The Militant Face of Democracy

Liberal Forces for Good

Anna Geis, Harald Müller, Niklas Schörnig

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781107037403
• eBook ISBN:
  9781107439931
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Democratic peace theory - the argument that democracies very rarely go to war with each other - has come under attack recently for being too naïve and for neglecting the vast amount of wars fought by democracies, especially since the end of the Cold War. This volume offers a fresh perspective by arguing that the same norms that are responsible for the democratic peace can be argued to be responsible for democratic war-proneness. The authors show that democratic norms, which are usually understood to cause peaceful behaviour, are heavily contested when dealing with a non-democratic other. The book thus integrates democratic peace and democratic war into one consistent theoretical perspective, emphasising the impact of national identity. The book concludes by arguing that all democracies have a 'weak spot' where they would be willing to engage militarily.

Table of contents

• Cover
• The Militant Face of Democracy
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Part I Introduction
• 1 Investigating ‘democratic wars’ as the flipside of ‘democratic peace’
• 2 The empirical study of ‘democratic wars’
• Part II Opting in, opting out
• 3 The United States
• 4 ‘The right thing to do’?
• 5 ‘O ally, stand by me’
• 6 Canada
• 7 French ambiguities
• 8 Burdens of the past, shadows of the future
• 9 Moving beyond neutrality
• Part III Conclusion
• 10 Liberal democracies as militant ‘forces for good’
• 11 The appropriateness of the liberal use of force
• Appendix: methodology
• Index