Lecture 3
Lecture 3
Lecture 3
LEARNING OUTCOMES
This week's session is dedicated to the role of democracy promotion in global
governance and international security. Liberal internationalists claim that
democracies do not fight each other, therefore generating a 'democratic
peace' across the world. We will critically assess this claim, and explore the
successes and failures; the legitimacy and legality of 'Foreign Imposed Regime
Change' in recent decades.
Lecture Handout
Slideshow
Lecture 3: Part I
Lecture 3: Part II
Read Clausen, Maria-Louise and Peter Albrecht (2021) ‘Interventions since the
Cold War: from statebuilding to stabilization’ International Affairs, 97(4): 1203–
1220 and consider the following questions:
What is the 'liberal peace' and has the Global North been
successful at maintaining it in the post-Cold War period?
What have the various phases of 'liberal peacebuilding' involved
and what explains their changing nature?
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Is there a relationship between democracy and security sector
reform (SSR)?
Chua, A (2004) World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds
Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability (London: William Heinemann).
READING
No readings found.
LIVE SESSION
LIVE SESSION
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This BBC series is available on IPlayer for the coming months. It offers many
insights that tie in with our discussions on the globalisation of democracy
The End of the Cold War and the promises of global democracy: The
disjuncture between globalisation and democracy (Held) requiring a
cosmopolitan democracy.
Democracy promotion and transnational activism/advocacy: global
governance and global civil society. Change and Transformation in
Global Politics: Revolution as the ‘sixth great power’. (eg case of Arab
Spring)
The Problem of Failed States: democratic governance and global security.
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The relationship between democracy, capitalist markets and the
state has therefore been much more complex than a 21st century
liberal narrative would allow: capitalism has expanded through
colonialism and dictatorship as well as democratisation; while
democratic struggles have often been against the state and market.
‘Modern Capitalism, for Weber, is defined by the rational (deliberate and systematic), pursuit of profit
through the rational (systemic and calculable) organization of formally free labour and through rational
(impersonal, purely instrumental), exchange on the market, guided by rational (rule-governed,
predictable) legal and political systems. Ascetic Protestantism is characterised by rational (methodical)
self-control and by the rational (purposeful) devotion to rational (sober, scrupulous) economic action as
rational (psychologically efficacious and logically intelligible) means of relieving the intolerable
pressure imposed on individuals by the rational (consistent) doctrine of predestination’ (Rogers
Brubaker, The Limits of Rationality, 1984).
It is with this background that notions of global governance and global civil
society erupted into scene during 1990s.
‘Global civil society organisations have emerged as powerful and influential force on the world stage, affecting as
they do both domestic and international policies, deciding as they do the fate of some authoritarian governments at
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least, and laying down agendas as they do. They not only have the power of influencing international public
opinion and mobilising against policies that they consider undesirable, they do so in ways that are sensationally
visible and therefore effective.’ (Chandhoke, 2003).
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IV. Exporting Democracy?: the case of Iraq
2003 invasion seen by many powerful actors (in Neo-Conservative Washington as
well as among European cosmopolitans) as an opportunity for democratisation of
greater Middle East. Weberian conception of state sovereignty combined with
Schumpeterian view of democracy to deliver vision where democracy, prosperity and
security reinforce each other.
Historical model was post-war reconstruction in West Germany and Japan ie.
democratisation through occupation. Challenges here revolved around endogenous
enforcement of democracy – that is, weakness of local counterparts, militarisation of
democracy-promotion and ‘liberalisation before institutionalisation’.
International Organisations invoked and to certain extent mobilised in the
reconstruction effort, but Realpolitik of ‘heavy-lifting’ (US as hegemonic power)
became apparent despite attempts at ‘hybrid’ rule through combination of security,
institution-building and development.
Outcome of these tensions was paradoxical reinforcement of what Weber labelled as
patrimonial, rather than bureaucratic form of rule: territorially fragmented, politically
sectarian and sociological segmentary society: ie a failed or collapsed state.
‘Three unexpected empirical developments have undermined belief in the assured stability of liberal
democracy in its traditional heartland of North America and Western Europe, not to speak of
democratic hegemony around the world. First, as Larry Diamond has chronicled, there has been a
long "democratic recession": For each of the past thirteen years, more countries have moved away
from democracy than have moved toward it. Second, as Roberto Stefan Foa and I have shown, large
numbers of people seem to have fallen out of love with liberal democracy: In countries from the
United Kingdom to Australia, citizens have grown both more critical of liberal democracy and more
open to authoritarian alternatives. Third, and perhaps most important, populist forces intent on
challenging the most basic rules and norms of liberal democracy have risen across a great swath of
democratic countries. While these developments are closely interrelated, each presents a distinct
challenge to the triumphalist assumptions of what is rapidly coming to seem like an earlier age’.
(Mounk, 2020: 28)