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Democratism: Towards an explanatory approach to international politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2018

Hans Agné Open the ORCID record for Hans Agné [Opens in a new window]
Hans Agné*
Affiliation:
Associate Professor, Political Science, Stockholm University
*
*Correspondence to: Hans Agné, Department of Political Science, Stockholm University, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden. Author’s email: [email protected]
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Abstract

International politics has often been viewed as a brutal place where might trumps right and where, as a consequence, questions of democracy are irrelevant to ask. In the last decades, however, scholars and political leaders have increasingly suggested that elements of democracy exist in governance beyond individual states. If this is so, how does democracy beyond the state shape international politics? This article suggests conceptual preliminaries for theorising consequences of democracy beyond the state in general and their implications for problems of peace and conflict in particular. The purpose is twofold: first, to begin reconstructing existing normative democratic theory into an explanatory perspective sensitive to international politics; second, to indicate how this new perspective is able to explain empirical observations pertaining to conflict and cooperation among states; international institutions; foreign policies; human rights protection; and the violence of transnational terrorist networks.

Keywords

DemocracyLegitimacyGlobal DemocracyExplanatory TheoryNormative TheoryConflictForeign PolicyInternational InstitutionsGlobalisationCivil SocietyConstituent Power
Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 44 , Issue 3 , July 2018 , pp. 547 - 569
Copyright
© British International Studies Association 2018 

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References

1 Conceptualisations of democracy beyond the state include those offered by, for example, Held, David, Democracy and the Global Order (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 1995)Google Scholar; Gould, Carol, Globalizing Democracy and Human Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hardt, Michael and Negri, Antonio, Multitude (New York: Penguin Books, 2005); Bohman, James, Democracy Across Borders (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007)Google Scholar; Dryzek, John S. and Niemeyer, Simon, ‘Discursive representation’, American Political Science Review, 102:4 (2008), pp. 481–493 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Macdonald, Terry, Global Stakeholder Democracy: Power and Representation Beyond Liberal States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Archibugi, Daniele, The Global Commonwealth of Citizens (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Empirical observations thereof are suggested, for example, by Zweifel, Thomas D., International Organizations and Democracy (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner, 2006)Google Scholar; Smith, Jackie, Social Movements for Global Democracy (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2008)Google Scholar; Steffek, Jens, Kissling, Claudia, and Nanz, Patrizia, Civil Society Participation in European and Global Governance: A Cure for the Democratic Deficit? (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Scholte, Jan Aart (ed.), Building Global Democracy? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Levi, Lucio, Finizio, Giovanni, and Vallinoto, Nicola (eds), The Democratization of International Institutions (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2014)Google Scholar; Kuyper, Jonathan W., ‘Systemic representation: Democracy, deliberation, and non-electoral representatives’, American Political Science Review, 110:2 (2016), pp. 308–324 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A related literature addresses the discint topic of how international politics affects democracy in domestic politics; see, for example, Kaiser, Karl, ‘Transnational relations as a threat to the democratic process’, International Organization, 25:3 (1971), pp. 706–720 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Agné, Hans, Democracy Reconsidered: The Prospects of its Theory and Practice During Internationalisation – Britain, France, Sweden and the EU (Stockholm, Department of Political Science, 2004)Google Scholar; Keohane, Robert, Macedo, Stephen, and Moravcsik, Andrew, ‘Democracy-enhancing multilateralism’, International Organization, 63:1 (2009), pp. 1–30 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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72 Arcbibugi, The Global Commonwealth of Citizens.

73 By specifying its general concept of structure, research guided by democratism may subsume arguments about the power-distribution in widely different institutions, for example, a formal parliament on the one hand and informal communication systems on the other, and compare their different effects.

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100 Mill, Considerations on Representative Government.

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107 But couldn’t the lower conflict level in the Iraq war be explained more conventionally by the greater power preponderance of the US in that case (for example, Geller, Daniel S., ‘Power differentials and war in rival dyads’, International Studies Quarterly, 37:2 (1993), pp. 173–193)CrossRefGoogle Scholar? To some extent, but not entirely. What a power preponderance theory does not explain is the seemingly stronger preference of the US to end the war in Iraq. The US did not reach its aim neither in Iraq (to create a liberal democracy and to eliminate sources of terrorism in the region), nor in Vietnam (to hinder the establishment of a communist regime in the country). It did, however, pretend to have reached a victory much more quickly in Iraq (on 1 May 2003, forty days after launching the attack). Hence, democratism, in contrast to power preponderance theory, is interesting by potentially explaining two seemingly interdependent matters: conflict levels (as indicated by casualties) and perceived war costs (as indicated by early declarations of victory and readiness to pull out despite not having accomplished the aims of war).

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110 Barack Obama, interviewed in Asharq Al-Awsat (13 May, 2015), available at: {http://english.aawsat.com/2015/05/article55343422/obama-we-are-prepared-to-use-all-elements-of-our-power-to-secure-our-interests-in-the-middle-east}.

92 As published in the Human Security Report 2009/2010: The Causes of Peace and the Shrinking Costs of War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). Original Data Source: UCDP/PRIO, available at: {http://www.hsrgroup.org/human-security-reports/20092010/text.aspx}.

96 As published in the Human Security Report 2009/2010. Data Sources: PRIO; UCDP/HSRP Dataset; UN World Population Prospects.

97 Data retrieved from Pieter Willets, ‘The Growth in the Number of NGOs in Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations’ (2015), available at: {http://www.staff.city.ac.uk/p.willetts/NGOS/NGO-GRPH.HTM#data}.