Debating the Democratic Peace PDF Download

Author: Michael E. Brown
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262522137
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
Are democracies less likely to go to war than other kinds of states? This question is of tremendous importance in both academic and policy-making circles and one that has been debated by political scientists for years. The Clinton administration, in particular, has argued that the United States should endeavor to promote democracy around the world. This timely reader includes some of the most influential articles in the debate that have appeared in the journal International Security during the past two years, adding two seminal pieces published elsewhere to make a more balanced and complete collection, suitable for classroom use.

Author: Tarak Barkawi
Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers
ISBN: 9781555879556
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Commencing with Susan Sontag's line that "the only worthwhile answers are those that blow up the questions," ten contributions by UK and US academics critique the "democratic peace" (DP) prescription for inter-state peace of "just add liberal democracy." Contextualizing the DP literature historically and internationally, they call for reassessment of the complex inter-relationships among democracy, liberalism, and war in the global revolution; provide a table summarizing war and democracy by world order periods; and identify directions for future research. Based on US workshops in 1998 and 2000. Barkawi and Laffey are lecturers in international relations, the former at the U. of Wales, Aberystwyth and the latter at the U. of London.--

Author: Jonathan Mermin
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400823323
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
The First Amendment ideal of an independent press allows American journalists to present critical perspectives on government policies and actions; but are the media independent of government in practice? Here Jonathan Mermin demonstrates that when it comes to military intervention, journalists over the past two decades have let the government itself set the terms and boundaries of foreign policy debate in the news. Analyzing newspaper and television reporting of U.S. intervention in Grenada and Panama, the bombing of Libya, the Gulf War, and U.S. actions in Somalia and Haiti, he shows that if there is no debate over U.S. policy in Washington, there is no debate in the news. Journalists often criticize the execution of U.S. policy, but fail to offer critical analysis of the policy itself if actors inside the government have not challenged it. Mermin ultimately offers concrete evidence of outside-Washington perspectives that could have been reported in specific cases, and explains how the press could increase its independence of Washington in reporting foreign policy news. The author constructs a new framework for thinking about press-government relations, based on the observation that bipartisan support for U.S. intervention is often best interpreted as a political phenomenon, not as evidence of the wisdom of U.S. policy. Journalists should remember that domestic political factors often influence foreign policy debate. The media, Mermin argues, should not see a Washington consensus as justification for downplaying critical perspectives.

Author: Bruce Miroff
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780618054558
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
This supplementary text offers two readings per chapter organized in a debate-style format, representing opposing viewpoints. The straightforward, thought-provoking presentation facilitates class discussion. Debate topics include Public Opinion: The American People and War, Civil Liberties and War: Debating the USA Patriot Act, Debating the Deficit and the Size of Government, Economic Equality: A Threat to Democracy? and U.S. Foreign Policy After September 11: American Hegemony or International Cooperation?

Author: Bruce Russet
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400821029
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
By illuminating the conflict-resolving mechanisms inherent in the relationships between democracies, Bruce Russett explains one of the most promising developments of the modern international system: the striking fact that the democracies that it comprises have almost never fought each other.

Author: Felix Wiebrecht
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3656557217
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 6

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Book Description
Essay from the year 2013 in the subject Politics - International Politics - General and Theories, grade: 16, University of Aberdeen, language: English, abstract: The democratic peace theory has been widely discussed by scholars of international relations and whereas on the one hand it is acclaimed as the “closest thing we have to a law in international politics”, it is rejected as not being true by the other side. Whether the democratic peace theory is a useful guidance for policy-makers or not is the conflict of different theories in international relations, namely liberalism and realism. This paper wants to clarify the disparity of liberalism and realism in the aspect of the democratic peace theory and therefore it will start with the idealist perspective, followed by the view of the opponents of the theory and then ending with a conclusion on the merits of democratic peace theory. In the regard of the democratic peace theory it is difficult to find any reliable and meaningful statistical date because this is a field of research that demands various definitions which vary from author to author. They set up different meanings for the terms 'democracy' and 'war' respectively 'conflict'. However, specific ideas of those terms are essential as this paper will point out. However, there have been examples of democracies fighting other democracies in wars, for instance the Kashmir conflicts between India and Pakistan, or in more modern history the 2006 Lebanon War and the five-day war between Georgia and Russia in 2008.

Author: Spencer R. Weart
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300082982
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
This lively survey of the history of conflict between democracies reveals a remarkable--and tremendously important--finding: fully democratic nations have never made war on other democracies. Furthermore, historian Spencer R. Weart concludes in this thought-provoking book, they probably never will. Building his argument on some forty case studies ranging through history from ancient Athens to Renaissance Italy to modern America, the author analyzes for the first time every instance in which democracies or regimes like democracies have confronted each other with military force. Weart establishes a consistent set of definitions of democracy and other key terms, then draws on an array of international sources to demonstrate the absence of war among states of a particular democratic type. His survey also reveals the new and unexpected finding of a still broader zone of peace among oligarchic republics, even though there are more of such minority-controlled governments than democracies in history. In addition, Weart discovers that peaceful leagues and confederations--the converse of war--endure only when member states are democracies or oligarchies. With the help of related findings in political science, anthropology, and social psychology, the author explores how the political culture of democratic leaders prevents them from warring against others who are recognized as fellow democrats and how certain beliefs and behaviors lead to peace or war. Weart identifies danger points for democracies, and he offers crucial, practical information to help safeguard peace in the future.

Author: A. Geis
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230626564
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
The book turns the 'democratic peace' theme on its head: rather than investigating the reasons for the supposed pacifism of democracies, it looks for the causes of their militancy. In order to solve this puzzle, the authors look across International Relations, political theory, political philosophy and sociology.

Author: David J. Lorenzo
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317401980
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
What arguments have critics of American wars and interventions put forward, and what arguments do they currently employ? Thomas Jefferson, Henry Thoreau, John Calhoun, the Anti-Imperialist League, Herbert Hoover, Charles Lindbergh, Martin Luther King Jr., and Ron Paul (among others) have criticized proposals to intervene in other countries, enter wars, acquire foreign territory, and engage in a forward defense posture. Despite cogent objections, they have also generally lost the argument. Why do they lose? This book provides answers to these questions through a survey of oppositional arguments over time, augmented by the views of contemporary critics, including those of Ron Paul, Chalmers Johnson and Noam Chomsky. Author David J. Lorenzo demonstrates how and why a significant number of arguments are dismissed as irrelevant, unpatriotic, overly pessimistic, or radically out of the mainstream. Other lines of reasoning might provide a compelling critique of wars and interventions from a wide variety of perspectives – and still lose. Evaluating oppositional arguments in detail allows the reader to understand problems likely to be faced in the context of policy discussions, to grasp important political differences and the potential for alliances among critics, and ultimately to influence decision-making and America’s place in the international power structure.

Author: Steven W. Hook
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
Historical patterns suggest that democratic governments, which often fight wars against authoritarian regimes, maintain peaceful relationships with other governments that uphold political freedoms and empower their civil societies. This timely collection of essays by leading scholars examines how democracies maintain relationships and how democratic principles are spread throughout the world.