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AbstractThe Democratic Peace research programme remains a prominent and influential strand of International Relations theory. It occupies a central place in the discipline, both as a dominant version of liberal internationalism, and as a supposedly paradigmatic case demonstrating the strengths of positivist scholarship. Nonetheless, Democratic Peace scholarship has been challenged by recent real world events, notably the belligerent behaviour of democratic states during the so-called 'War on Terror', and the use of its findings to justify the US led invasion of Iraq. In this regard, Democratic Peace research has struggled to deal with the ethical and practical consequences of its work, as the focus has been on empirically observable and testable problems that fit within the remit of positivist social scientific practice. Responding to this state of affairs, it is argued here that there is a pressing need to further extend and pluralise existing scholarship by incorporating approaches which commence from different ontological, epistemological and methodological starting points. While there are multiple possibilities, Frankfurt School Critical Theory has great potential to contribute to an expanded research agenda. The article outlines what a Critical Theory approach to the study of Democratic Peace would entail, highlighting the substantial contribution it can make.

The work of Immanuel Kant has been foundational in modern democratic peace theory. His essay Toward Perpetual Peace gives three prescriptions for attaining peace between democracies: republican institutions, a pacific union between states, and an ethos of universal hospitality. Contemporary democratic peace theory, however, has warped the Kantian framework from which it draws inspiration: the third prescription has been gradually substituted for commerce and trade. I argue that this change in emphasis produces tensions between Perpetual Peace and the body of democratic peace theory literature it spawned. Moreover, I contend that a look back at Kant's essay sheds light on why this transformation occurred. Finally, I use this new look back at Perpetual Peace to reformulate the relationship between peace, democracy, and commerce so as to offer a new perspective on the democratic peace theory/capitalist peace theory debate.

Cover -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface and Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Democratic Peace Theory -- Part One: Democratic Peace in Theory -- 1. Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs -- 2. Faulty Correlation, Foolish Consistency, Fatal Consequence -- 3. The Common Origins of Democracy and Peace -- 4. Democracy, the State, and Global Capitalism -- 5. Poverty and Democratic Consolidation in Sub-Saharan Africa -- Part Two: Democratic Peace in Practice -- 6. Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs, Part 2 -- 7. Competing Values in U.S. Democratization Policy -- 8. The Forgotten Element of Democratization: Bringing the Citizen Back In -- 9. Sanctioning for Democracy -- 10. Washington in the Mideast: A Doctrine, a Dilemma, and Durable Despotism -- 11. Promoting Democracy by Example -- 12. Democracy and Counterterrorism: Multiple Issues, Varied Effects -- 13. Encouraging Democracy or Terrorism? -- References -- Contributors -- Index.

It is believed that democracy and peace are inextricably linked, that democracy leads to and causes peace, and that peace cannot be achieved in the absence of democracy. It is an obvious but important starting-point to remember that democracy and peace are not timeless but historical social concepts. Indeed, war itself is a historical product as the negation of peace. Democracy is accepted as the only way for the peaceful world according to the Democratic Peace Theory, but to understand the democratic peace theory, it will be better to ask the question, "What is democracy"? Democratic peace theory's main argument is that democracies do not fight each other, but "what kind democracies"? In this paper some important points of democracy and the democratic peace theory will be pointed out. This paper gives a perspective of the relationship of democracy and peace, and clarifies the question of "does democracy really promote peace"?

Democratic peace theory is probably the most powerful liberal contribution to the debate on the causes of war and peace. In this paper I examine the causal logics that underpin the theory to determine whether they offer compelling explanations for the finding of mutual democratic pacifism. I find that they do not. Democracies do not reliably externalize their domestic norms of conflict resolution and do not trust or respect one another when their interests clash. Moreover, elected leaders are not especially accountable to peace loving publics or pacific interest groups, democracies are not particularly slow to mobilize or incapable of surprise attack, and open political competition does not guarantee that a democracy will reveal private information about its level of resolve thereby avoiding conflict. Since the evidence suggests that the logics do not operate as stipulated by the theory's proponents, there are good reasons to believe that while there is certainly peace among democracies, it may not be caused by the democratic nature of those states.

If contractualism causes both democracy and peace, the correlation between democracy and peace is spurious. But the definition of contractualism is sufficiently unclear as to create doubts that it has such an impact. In addition, if democracy has an impact on contractualism, then, even with an otherwise perfectly specified model, controlling for contractualism will bias estimates of the effect of democracy on peace. International trade involves contracting behavior between strangers in different states. In addition, unlike contracting behavior within states, trade involves interactions in the same arena where interstate conflict needs to be deterred. Contractualist states have existed in significant numbers only recently. This limits contractualism's ability to compete with democracy as a predictor of peace. Mousseau's previous findings have been extraordinarily fragile. Finally, observational data should be complemented by multiple streams of evidence. Some experimental data support democratic peace theory; analogous experiments would almost certainly not provide evidence to support contractualism.