kant's democratic peace thesis

What Is the Democratic Peace Theory? Definition and Examples

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The Democratic Peace Theory states that countries with liberal democratic forms of government are less likely to go to war with one another than those with other forms of government. Proponents of the theory draw on the writings of German philosopher Immanuel Kant and, more recently, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson , who in his 1917 World War I message to Congress stated that “The world must be made safe for democracy.” Critics argue that the simple quality of being democratic in nature may not be the main reason for the historic tendency of peace between democracies.

Key Takeaways

• The Democratic Peace Theory holds that democratic countries are less likely to go to war with one another than non-democratic countries.
• The theory evolved from the writings of German philosopher Immanuel Kant and the adoption of the 1832 Monroe Doctrine by the United States.
• The theory is based on the fact that declaring war in democratic countries requires citizen support and legislative approval.
• Critics of the theory argue that merely being democratic may not be the primary reason for peace between democracies.

Democratic Peace Theory Definition

Dependent on the ideologies of liberalism , such as civil liberties and political freedom, the Democratic Peace Theory holds that democracies are hesitant to go to war with other democratic countries. Proponents cite several reasons for the tendency of democratic states to maintain peace, including:

• The citizens of democracies usually have some say over legislative decisions to declare war.
• In democracies, the voting public holds their elected leaders responsible for human and financial war losses.
• When held publicly accountable, government leaders are likely to create diplomatic institutions for resolving international tensions.
• Democracies rarely view countries with similar policies and form of government as hostile.
• Usually possessing more wealth that other states, democracies avoid war to preserve their resources.

The Democratic Peace Theory was first articulated by German philosopher Immanuel Kant in his 1795 essay entitled “ Perpetual Peace .” In this work, Kant argues that nations with constitutional republic governments are less likely to go to war because doing so requires the consent of the people—who would actually be fighting the war. While the kings and queens of monarchies can unilaterally declare war with little regard for their subjects’ safety, governments chosen by the people take the decision more seriously.

The United States first promoted the concepts of the Democratic Peace Theory in 1832 by adopting the Monroe Doctrine . In this historic piece of international policy, the U.S. affirmed that it would not tolerate any attempt by European monarchies to colonize any democratic nation in North or South America.

The democratic peace theory does not claim that democratic countries are generally more peaceful than nondemocratic countries. However, the theory’s claim that democratic countries rarely fight each other is widely regarded as true by international relations experts and further supported by history. 

Kant’s “Perpetual Peace” essay remained largely unnoticed until the mid-1980s when the American international-relations scholar Michael Doyle cited it in arguing that the “zone of peace” envisioned by Kant had gradually become reality. After the Cold War, which pitted democratic states against communist states, the democratic peace theory became one of the most studied topics of research in international relations. This research has shown that while wars between non-democracies, or between democracies and non-democracies have been common, wars between democracies have been extremely rare.

Interest in the democratic peace theory has not been limited to the halls of academia. During the 1990s, U.S. President Bill Clinton featured it in many aspects of his administration’s foreign policy of spreading democracy throughout the world. Clinton’s foreign policy asserted that if the formerly autocratic nations of Eastern Europe and the collapsed Soviet Union converted to democracy, the United States and its allies in Europe would no longer need to restrain those countries militarily because democracies do not attack each other.

The democratic peace theory similarly influenced U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. U.S. policymakers believed that a zone of democracy equaled a zone of peace and security that supported President George W. Bush’s strategy of using military force to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s ruthless dictatorship in Iraq. Bush’s administration hoped that the democratization of Iraq would eventually result in the spread of democracy throughout the Middle East.

Democracies and War in the 1900s

Perhaps the strongest evidence supporting the Democratic Peace Theory is the fact that there were no wars between democracies during the 20th century.

As the century began, the recently ended Spanish-American War had seen the United States defeat the monarchy of Spain in a struggle for control of the Spanish colony of Cuba.

In World War I , the U.S. allied with the democratic European empires to defeat the authoritarian and fascist empires of Germany, Austro-Hungary, Turkey, and their allies. This led to World War II and eventually the Cold War of the 1970s, during which the U.S. led a coalition of democratic nations in resisting the spread of authoritarian Soviet communism .

Most recently, in the Gulf War (1990-91), the Iraq War (2003-2011), and the ongoing war in Afghanistan , the United States, along with various democratic nations fought to counter international terrorism by radical jihadist factions of authoritarian Islamist governments. Indeed, after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks , the George W. Bush administration based its use military force to topple Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship in Iraq on the belief that it would bring democracy—thus peace—to the Middle East.

While the claim that democracies rarely fight each other has been widely accepted, there is less agreement on why this so-called democratic peace exists.

Some critics have argued that it was actually the Industrial Revolution that led to peace during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The resulting prosperity and economic stability made all of the newly modernized countries—democratic and nondemocratic—much less belligerent toward each other than in preindustrial times. Several factors arising from modernization may have generated a greater aversion to war among industrialized nations than democracy alone. Such factors included higher standards of living, less poverty, full employment, more leisure time, and the spread of consumerism. Modernized countries simply no longer felt the need to dominate each other in order to survive.

Democratic Peace Theory has also been criticized for failing to prove a cause-and-effect relationship between wars and types of government and the ease with which definitions of “democracy” and “war” can be manipulated to prove a non-existent trend. While its authors included very small, even bloodless wars between new and questionable democracies, one 2002 study contends that as many wars have been fought between democracies as might be statistically expected between non-democracies.

Other critics argue that throughout history, it has been the evolution of power, more than democracy or its absence that has determined peace or war. Specifically, they suggest that the effect called “liberal democratic peace” is really due to “realist” factors including military and economic alliances between democratic governments.

Sources and Further Reference

• Owen, J. M.  “ How Liberalism Produces Democratic Peace .” International Security (1994).
• Schwartz, Thomas and Skinner, Kiron K. (2002) “ The Myth of the Democratic Peace .” Foreign Policy Research Institute.
• Gat, Azar (2006). “ The Democratic Peace Theory Reframed: The Impact of Modernity .” Cambridge University Press.
• Pollard, Sidney (1981). “ Peaceful Conquest: The Industrialization of Europe, 1760–1970 .” Oxford University Press.
• Who Were the Democratic Presidents of the United States?
• Why Did the U.S. Enter the Vietnam War?
• Republic vs. Democracy: What Is the Difference?
• What Is Autocracy? Definition and Examples
• The History of Containment Policy
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• Biography of Madeleine Albright: First Female US Secretary of State
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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Democratic Peace Theory

Introduction, general overviews.

• Early Empirical Work
• Casualties and Public Support for War
• Audience Costs
• Variation among Democratic Political Institutions
• Variation among Authoritarian Political Institutions
• Democracy and War Outcomes
• Democracy, Alliance, and Wars
• Democracies, Conscription, and War
• Normative Accounts
• Systemic Outlooks and the Effect of Peace on Democracy
• Constructivist Accounts
• Democratization
• Methodological Debates
• Common Interests
• Critiques of the Normative Account
• Critiques of Democracy and War Outcomes
• Secrecy and Covert Action
• Qualitative Empirical Scholarship
• Formal Theory

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Democratic Peace Theory by Dan Reiter LAST REVIEWED: 25 October 2012 LAST MODIFIED: 25 October 2012 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756223-0014

Democratic peace is the proposition that democracies are more peaceful in their foreign relations. This idea dates back centuries, at least to Immanuel Kant and other 18th-century Enlightenment thinkers. In recent decades it has constituted a major research agenda, competing with and arguably supplanting other research agendas such as neo-realism. The democratic peace proposition has many possible empirical and theoretical forms. On the empirical side, some propose that democracies are more peaceful in their relations with all other states in the system (“monadic” democratic peace); some propose that democracies are more peaceful only in their relations with other democracies (“dyadic” democratic peace); others argue that the more democracies there are in a region or the international system, the more peaceful the region or international system will be (“systemic” democratic peace); and still others doubt the existence of any significant relationship between democracy and peace. Notably, most although not all empirical research on the democratic peace has employed quantitative methods of analysis. On the theoretical side, there are many different accounts of the relationship between democracy and peace, with most focusing on domestic political institutions, domestic political norms, and constructed identities. The democratic peace proposition is connected to many other propositions linking domestic politics and international relations, including that democracies are more likely to cooperate with each other, that democracies are more likely to win the wars they fight, that escalating military casualties degrade public support for war, that leaders initiate conflict to secure their domestic hold on power (the diversionary hypothesis), that democracies fight shorter wars, that different kinds of democracies experience different kinds of conflict behavior, that different kinds of authoritarian systems experience different kinds of conflict behavior, and others. The democratic peace also overlaps with related ideas such as the liberal peace and the commercial peace.

The democratic peace proposition has been lurking in Western thought for millennia, as Weart 1998 shows, but Kant 1991 provides its first modern formulation. The idea that global democracy would provide a solid foundation for global peace was restated in 1917 by Woodrow Wilson as a justification for American entry into World War I and then as part of his vision for a new world order. Modern political science first observed the dyadic democratic peace—that democracies tend not to fight each other—in the 1970s. The observation enjoyed greater attention in the 1980s in particular in two pathbreaking 1983 essays by Michael Doyle, reprinted in Doyle 2011 . It received fuller theoretical and empirical attention in the 1990s. Fukuyama 1992 , a famous argument that humanity had reached “the end of history,” incorporates the democratic peace proposition. Other scholars sought to develop the theory and push forward more advanced research designs in works such as Russett 1993 ; Ray 1995 ; and Rousseau, et al. 1996 . In the 2000s, proponents of the democratic peace responded to their critics and embedded the democratic peace in a broader Kantian peace ( Russett and Oneal 2001 ).

Doyle, Michael W. Liberal Peace: Selected Essays . New York: Routledge, 2011.

Contains a number of Doyle’s important essays, especially from the 1980s, that lay out the philosophical and theoretical basis of the democratic peace.

Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man . New York: Free Press, 1992.

Presents a Hegelian argument that humanity has at last achieved its penultimate form of political and economic organization, liberal democracy. The definitive intellectual statement that Western values triumphed in the Cold War.

Huth, Paul K., and Todd L. Allee. The Democratic Peace and Territorial Conflict in the Twentieth Century . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Application of the democratic peace to territorial conflict in the 20th century. Presents a massive new data set on territorial conflicts.

Kant, Immanuel. Kant’s Political Writings . 2d ed. Edited by Hans S. Reiss. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Central essay is on the “perpetual peace,” which presents Kant’s vision as to how republics can maintain world peace. Originally published in 1796.

Ray, James Lee. Democracy and International Conflict: An Evaluation of the Democratic Peace Proposition . Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995.

Provides an extensive literature review on democratic peace literature up to the early 1990s as well as case studies of the Fashoda Crisis and Spanish-American War.

Rousseau, David L., Christopher Gelpi, Dan Reiter, and Paul K. Huth. “Assessing the Dyadic Nature of the Democratic Peace, 1918–1988.” American Political Science Review 90.3 (1996): 512–533.

DOI: 10.2307/2082606

Important, early empirical test of the democratic peace, presenting important research design advances.Available online by subscription.

Russett, Bruce. Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post–Cold War World . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993.

The first book-length treatment of the democratic peace. Lays out the normative and institutional explanations of the democratic peace and presents a variety of different forms of rigorous evidence demonstrating the dyadic democratic peace, including sophisticated analysis of post-1945 conflict behavior.

Russett, Bruce, and John R. Oneal. Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations . New York: Norton, 2001.

Embedded the democratic peace in a larger theoretical framework, the Kantian Peace, in which democracy, trade, international organization, and peace all mutually reinforce each other. Presented more sophisticated empirical tests, addressing many 1990s theoretical and empirical critiques. Also see Democratization .

Weart, Spencer R. Never at War: Why Democracies Will Never Fight One Another . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998.

Summarizes several years of work on democratic peace theory. Presents a narrative rather than statistical empirical tests. One main contribution is the analysis of democratic peace in pre-Napoleonic times, including ancient Greece and medieval Italy. Discusses the phenomena of democratic aggression and imperialism.

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Kant, Habermas and Democratic Peace

Chicago Journal of International Law, 2010

U of St. Thomas Legal Studies Research Paper No. 10-01

UC Berkeley Public Law Research Paper No. 1544063

38 Pages Posted: 31 Jan 2010

Robert J. Delahunty

University of St. Thomas School of Law (Minnesota)

University of California at Berkeley School of Law; American Enterprise Institute; Stanford University - The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace

Philosophers of great stature rarely write about international law or international relations. When they do, their writing, though often illuminating, tends to be brief, episodic and marginal to the rest of their work. Major exceptions include the towering eighteenth-century Enlightenment thinker Immanuel Kant and the contemporary German thinker Jürgen Habermas, much of whose highly influential work is devoted to international affairs. The relationship between Kant and Habermas is an extremely close one, and few later thinkers have done as much as Habermas to demonstrate the continuing importance and relevance of Kant’s political thought for the contemporary world. Briefly stated, our argument is this: two characteristically Kantian theses need to be distinguished. The first thesis we call the idea of “world federalism,” in other words the creation of some form of global governance structures as a solution to the problem of war. The second thesis is what has come to be called the “democratic peace.” The first idea envisages the creation of a “cosmopolitan constitution,” or a set of legal and political arrangements on a global scale that would entrench peace between and within states, partly through extending world citizenship and human rights protections to all human beings. Kant also discovered what later expositors have come to call the “democratic peace thesis.” Supporters of the democratic peace thesis often believe that the surest and best method of securing global peace, protecting human rights and reducing the incidence of mass atrocities is to promote democracy successfully throughout the world. Our core claim is this: Habermas conceives the “Kantian project” to be one of securing global peace and upholding basic human rights through strengthening and expanding supranational and transnational institutions. In substance, he is offering a kind of Kantian world federalism as the way forward for the global community of states. We consider that approach fundamentally mistaken. In our view, democracy-promotion is clearly the better path. It recognizes the necessity and desirability of a plurality of independent nation states. It is more protective of both the freedom of individuals and the cultural identities of peoples. It is far more likely to yield a durable global peace. And it can form the basis of a foreign policy that serves the national security interests of the US and its leading allies.

Keywords: international law, world peace, kant, habermas, international security, democratic peace

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Robert J. Delahunty (Contact Author)

University of st. thomas school of law (minnesota) ( email ).

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Habermas, Kant and the European Union

By Scott Staring

How Convincing is the Democratic Peace Thesis?

How Convincing is the Democratic Peace Thesis When Considered in Relation to Realist (and Other) Counter-arguments?

This paper will discuss the convincingness of democratic peace theory relative to realist and other counter-arguments; in particular, it will compare the democratic peace theory with the clash of civilizations and the constructivist arguments. The theory of democratic peace stems from Immanuel Kant’s To Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch , which outlines the fundamental principles necessary for democratic peace. He writes that a republican constitution is the most desirable circumstance for perpetual peace, and the absence of war is dependent on mutual respect between states based on regime type (Kant, 1795 trans. by Humphreys, 2003: 9). Other scholars, such as Doyle, developed the idea of perpetual peace using Kant’s work.

The most easily observable criticism of the democratic peace theory would be the realist argument, explicitly because liberal and realist ways of thinking represent opposing worldviews. Thus, it is important to evaluate the robustness of democratic peace theory in relation to the realist counter-argument. Layne (1994) argues that the Trent Affair, in 1861, is best explained by realism. I will further examine his example to determine the relevance of the realist counter-argument. Furthermore, the democratic peace versus the clash of civilizations argument, developed by Davies and Johns, sheds light on the importance of religion as opposed to regime type. This recent study compares statistical evidence from the United States and United Kingdom (Davies and Johns, 2012). Both of these counter-arguments have certain merits but do not consider problems of defining democracy, the role of the individual, and lack sufficient explanatory power. This can be resolved by the constructivist argument which focuses on cooperation or conflict. I will use Widmaier’s (2005) example of the US-India relationship, specifically focusing on the Nixon administration, to demonstrate this argument.

I will focus my critique on Doyle’s interpretation of the democratic peace, arguing that although it can generally be supposed that democracies are less likely to go to war with one another, the democratic peace argument is lacking in clarity. I will argue that the constructivist approach is the most thorough criticism of democratic peace theory as it addresses the points which the latter fails to explain.

Defining the Democratic Peace Theory

Immanuel Kant’s theory is based on the assumption that democracies will not go to war with one another due to the role of the public; he favours a republican constitution as the basis of the creation of perpetual peace, which would require citizen consent (Kant, 1795 trans. by Humphrey, 2003: 9). To elaborate further, he says:

If…consent of the citizens is required to decide whether or not war is to be declared, it is very natural that they will have great hesitation in embarking on so dangerous an enterprise. For this would mean calling down on themselves all the miseries of war, such as doing the fighting themselves, supplying the costs of war from their own resources, painfully making good the ensuing devastation… (Kant in Widmaier, 2005: 434).

He believes the decision to use force against another state is based on whether the public is prepared to deal with the consequences (Kant, 1795 trans. by Humphrey, 2003).

Over a century after Kant, the victory of democracies, at the end of the First World War, created the widespread consensus that a democratic regime was the most favourable regime type (Ray, 1995: 8). These ideas proved especially influential after the Cold War. When Francis Fukuyama published his book entitled The End of History? (1989), new light was cast on the idea of the democratic peace. Fukuyama claimed that we had reached “the end point of man’s ideological evolution” and that our final form of human government would be a universal liberal democracy (Fukuyama, 1989: 2).

Michael Doyle based his theory on Kant’s ‘perpetual peace’. In his book Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs (1983) he states that the spread of democracy makes the elimination of war possible. The belief in freedom of the individual and the idea that democratic peoples will treat each other ethically is at the heart of his theory (Rasmussen, 2003: 21). Michael Doyle says that:

Liberalism has been identified with an essential principle – the importance of the freedom of the individual. Above all, this is a belief in the importance of moral freedom, of the right to be treated and a duty to treat others as ethical subjects, and not as objects or means only. This principle has generated rights and institutions (Doyle in Rasmussen, 2003: 21).

He also says that, “even though liberal states have become involved in numerous wars with nonliberal states, constitutionally secure liberal states have yet to engage in war with one another” (Doyle, 1983: 213). Doyle claims that democracy is what defines a liberal state; this would mean that peace is defined by democracy. Furthermore, he considers the factor of regime type to be the explanatory mechanism and deciding element in a democracy’s choice to use force (MacMillan, 2003: 234). I will revolve my arguments and evaluation of democratic peace theory around these assumptions made by Doyle, as he is one of the most noteworthy scholars in this field.

The Realist Counter-argument

Realism is based on the assumption that the world is in a constant state of anarchy, where states are focused on survival and self-help (Dunne and Schmidt in Baylis, Smith and Owens, 2011: 87).  In a realist world cooperation is a possibility but it is difficult to uphold due to the competitive, anarchical nature of the international system (Layne, 1994, 11). An important point to note is that, “It is competitive in a manner that differs crucially from domestic politics in liberal societies, where the losers can accept an adverse outcome because they live to fight another day and can, therefore, ultimately hope to prevail” (Layne, 1994: 11).

Realism dictates that states seek to maximize their power in relation to their rivals (Layne, 1994: 11). Unsurprisingly, then, war is a common phenomenon in the realist arena. Layne (1994) examines examples of situations when two states came to the brink of war. One of these is the Trent Affair, which I will now examine.

The Trent Affair, 1861

During the War Between the States, the conflict between Great Britain and the Union arose due to the action of the USS San Jacinto , which intercepted the British mail ship Trent . The ship was carrying James M. Mason and John Slidell (the Confederacy’s commissioners-designate). The most important cause of friction in this situation was the Northern blockade of Confederate ports which meant that Britain no longer had access to cotton (Layne, 1994: 16). This conflict finally ended when Washington decided to submit to British demands.

But the reason for the end of this conflict was not the mutual respect between democracies, which Doyle refers to. The dissolution of this conflict can best be described through realism. The War Between the States was crucial to this outcome because the Union could not have defeated the Confederacy and Great Britain. Furthermore, in Britain, public opinion during the conflict was actually supporting a war (Layne, 1994: 16). Doyle (1983) addresses the issue of the Trent Affair briefly but merely says that despite reaching the brink of war, the line was never crossed. This does not consider why these two democracies did not go to war. Thus, democratic peace theory is lacking in explanatory power.

Statistical Evidence of the Democratic Peace Theory

Realist theorists may also argue that the statistical evidence provided in support of the democratic peace theory is inconclusive. This is because until after the end of the Cold War there were not many democratic states to base such research on (Russett, 2010: 106). John Mearsheimer, a neorealist, noted that “democracies have been few in number over the past two centuries, and thus there have not been many cases where two democracies were in a position to fight each other” (in Spiro, 2001: 203). This further discredits the argument of democratic peace. Moreover, Doyle does not include the case of the war between Peru and Ecuador in his statistics because he claims that liberalism has not yet fully imposed its pacifying effects on these countries (Doyle, 1983: 213).

Realism certainly raises important issues when examining how convincing democratic peace theory is. This argument shows that democratic peace theory simply does not deliver on an explanatory level when it comes to questions such as: why did these two states choose not to go to war? Yet, the realist argument does not take into account the role of individual actors. We can look, for example, at the role that President Nixon played in US-India relations; it is evident from this that political leaders are able to override public opinion (Widmaier, 2005, 434).

Democratic Peace or Clash of Civilizations?

Graeme Davies and Robert Johns have related their critique of democratic peace theory to Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations . Huntington argues that future wars will be fought on the “fault lines between civilizations” and that this presents the “latest phase in the evolution of conflict in the modern world” (Huntington, 1993: 22). Huntington’s civilizations are cultural entities; there are fundamental differences between civilizations (Huntington, 1993: 25). The study produced by Davies and Johns examines how regime type and dominant faith of a target state can influence public support for the use of force against it (Johns and Davies, 2010: 1043). Religion is becoming a more salient basis for identity resulting in an increasing tendency to associate religion with negative motivations, especially after September 11, 2001 (Johns and Davies, 2010: 1050). Their study focuses on data gathered from the United Kingdom and the United States.

Through statistical analysis of the results Davies and Johns concluded that dominant faith was of higher importance than regime type. The public base their judgements not just on behaviour alone, but also on norms and motivations. British and American people showed an almost equally negative image of the Islamic religion (Johns and Davies, 2010: 1050). Democratic peace theory and the clash of civilizations theory can be identified in this example; people were more likely to support force against dictatorships rather than democracies, and against Islamic over Christian states (Johns and Davies, 2010: 1045).

We can see from the example that regime type is not the only deciding factor in terms of supporting or opposing military action or force. It is becoming evident that democratic peace theory dismisses the power of individual actors; public opinion can be shaped by political leaders. President George W. Bush referred to the ‘war on terror’ as a ‘crusade’ (White House, 2001), which demonstrates the importance of language and the creation of narratives. Undoubtedly, Bush’s statements were of vital significance in shaping public opinion. Within this particular critique of democratic peace theory the assumption that democracies do not fight one another remains robust. However, we can see an increasing need for democratic peace theory to explain the role of individuals, and that contrary to the theory’s assumptions, the public are not inherently peaceful. However, the study does not account for reasons why the public has a greater willingness to act against Islamic states and dictatorial regimes.

A Constructivist Approach

Constructivism derives from social theory; the belief that humans see the world via socially constructed perspectives is essential (Palan, 2000: 576-577). Furthermore, the theory is based on the idea that “historically produced and culturally bound knowledge enables individuals to construct and give meaning to reality” (Barnett, 2011: 156). The constructivist approach to democratic peace theory develops the idea that not all norms are positive, thus, not all implications regarding democracies necessarily mean cooperation; democratic differences can cultivate conflict (Widmaier, 2005: 435). When a state is identified as a democracy it can imply cooperative intentions, but how a state interprets democracy is pivotal and can vary (Widmaier, 2005: 435). Widmaier (2005: 435) says “tensions between ‘liberal’ and ‘social’ democracies may engender enmity and conflict”, so conflict will not only arise on the democratic-authoritarian fault line.

US-India Relations from 1971

Between 1949 and 1969 shifts in relations between India and the United States can be identified due to the nature of US political administration. When the republican Richard Nixon became President this relationship became especially turbulent. At this time the US viewed India as an aggressive foreign power rather than a fellow democracy (Widmaier, 2005: 445). On the one side were the US, China and Pakistan, and on the other, India and the Soviet Union. Several events such as the deployment of a US Navy aircraft carrier to the Bay of Bengal and India’s control of East Pakistan escalated tensions. On December 17, 1971, a cease-fire was accepted. In response to this, Nixon and Kissinger claimed that the Soviets, under US pressure, had agreed to coerce India to accept this proposal. Conversely, we could argue that the cease-fire was accepted because of India’s own calculations (Widmaier, 2005: 446). Widmaier (2005: 434) concludes that, “institutional structures do not determine states interests.”

The weakening or collapse of democratic peace theory lies within disagreements over the meaning of the word; it has brought about the emergence of democratic differences. Another point would be that Nixon and Kissinger, overriding public opinion, facilitated the projection of internal disputes, with the Democratic Party, into the international arena (Widmaier, 2005: 448). Essentially, democratic institutions do not automatically create and uphold peace (Widmaier, 2005).

These critiques of democratic peace theory have varying strengths and weaknesses, but the constructivist approach is the theoretical concept providing necessary explanations which the other critiques fail to deliver. Realism’s strength lies in the observation the absence of war does not always result from liberal sentiments (Layne, 1994). However, it does not explain the issue of different interpretations of the term ‘democracy’. The democratic peace versus the clash of civilizations argument draws our attention to the role of the public. The public, contrary to assumptions of democratic peace, are not inherently peaceful (Johns and Davies, 2010). However, the argument does not discuss why people are more prone to support the use of force against an Islamic state, or a dictatorial regime.

Constructivism assumes that our interpretations are socially constructed (Palan, 2000). The weakness of the realist argument can be explained through constructivism because it addresses the emergence of democratic differences. Realism also does not address the role of the individual (i.e. President Nixon in US-India relations). He chose to override public opinion, and also projected internal disputes with the Democratic Party into the international arena. This, again, is best explained by the constructivist approach.

The clash of civilizations argument illustrates that religion also plays an important role in the decision to go to war. A definitive weakness of this argument is that it cannot explain why the public responded in the way described in the study. Constructivism would attribute this to the varying ways in which worldviews are created. Although the assumption that democracies are less likely to go to war with one another generally holds true, “democratic peace is what states make of it” (Widmaier, 2005: 431).

Bibliography

BARNETT, M., 2011. Social Constructivism. In BAYLIS, J., SMITH, S., OWENS, P. (eds). The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations .           (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 148-165

DOYLE, M. W., 1983. Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs Part 1. Philosophy and Public Affairs , 12 (3), pp. 205-235

DOYLE, M. W., 2012. Liberal Peace: Selected Essays . (Oxon: Routledge)

DUNNE, T and SCHMIDT, B. C., 2011. Realism. In BAYLIS, J., SMITH, S., OWENS, P. (eds). The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations . (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 84-99

FUKUYAMA, F., 1989. The End of History?. The National Interest . Available at: http://ps321.community.uaf.edu/files/2012/10/Fukuyama-End-of-history-article.pdf (Accessed on: 01/11/2013)

HUNTINGTON, S., 1993. The Clash of Civilizations?. Foreign Affairs , 72 (3), pp. 22-49

JOHNS, R. and DAVIES, G. A.M., 2012. Democratic Peace or Clash of Civilizations? Target States and Support for War in Britain and the United States.  The Journal of Politics,  74 (4), pp. 1038-1052

KANT, I., 1795. To Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch . Translated by HUMPHREY, T., 2003. (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.)

LAYNE, C., 1994. KANT OR CANT: THE MYTH OF THE DEMOCRATIC PEACE.  International Security,  19 (2), pp. 5-49

MACMILLAN, J., 2003. Beyond the Separate Democratic Peace.  Journal of Peace Research,  40 (2), pp. 233-243

PALAN, R., 2000. A World of their making: an evaluation of the constructivist critique in International Relations. Review of International  Relations, 26 , pp. 575-598

RASMUSSEN, M. V., 2003. The West, Civil Society and the Construction of Peace . (Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan)

RAY, J. L., 1995. Democracy and International Conflict: An Evaluation of the Democratic Peace Proposition . (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press)

RUSSETT, B., 2010. Liberalism. In DUNNE, T., KURKI, M., SMITH, S. (eds). International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity ,2 nd Edition. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press)

SPIRO, D. E., 2001. The Insignificance of the Liberal Peace. In BROWN, M. E., LYNN-JONES, S. M., MILLER, S. E. (eds). Debating the Democratic Peace: An        International Security Reader . (Cambridge, MA and London, England: The MIT Press) pp. 202-238

WHITE HOUSE. 2001. Remarks by the President upon Arrival.

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uk_politics/3536131.stm (Accessed on: 02/11/2013)

WIDMAIER, W. W., 2005. The Democratic Peace Is What States Make of It: A Constructivist Analysis of the US-Indian ‘Near-Miss’ in the 1971 South Asian Crisis.  European Journal of International Relations,  11 (3), pp. 431-455

Written by: Therese Etten Written at: University of Warwick Written for: Alex Sutton Date written: November 2013  

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Kant, Doyle, and the Democratic Peace Thesis: A Postcolonial Critique

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Kantian perspectives on democratic peace: alternatives to doyle.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2001

As for the philosophers, they make imaginary laws for imaginary commonwealths, and their discourses are as the stars, which give little light, because they are so high.

Francis Bacon

The article argues that Doyle's interpretation of Kant's first definitive article in Perpetual Peace is mistaken. I distinguish between Kant's pragmatic argument (his democratic peace proposition) and his a priori, or transcendental claim. Both are distinct from Doyle's approach which emphasizes institutional restraint and shared cultural norms. Doyle must be criticized for taking Kant's transcendental claims as statements that can be verified empirically. I propose that we drop Doyle's juxtaposition of liberal and illiberal as a fallacy of essentialism. Kant's distinction between republican and despotic is a methodological abstraction belonging to ideal theory (the system of rights). Kantian non-ideal theory (his political philosophy) sees the distinction among states as a matter of degree rather than kind. Kant favours an inclusive global federation encompassing liberal as well as non-liberal states, rather than an exclusive federation and ‘separate peace’ of liberal states.

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• Volume 27, Issue 2
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• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210500002291

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