Redefining ‘security’ has recently become something of a cottage industry.E.g. Lester Brown, Redefining National Security, Worldwatch Paper No. 14 (Washington, DC, 1977); Jessica Tuchman Matthews, ‘Redefining Security’, Foreign Affairs, 68 (1989), pp. 162-77; Richard H. Ullman, ‘Redefining Security’, International Security, 8 (1983), pp. 129-53; Joseph J. Romm, Defining National Security (New York, 1993); J. Ann Tickner, ‘Re-visioning Security’, in Ken Booth and Steve Smith (eds.), International Relations Theory Today (Oxford, 1995), pp. 175-97; Ken Booth, ‘Security and Emancipation’, Review of International Studies, 17 (1991), pp. 313-26; Martin Shaw, ‘There Is No Such Thing as Society: Beyond Individualism and Statism in International Security Studies’, Review of International Studies, 19 (1993), pp. 159-75; John Peterson and Hugh Ward, ‘Coalitional Instability and the New Multidimensional Politics of Security: A Rational Choice Argument for US-EU Cooperation’, European Journal of International Relations, 1 (1995), pp. 131-56; ten articles on security and security studies in Arms Control, 13, (1992), pp. 463-544; and Graham Allison and Gregory F. Treverton (eds.), Rethinking America's Security: Beyond Cold War to New World Order (New York, 1992). Most such efforts, however, are more concerned with redefining the policy agendas of nation-states than with the concept of security itself. Often, this takes the form of proposals for giving high priority to such issues as human rights, economics, the environment, drug traffic, epidemics, crime, or social injustice, in addition to the traditional concern with security from external military threats. Such proposals are usually buttressed with a mixture of normative arguments about which values of which people or groups of people should be protected, and empirical arguments as to the nature and magnitude of threats to those values. Relatively little attention is devoted to conceptual issues as such. This article seeks to disentangle the concept of security from these normative and empirical concerns, however legitimate they may be.

War is ... an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will

—Clausewitz, On WarCarl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and tr. Michael Howard and Peter Paret, rev. edn (Princeton, NJ 1984), p. 75.

All politicians and national leaders are instinctive adherents of the formulation by Clausewitz cited above, even if few of them have actually read On War. Uninterested in — and often impatient with — military detail, fearful of casualties and expense, they are primarily concerned with the political result which a successful military action will bring, and often find professional realism about the efficacy of military power tiresome. In particular, the concept of military force exercised or threatened to bring about the political collapse of a state, or the destruction of the morale of its people, or even a modification in the policies of its government, is a habitual policy of national leaders, and has been for many years a commonplace in that grey area where the concerns of politicians and military men overlap. In this article, I show by historical example how difficult the use of military power in this way has been, and how unclear it is whether there is any straightforward way in which military force can be calibrated and employed, or threatened, for political ends.

What are the prospects for conflict and cooperation (and ultimately for war and peace) now that the Cold War has ended? The various theoretical perspectives come up with rather different answers. Waltzian Neorealism diagnoses business as usual: anarchy prevails; states will continue to have to fend for themselves. With the current transition from bipolarity toward multipolarity we must even expect more, not less, international conflict. Liberals are much more optimistic: international institutions and liberal democracy can pave the way for significant progress toward a peaceful world. Constructivists are also optimistic: states can develop cooperative relationships; anarchy is not a given systemic constraint. Cooperative anarchies are thus a possibility. In this article, I argue that there is an important element missing from the current debate about prospects for international conflict and cooperation. That element concerns the nature of contemporary statehood. Internation relations theory has tended to treat states as fixed, ‘like units’.This is the well-known formulation by Kenneth Waltz: ‘so long as anarchy endures, states remain like units’. ‘To call states “like units” is to say that each state is like all other states in being an autonomous political unit’. ‘We abstract from every attribute of states except their capabilities.’ Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA, 1979), pp. 93, 95, 99. They are not, of course, and the difference between the main types of statehood amounts to much more than the variation in capabilities noted by Realists and the absence or presence of liberal democracy as analyzed by liberals. There are three different main types of state in the present international system, and an identification of them is necessary in order to appreciate current and future patterns of cooperation and conflict.

For a long time the intractable nature of the Jerusalem problem ensured that it was persistently swept under the rug in Middle East peace negotiations. Indeed, the widespread belief has been that the dispute over the city’s future political status cannot be settled until most other issues in the Israeli–Arab conflict have been resolved. Under the terms of the Oslo Declaration of Principles signed in September 1993, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) agreed to settle the thorny issue of Jerusalem in the final stage of permanent status negotiations.The Oslo Declaration of Principles, based on the secret Israel–PLO talks in Norway, established a staged approach and a timetable for reaching a permanent settlement. First, the interim negotiations would result in Israeli military withdrawal from Jericho and the Gaza Strip, the transfer of power to a nominated Palestinian National Authority, and the beginning of a five-year transitional period of Palestinian self-government under this Authority. Secondly, the Palestinians would elect a Council and achieve early ‘empowerment’ (self-government) in five spheres in the rest of the West Bank. Thirdly, the permanent status negotiations — to cover Jerusalem, Jewish settlements, refugees, security arrangements and borders, among other issues — would commence by the start of the third year of the interim period, and the resulting final settlement would take effect at the end of the interim phase. The negotiations leading to the signing of the Gaza-Jericho Agreement in May 1994 achieved the first objective. The signing of the Israel-Palestinian Interim Agreement (also termed Oslo II and the Taba Agreement) in September 1995 set the stage for a partial implementation of the second goal: Palestinians gained full control over six main West Bank towns and administrative responsibility for almost the entire Palestinian West Bank population. A Palestinian Council was elected in January 1996.

When Churchill became Prime Minister and Anthony Eden Foreign Secretary in 1951 they had to try to adjust Britain's world role to match her capabilities, while confronting a wide range of problems. Britain faced a balance-of-payments crisis and troublesome questions from the USA about both dollar aid and trade with Communists. In the Middle East the nationalization of the massive Anglo-Iranian Oil Company operations by the Iranian leader Mossadeq was another difficult issue: Britain emphasized the need to coerce the Iranians in order to safeguard her economic interests, whereas the Americans saw Cold War dangers in pressurizing Iran. They feared British policy would destabilize Iran and create opportunities for a Communist takeover. In Egypt also, nationalist forces caused a division between the two allies, with the USA evincing more caution for fear of being tainted with colonialism and thereby alienating Third World countries from the Western camp. In Europe, Britain dragged her feet on integration and the creation of a European Army, which made more difficult the agreed aim of rearming Germany. In NATO the British resented the appointment of an American as the Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic (SACLANT); and they worried about America's strategic plans and general stance towards the Soviets, and about the atom bomb regarding both its possible use and the breakdown of wartime Anglo-US cooperation. There were American doubts about the integrity of Britain's security after the Klaus Fuchs spy case and her failure to make reforms suggested by the Americans, and there were relatively minor disagreements on such issues as the choice of a standard rifle for NATO and the location of NATO headquarters. The most immediate trouble-spot for Anglo-US relations, however, was the Far East where there were differences about the Korean War, the People's Republic of China (PRC), the Nationalist Chinese on Formosa, and the Japanese Peace Treaty.

All history is tendentious, and if it were not tendentious nobody would write it.R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, rev. edn, ed. Jan Van Der Dussen (Oxford, 1994), p. 398.

History is therefore never history, but history-for.C. Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (La Pensée sauvage) (London, 1972), p. 257. This is reminiscent of Robert Cox's much-quoted statement that '[t]heory is always for someone and for some purpose'. See his 'Social Forces, States and World Order: Beyond International Relations Theory', Millennium, 10 (1981), pp. 126-55, at p. 128.

Introduction

War is a multi-causal phenomenon, not only in the oft-noted sense that a variety of factors contribute to the making of a war, but also in the perhaps less obvious sense that there are multifarious casual paths to war. Some of the more idiographically minded are adamant, therefore, that 'the only investigation of the causes of war that is intellectually respectable is that of the unique origins ... of the particular past wars'.A. Seabury and A. Codevilla, War: Ends and Means (New York, 1989), p. 50; emphasis in original. And even one of the more nomothetically minded has conceded, some dissentign voices notwithstanding, that 'the hope that there are a few necessary conditions that must always be present in order for war to occur is probably not going to be fulfilled'.J. A. Vasquez, The War Puzzle (Cambridge, 1993), p. 48. For a dissenting voice, see B. Bueno de Mesquita, The War Trap (New Haven, CT, 1981). Vasquez, however, goes on to suggest three necessary conditions of 'world wars'. For a brief, critical discussion of Bueno de Mesquita and Vasquez, see my On the Causes of War, pp. 74-9.

Raymond Aron is a neglected theorist, at least if we understand by ‘neglected’ a theorist whose theory no longer engenders critical scholarly debate. More often than not, students of international politics either ignore Aron altogether or wrongly subsume him under the rubric of classical Realist. This is not to deny points of agreement between Aron and theorists like Carr and Morgenthau, but merely to indicate that many scholars fail to articulate and to take into consideration the numerous fundamental differences between Aron and other classical Realists. Aron’s Peace and War is probably ‘more quoted than read’ today, and it is doubtful whether more than a handful of students seriously study this monumental work at all.J. Hall, Diagnoses of Our Time: Six Views on Our Social Condition (London, 1981), p. 164.

While the euphoric predictions of a ‘New World Order’ and the ‘End of History’ have been buried in the alleys of Sarajevo and the killing fields of Rwanda and Chechnya, the end of the Cold War still constitutes the primary prism through which world affairs in general, and Middle Eastern events in particular, are observed. When in 1991 an American-led international coalition under the auspices of the United Nations expelled Iraq from the emirate of Kuwait, invaded and annexed six months earlier, this move was at once lauded as a confirmation of the New World Order, based on respect for and enforcement of international law, and castigated as an imperialist ploy by the United States, now ‘the only remaining superpower’, to impose its hegemony over the Persian Gulf and the Arab world as a whole. Likewise, the first-ever agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, signed on the White House lawn on 13 September 1993, was widely interpreted as a corollary of the end of the Cold War. To its proponents the accord represented the immeasurable potential for coexistence and cooperation generated by the end of superpower global rivalry; to its detractors, a humiliating pax Americana imposed on two disorientated and subservient clients.

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.

International Relations scholars have drawn on history ever since the field first formed in the early twentieth century. They have trawled the beds of the past, far and near, to probe, substantiate, and analogize in the pursuit of theories about what have been taken to be the main pillars of contemporary international life: states and the institutions and systems that form around their interaction. Even if states as we now know them did not exist in a given period, one could still mine insights from the interaction of any relatively autonomous political units, from city-states to tribal bands.See, e.g., Marcus Fischer, ‘Feudal Europe, 800–1300: Communal Discourse and Conflictual Practices’, International Organization, 46 (1992), pp. 427–66; and Adam Watson, The Evolution of International Society (London, 1992).

The boat was leaky, the sea heavy, and the shore a long way off. It took all the efforts of the one man to row, and of the other to bail. If either had ceased both would have drowned. At one point the rower threatened the bailer that if he did not bail with more energy he would throw him overboard; to which the bailer made the obvious reply that, if he did, he (the rower) would certainly drown also.

Sir Norman Angell (1914)

Introduction

While most European Union (EU)I use the term EU when referring to events after November 1993 and when discussing the general history of the Union, but I reserve the usage 'European Community' (EC) for specific occurrences before the enactment of the Treaty on European Union in November 1993. scholars agree that international economic interdependence is a key variable in understanding politics between states, only a small number of studies have recognized the impact of interdependence on politics within states. Traditionally, scholars have been concerned with the effects of interdependence on states' external autonomy and have focused on the limitations that increased levels of interdependence impose on states' foreign policies.The classic piece being Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Jr, Power and Interdependence (Boston, MA, 1977). More recent scholarship, however, has suggested that the effects of rising interdependence also manifest themselves domestically.See, e.g., Peter Gourevitch, Politics in Hard Times: Comparative Responses to International Economic Crisis (Ithaca, NY, 1986); and Helen V. Milner, Resisting Protectionism: Global Industries and the Politics of International Trade (Princeton, 1988). In scholarship on international organizations, for example, it has been argued that international organizations increasingly shape the domestic policy choices of states and have lasting implications for executives' autonomy.Andrew P. Cortell and James W. Davis, Jr, 'International Institutions and Domestic Politics: Structure, Interest and Agency', unpublished ms., University of Pittsburgh and Columbia University, 1995; and Vivien A. Schmidt, 'Upscaling Business and Downsizing Government: France in the New European Community', paper presented at American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, 2-5 September 1993. More specifically, it has been suggested in the context of the EU that membership has 'strengthened' the domestic autonomy of governments.Andrew Moravcsik, 'Why the European Community Strengthens the State: Domestic Politics and International Cooperation', Center for European Studies, Harvard University, Working Paper Series No. 52 (1994).

Territorial secession and dissolution of empire means a challenge to the established system of states. How are the criteria for recognition of new states worked out? How is the gatekeeping to statehood performed? We shall sort out the answers by putting the new post-Cold War challenge into historical perspective. It is not only a question of changing criteria of entry to the system of states, but also one of a change in the state system whereby the quest for ‘criteria of admission’ became meaningful. The question of ‘gatekeeping’ is therefore intrinsically linked up with the modern evolution of the state system as such. The article is structured in a way that will specify this linkage historically.

1. Theory and the application of hegemonic power

The idea of hegemony, in the general sense in which it has been employed by scholars of international relations and historians since the 1970s, has been intended to deepen understanding of the behaviour of states possessing characteristics that qualify the states as hegemons and the effect of that behaviour upon the international system. But the lengthy debate over hegemony has failed to characterize adequately the distinction between hegemonic power and its use by policy-makers in the hegemonic state. Analyses of the role of hegemonic states in the international system that seek to explain the rise and fall of hegemons mechanistically, such as the theory of hegemonic stability in its various permutations,Charles P. Kindleberger, The World in Depression, 1929–1939 (Berkeley, CA, 1973; Stephen D. Krasner, ‘State Power and the Structure of International Trade’, World Politics, 28:3 (1976) pp. 317–43; Robert O. Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge, 1981); Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony (Princeton, 1984); Duncan Snidal, ‘The Limits of Hegemonic Stability’, International Organization 39:4 (1985), pp. 579–614. have not explained successfully either the behaviour of policy-makers in the governments of hegemonic states or the variety of resulting effects upon the hegemon and the international system within which it operates.Conybeare’s theory of the tariff-setting behaviour of large and small states, for example, by Conybeare’s own admission fails to explain the behaviour of the two most important trading powers over the period that he considers, Britain and the United States whilst hegemons. See John A. C. Conybeare, Trade Wars: The Theory and Practice of International Commercial Rivalry (New York, 1987), pp. 22–7, 44–5, 272–6. Hegemonic stability theory has paid too little attention to the process of policy-making in the hegemonic state. What makes hegemony a useful characterization for discussion and analysis (separate from the more general analysis of ‘large’ economies or ‘powerful’ states) is that hegemonic states possess a combination of types of power resources that, insofar as that power is used, allows hegemonic states to affect the international system in ways that other, merely large states cannot. This makes the distinction between power and its use, as well as the question of awareness of power by policy-makers, more important with respect to hegemons than to other states.

Sovereign insiders and minority outsiders

The ‘problem of minorities’, with its numerous implications for both international theory and practice, has been a significant issue in international society for centuries. It has constituted an ongoing friction between states, a pretext for separatism, irredentism and intervention, and a direct and indirect cause of local and general wars.Among the best works which examine various aspects of the ‘problem of minorities’ are the following: I. Bagley, General Principles and Problems in the International Protection of Minorities (Geneva, 1950); I. Claude, National Minorities: An International Problem (Cambridge, MA, 1955); G. Gotlieb, Nation Against State (New York, 1993); W. Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship (Oxford, 1995); J. Laponce, The Protection of Minorities (Berkeley, CA, 1960); C. Macartney, Nation States and National Minorities (London, 1934); J. Mayall, Nationalism and International Society (Cambridge, 1990); H. Miall (ed.), Minority Rights in Europe (London, 1994); D. Moynihan, Pandaemonium; Ethnicity in International Politics (Oxford, 1993); and P. Thornberry, International Law and the Rights of Minorities (Oxford, 1991). Why?

The obsolescence of war in the relations between the leading industrial powers, and the declining significance of national sovereignty in the context of globalization are frequently cited as key indicators of the steady decline of the Westphalian era.For an insightful overview, see J. Richardson, ‘The End of Geopolitics?’, in R. Leaver and J. Richardson (eds.), Charting the Post-Cold War (Boulder, CO, 1993). The transformation of world politics has encouraged the formations of new linkages between the study of change in international relations and the normative consideration of alternative principles of world politics. Imagining new forms of political community has emerged as a major enterprise in the contemporary theory of the state and international relations.W. Connolly, ‘Democracy and Territoriality’, in M. Ringrose and A. J. Lerner (eds.), Reimagining the Nation (Buckingham, 1993); D. Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Global Governance(Cambridge, 1995); W. Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community and the Culture (Oxford, 1989); A. Linklater, ‘Community’, in A. Danchev (ed.), Fin de Siècle: The Meaning of the Twentieth Century (London, 1995); and R. B. J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge, 1993). In this context, E. H. Carr’s writings on the crisis of world politics in the first part of the twentieth century acquire a relevance for contemporary debates which his reputation for Realism has served to distort. His writings contain a striking analysis of the changing nature of the modern state and the possibility of new forms of political association. Carr’s observations about these subjects are as profound as they are inspiring, and they are rich in their significance for the contemporary theory and practice of international relations. They make significant contributions in three areas: the empirical analysis of the transformation of the modern state, especially but not only in Europe; the embryonic but increasingly sophisticated normative analysis of how the nation-state ought to evolve, and what it ought to become; and the evolving discussion of how the study of internation relations might be reformed to tackle the dominant moral and political questions of the epoch. These questions are concerned above all else with the metamorphosis of political community.

In the past, the key question about humanitarian intervention has been: if governments violate the basic human rights of their citizens, should other governments intervene forcibly to remedy the situation? Since the end of the Cold War the key question has been: if internal conflicts cause unacceptable human suffering, should the international community develop collective mechanisms for preventing or alleviating it?

Theory and morality

All history is the history of human consciousness.

To say such a thing is not merely to take a certain view of the metaphysics of history or of the epistemology of historiography - aligning oneself, perhaps, with R. G. Collingwood.R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford, 1946), p. 305. In An Autobiography (London, 1939), Collingwood said: 'My life's work ... has been in the main an attempt to bring about a rapprochement between philosophy and history' (p. 77). May greater success attend our efforts to reconcile philosophy and international studies! To say such a thing is itself a significant event within the history of human consciousness, an event whose ironical power is centred in the word 'is'. And that is really all I want to talk about this evening. The word 'is' - and the awful moral responsibility which rests on the shoulders of those of us who are masters of the word Is. Let us call ourselves isarchs, the ruling-class of Istopia. Let us call ourselves the Wizards of Is.

Research output on European integration was once likened by Puchala to the story of the blind men and the elephant. Explanations tend to be similar to a ‘blind man’s account’ of the colossal creature, i.e., fragmentary and impressionistic.For the original analogy, see D. Puchala, ‘Of Blind Men, Elephants and International Integration’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 3 (1972), pp. 267–84. We agree with arguments that this analogy is still valid today.In a recent paper, Haaland-Matlary suggests that the current state of research on European integration can still be described with reference to Puchala’s metaphor. See J. Haaland-Matlary, ‘Integration Theory and International Relations Theory: What Does the Elephant Look Like Today and How Should It Be Studied?’, paper submitted to the 2nd ECSA World Conference on ‘Federalism, Subsidiarity and Democracy in the European Union’, Brussels, 5–6 May 1994. In this context, not only have conventional state-centric approaches failed to come to terms with the dynamics and policy-making of a regional integration scheme that has proved dynamic and cumulative; but society-centric approaches such as functionalism/neofunctionalism have also been frustrated by the resilience of the European state within an ongoing process of integration. A recent attempt to transcend these shortcomings, the policy networks approach, has attracted significant interest.For a discussion on the origins and relevance of the policy networks approach, see R. A. W. Rhodes and D. Marsh, ‘Policy Networks in British Politics: A Critique of Existing Approaches’, in D. Marsh and R. A. W. Rhodes (eds.), Policy Networks in British Government (Oxford, 1992), pp. 1–26. For the application of the model to EU policy-making, see J. Peterson, ‘The European Technology Community: Policy Networks in a Supranational Setting’, in Marsh and Rhodes (eds.), Policy Networks, pp. 226–48; and V. Schneider et al., ‘Corporate Actor Networks in European Policy Making: Harmonising Telecommunications Policy’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 4 (1994), pp. 473–98. Although it attempts to examine the integration process and EU policy-making on the basis of a proxy to state–society relations (i.e., policy networks consisting of public and private agents), this strength is overshadowed by two weaknesses. First, its findings are inevitably partial/sectoral and therefore sacrifice the wood for the trees. Second, it tends to provide an essentially descriptive account of how societal actors influence the dynamics of integration and EU policy-making.

The Imperfect Is Our Paradise

Wallace Stevens

1. Introduction

One significant consequence of the subsidence of positivism as the dominant methodology of the social sciences has been the strong emergence of an emancipatory conception of international relations. Reisisting pedestrian calls 'to define one's terms', let us rather try to be more useful and characterize the general idea behind it in terms of its aim. The aim of any emancipatory international relations is to reveal to subjects who continue to suffer economically, politically, socially, psychologically, etc., not only that their condition is based on false beliefs but that in learning why such conditions came about, they will acquire the motivation and other instruments to eliminate them. Let us call any such conception, with some considerable trepidation of misunderstanding, 'an emancipatory conception of international relations'. Since we can, under the same rubric, further distinguish classical Marxism, critical theory, post-structuralism and feminist international relations, we evidently must acknowledge that an emancipatory conception of international relations is not all of a piece. The subjects who are picked out by the emancipatory theory may be working class, or women or society's marginal people, but, whomever the subject, the theories addressed to them share the liberatory idea that there is something drastically wrong with the way human life is lived on this planet, and that, more importantly, people live in certain ways because they have an erroneous understanding of what their individual and collective existence ought to consist of which can, and should, be changed.

The fact that democracies seldom fight other democracies has been explained monadically — there is something about democratic institutions that constrains decision-makers — and dyadically — there are normative sentiments shared by democracies that make their conflicts less probable in the first place and less likely to escalate when they do occur. The problem is that empirical analyses rarely support the contention that less authoritarian states are discernibly less likely to initiate wars. Moreover, the presence or absence of normative ties between democracies has proven difficult to measure directly. Even more problematic is the tendency to pursue regime type explanations as if regime type arguments, in either their monadic or dyadic manifestations, are likely to be necessary and sufficient. While no one explicitly argues that they are necessary and sufficient, the systematic assessment of competing explanations (regime type versus alternatives) is still very much in its infancy. Not only is it fair to say that we do not know for sure what it is about regime type that restrains conflict within some dyads; we also do not know how much relative explanatory credit to give to regime type.Arguments and evidence on the democracy-war generalization may be found in Quincy Wright, A Study of War (Chicago 1942/65); Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace (Indianapolis, 1957; Dean Babst, ‘Elective Governments — A Force for Peace?’, The Wisconsin Sociologist, 3 (1964), pp. 9-14; Peter Wallensteen, Structure and War: On International Relations, 1920-1968 (Stockholm, 1973); R. J. Rummel, ‘Libertarianism and International Violence’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 27 (1983), pp. 27-71; Steven Chan, ‘Mirror, Mirror on the Wall...Are the Freer Countries More Pacific?’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 28 (1984), pp. 617-48; Erich Weede, ‘Democracy and War Involvement’, ibid., pp. 649-64; Michael W. Doyle, ‘Liberalism and World Politics’, American Political Science Review, 80 (1986), pp. 1151-69; Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace (Princeton, 1993); Max Singer and Aaron Wildavsky, The Real World Order: Zones of Peace/Zones of Turmoil (Chatham, NJ, 1993); and James Lee Ray, Democracy and International Conflict: An Evaluation of the Democratic Peace Proposition (Columbia, MO, 1995). Alternative approaches to developing greater specification, examining rival hypotheses, and presenting still more arguments can be found in Melvin Small and J. David Singer, ‘The War-Proneness of Democratic Regimes, 1816-1965’, Jerusalem Journal of International Relations, 1 (1976), pp. 50-69; William K. Domke, War and the Changing Global System (New Haven, CT, 1988); Zeev Maoz and Nasrin Abodali, ‘Regime Type and International Conflict’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 33 (1989), pp. 3-35; Richard L. Merritt and Dina A. Zinnes, ‘Democracies and War’, in Alex Inkeles (ed.), On Measuring Democracy: Its Consequences and Concomitants (New Brunswick, NJ, 1989); George Modelski and Gardener Perry III, ‘Democratization from a Longterm Perspective’, in N. Nakicenovic and A. Grubler (eds.), Diffusion of Technologies and Social Behavior (New York, 1991); Stuart A. Bremer, ‘Dangerous Dyads: Conditions Affecting the Likelihood of Interstate War, 1816-1965’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 36 (1992), pp. 309-41; Zeev Maoz and Bruce Russett, ‘Alliance Contiguity, Wealth, and Political Stability: Is the Lack of Conflict Among Democracies a Statistical Artifact?’, International Interactions, 17 (1992), pp. 245-68; David Lake, ‘Powerful Pacifists: Democratic States and War’, American Political Science Review, 86 (1992), pp. 24-37; Randall Schweller, ‘Domestic Structure and Preventative War: Are Democracies More Pacific?’, World Politics, 44 (1992), pp. 235-69; Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and David Lalman, War and Reason (New Haven, CT, 1992); T. Clifton Morgan and Valerie Schwebach, ‘Take Two Democracies and Call Me in the Morning: A Prescription for Peace?’, International Interactions, 17 (1992), pp. 305-20; Alex Mintz and Nehemia Geva, ‘ Why Don't Democracies Fight Each Other? An Experimental Assessment of the “Political Incentive” Explanation’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 37 (1993), pp. 484-503; William J. Dixon, ‘Democracy and the Peaceful Settlement of International Conflict’, American Political Science Review, 88 (1994), pp. 14-32; James D. Fearon, ‘Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes’, American Political Science Review, 88 (1994), pp. 577-92; Christopher Layne, ‘Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace’, International Security, 19 (1994), pp. 5-49; David E. Spiro, ‘The Insignificance of the Liberal Peace’, ibid., pp. 50-86; John M. Owen, ‘How Liberalism Produces Democratic Peace’, ibid., pp. 87-125; and William R. Thompson, ‘Democracy and Peace: Putting the Cart Before the Horse?’ International Organization, 50 (1996), pp. 141-74. In particular, Bremer, ‘Dangerous Dyads’, and Maoz and Russett, ‘Alliance Contiguity’, have made some headway in examining the relative contribution of dyadic regime factors versus other sources of influence. However, Maoz and Russett's examination is limited to a restricted set of variables and the post-1945 era. Bremer's analysis has a longer time-span but his study is characterized by important operationalization problems and also fails to check the temporal stability of the outcome. More work along these lines is definitely warranted.