Democratization and foreign policy change: the case of the Russian Federation

Abstract

Theorists of international politics have recently observed an apparent anomaly: democracies do not seem to fight each other.See, e.g., Michael Doyle, ‘Liberalism and World Politics’, American Political Science Review, 80:4 (1986), pp. 1151-69; Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World (Princeton, 1993); Rudolph Rummel, ‘Libertarian Propositions on Violence Between and Within Nations’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 29:3 (1985), pp. 419-55; David Lake, ‘Powerful Pacifists: Democratic States and War’, American Political Science Review, 86:1 (Mar. 1992), pp. 24-37; Clifton Morgan, ‘Democracy and War: Reflections on the Literature’, International Interactions, 18:3 (1993), pp. 197-204; John M. Owen, ‘How Liberalism Produces Democratic Peace’, International Security, 19:2 (Fall 1994), pp. 87-125. It should be emphasized, however, that some analysts question the validity of the ‘democratic peace’ argument. See, e.g., Christopher Layne, ‘Kant or Cant: The Myth of Democratic Peace’, International Security, 19:2 (Fall 1994), pp. 5-49; David Raymond Cohen, ‘Pacific Unions: A Reappraisal of the Theory that “Democracies do not Go to War with Each Other”’, Review of International Studies, 20:3 (1994), pp. 207-23. For the response of the ‘democratic peace’ theorists to these criticisms, see Bruce Russett, ‘The Democratic Peace: “And Yet it Moves”’, International Security, 19:4 (Spring 1995), pp. 164-75; Bruce Russett and James Lee Ray, ‘Why the Democratic-Peace Proposition Lives’, Review of International Studies, 21:3 (1995), pp. 319-23. Increasingly part of conventional wisdom, this proposition has been mechanically converted into a policy prescription, according to which the process of democratization invariably exerts positive effects on international security. Thus, for example, in his 1994 State of the Union address President Clinton declared that, ‘the best strategy to ensure our security and to build a durable peace is to supprt the advance of democracy elsewhere’.‘Excerpts from President Clinton's State of the Union Message’, New York Times, 26 January 1994, p. A17. Similarly, Shimon Peres, when Israeli Foreign Minister, announced that Israel should ‘encourage’ democratization among its neighbours in order to strengthen the process of peace settlememt in the Middle East.Cited in Cohen, ‘Pacific Unions’, p. 223.