perestroika and Global Politics.” Perspectives on Politics 13(2): 418–19.Google Scholar
Kurki, Milja. 2008. Causation in International Relations: Reclaiming Causal Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kurki, Milja. 2013. Democratic Futures: Revisioning Democracy Promotion. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Lake, David A. 2013. “Theory Is Dead, Long Live Theory: The End of the Great Debates and the Rise of Eclecticism in International Relations.” European Journal of International Relations 19(3): 567–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacMillan, John. 2012. “‘Hollow Promises?’ Critical Materialism and the Contradictions of the Democratic Peace.” International Theory 4(3): 331–66.Google Scholar
Mair, Peter. 2013. Ruling the Void: The Hollowing of Western Democracy. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Manent, Pierre. 2014. “The Crisis of Liberalism.” Journal of Democracy 25(1): 131–41.Google Scholar
Manin, Bernard. 1996. The Principles of Representative Government. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mann, Michael. 2005. The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mansfield, Edward D. and Snyder, Jack. 1995. “Democratization and the Danger of War.” International Security 20(1): 5–38.Google Scholar
Maoz, Zeev and Russett, Bruce. 1993. “Normative and Structural Causes of Democratic Peace, 1946–1986.” American Political Science Review 87(3): 624–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayer, Jane. 2016. Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. New York: Doubleday.Google Scholar
McDonald, Patrick J. 2007. “The Purse Strings of Peace.” American Journal of Political Science 51(3): 569–82.Google Scholar
Mearsheimer, John J. and Walt, Stephen M.. 2013. “Leaving Theory Behind: Why Simplistic Hypothesis Testing Is Bad for International Relations.” European Journal of International Relations 19(3): 427–57.Google Scholar
Moffitt, Benjamin. 2016. The Global Rise of Populism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Moffitt, Benjamin and Tormey, Simon. 2014. “Rethinking Populism: Politics, Mediatisation and Political Style.” Political Studies 62(2): 381–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mogato, Manuel. 2016. “Death Toll in Philippines’ Drug War Hits 2,000.” Reuters, August 31. Available at http://www.reuters.com/article/us-philippines-duterte-idUSKCN1151UD; accessed September 5, 2016.Google Scholar
Morlino, Leonardo. 2011. Changes for Democracy: Actors, Structures, Processes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mousseau, Michael. 2009. “The Social Market Roots of Democratic Peace.” International Security 33(4): 52–86.Google Scholar
Mousseau, Michael. 2013. “The Democratic Peace Unraveled: It’s the Economy.” International Studies Quarterly 57(1): 186–97.Google Scholar
Mousseau, Michael, Orsun, Omer, Ungerer, Jameson, and Mousseau, Demet. 2013. “Capitalism and Peace: It’s Keynes, Not Hayek.” In The Capitalist Peace: The Origins and Prospects of a Liberal Idea, ed. Schneider, Gerald and Gleditsch, Nils Petter. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Mudde, Cas. 2004. “The Populist Zeitgeist.” Government and Opposition 39(4): 542–63.Google Scholar
Mudde, Cas and Kaltwasser, Cristobal Rovira. 2012. “Populism and (Liberal) Democracy: A Framework for Analysis.” In Populism in Europe and the Americas: Threat or Corrective for Democracy?, ed. Mudde, Cas and Kaltwasser, Cristobal Rovira. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Niebuhr, Reinhold. 2011. The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Norris, Pippa. 2011. Democratic Deficit: Critical Citizens Revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
O’Donnell, Guillermo A. 2007. “The Perpetual Crises of Democracy.” Journal of Democracy 18(1): 5–11.Google Scholar
Offe, Claus. 1983. “Competitive Party Democracy and the Keynesian Welfare State: Factors of Stability and Disorganization.” Policy Sciences 15: 225–246.Google Scholar
Offe, Claus. 2011. “Crisis and Innovation of Liberal Democracy: Can Deliberation Be Institutionalised?” Czech Sociological Review 47(3): 447–72.Google Scholar
Oren, Ido. 1995. “The Subjectivity of the Democratic Peace: Changing US Perceptions of Imperial Germany.” International Security 20(2).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oren, Ido. 2016. “A Sociological Analysis of the Decline of American IR Theory.” International Studies Review 18(4): 571–596 .Google Scholar
Owen, John M. 1994. “How Liberalism Produces Democratic Peace.” International Security 19(2): 87–125.Google Scholar
Phillips, Kevin. 2002. Wealth and Democracy. New York: Broadway Books.Google Scholar
Piketty, Thomas and Saez, Emmanuel. 2014. “Inequality in the Long Run.” Science 344(6186): 838–43.Google Scholar
Polanyi, Karl. 2001. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Polity IV Project. 2014. “Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800–2014.” Available at http://www.systemicpeace.org/inscrdata.html; accessed May 10, 2015.Google Scholar
Poznansky, Michael. 2015. “Stasis or Decay? Reconciling Covert War and the Democratic Peace.” International Studies Quarterly 59(4): 815–26.Google Scholar
Rasmussen, Mikkel Vedby. 2003. The West, Civil Society and the Construction of Peace. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Ray, James Lee. 2003. “A Lakatosian View of the Democratic Peace Research Program.” In Progress in International Relations Theory: Appraising the Field, ed. Elman, Colin and Elman, Miriam Fendius. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Rosanvallon, Pierre. 2008. Counter-Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rosato, Sebastian. 2003. “The Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory.” American Political Science Review 97(4): 585–602.Google Scholar
Runciman, David. 2013. The Confidence Trap: A History of Democracy in Crisis from World War I to the Present. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Russett, Bruce. 1993. Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Russett, Bruce and Oneal, John. 2001. Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Saez, Emmanuel and Zucman, Gabriel. 2016. “Wealth Inequality in the United States since 1913: Evidence from Capitalized Income Tax Data.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 131(2): 519–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scheuerman, William. 2001. “Liberal Democracy and the Empire of Speed.” Polity 34(1): 41–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schneider, Gerald and Gleditsch, Nils Petter, eds. 2010. “Special Issue: A Capitalist Peace?” International Interactions 36(2).Google Scholar
Schram, Sanford. 2012. “The Artful Study of Not Being Governed: Better Political Science for a Better World.” Common Knowledge 18(3): 528–37.Google Scholar
Skelton, David. 2011. “Government of the Technocrats, by the Technocrats, for the Technocrats.” NewStatesman. Available at http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/11/european-greece-technocrats; accessed September 13, 2016.Google Scholar
Skocpol, Theda and Hertel-Fernandez, Alexander. 2016. “The Koch Network and Republican Party Extremism.” Perspectives on Politics 14(3): 681–99.Google Scholar
Skocpol, Theda and Jacobs, Lawrence R.. 2012. “Accomplished and Embattled: Understanding Obama’s Presidency.” Political Science Quarterly 127(1): 1–24.Google Scholar
Smith, Tony. 1994. America’s Mission: The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy in the Twentieth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Tony. 2007. A Pact with the Devil: Washington’s Bid for World Supremacy and the Betrayal of the American Promise. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Solt, Frederick. 2008. “Economic Inequality and Democratic Political Engagement.” American Journal of Political Science 52(1): 48–60.Google Scholar
Steele, Brent J. 2010. “Of ‘Witch’s Brews’ and Scholarly Communities: The Dangers and Promise of Academic Parrhesia.” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 23(1): 49–68.Google Scholar
Sterling-Folker, Jennifer. 2015. “All Hail to the Chief: Liberal IR Theory in the New World Order.” International Studies Perspectives 16(1): 40–49.Google Scholar
Streeck, Wolfgang. 2014. Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Tormey, Simon. 2014. “The Contemporary Crisis of Representative Democracy.” Democratic Theory 1(2): 104–12.Google Scholar
Ungerer, Jameson Lee. 2012. “Assessing the Progress of the Democratic Peace Research Program.” International Studies Review 14(1): 1–31.Google Scholar
Zakaria, Fareed. 2013. “Can America Be Fixed? The New Crisis of Democracy.” Foreign Affairs 92(1). Available at http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138474/fareed-zakaria/can-america-be-fixed; accessed February 1, 2015.Google Scholar