Nobody Here But Us Liberals: Competing Liberal Theories of International Relations and the International Relations of Ethnic Conflict

By Stephen M. Saideman and  Young Choul-Kim (Texas Tech University)

 

Abstract

            The democratic peace debate has taken a new turn, focusing on a debate among liberal theorists about what drives foreign policy: domestic structures, democratic norms, economic interests, international norms and institutions, or domestically derived preferences.  This article takes this debate to a different realm—from that of interstate war to taking sides in ethnic conflicts in other countries.  As the various liberal strands are more likely to have competing predictions in this second area, we should not only see clearer some of the logical contradictions between different liberal approaches but also determine whether certain liberal arguments better capture what states actually do.  The article derives testable hypotheses from several strands of liberal thought and applies them to a dyadic dataset of ethnic groups and states to see what relationships exist.  We find that ethnic ties, which is how we conceive of preferences here, shapes the behavior of states towards ethnic groups in other countries more than domestic structures.  Other liberal arguments, such as common interests (states facing separatism do not support separatist groups), economic interests, and democratic norms either do not matter that much or have an effect opposite from what liberals would usually argue.  We conclude by focusing on liberalism as a preference-centered approach.

 

Acknowledgements

First, a grant from Texas Tech University’s Research Enhancement Fund and the Carnegie Corporation of New York made the creation of this dataset possible.  Of course, the statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author, and not of the Carnegie Corporation.  Second, I owe a dept to Ted Gurr, Anne Pitsch, Deepa Khosa and the rest of the Minorities at Risk project for providing me with their dataset and raw data, and for helping me in using it.  Third, I am grateful to Douglas Van Belle, as he helped me develop my indicators for relative power.  Likewise, James Fearon provided crucial assistance in suggesting how to use code language differentials, although his advice related to a different project.   Finally, I am very thankful for the research assistance provided by Cari MacDonald and J.W. Justice.

 

Introduction

            The democratic peace debate has followed an interesting trajectory.  At first, scholars sought to show that a correlation existed between democracy and peace (Chan 1984; Doyle 1986; Maoz and Abdolali 1989; Maoz and Russett 1993).  Since then, adherents and critics have engaged in lively discussions about whether significant relationships exist and what might be causing these relationships.[1]  Now, the debate has evolved to the point where liberal theorists are arguing with each other about the causes of this phenomena.[2]  Eric Gartzke (1998, 2000) has argued that common interests have caused democracies not to fight with each other.  Bruce Russett and John Oneal (1997, 1999) have strongly disagreed, arguing that democratic institutions, international organizations, and economic interdependence have bound democracies together, creating a zone of peace among them.  They both might be right, but their differences raise questions about liberal international relations theory.

As liberal theory develops as a paradigm for understanding international relations, it makes sense to work out the conflicting claims that flow from core liberal assumptions and deductions.  The problem with using the democratic peace as the battleground for various liberal arguments is that they largely predict the same outcome, so scholars have to argue about which factors have more causal weight.[3]  Focusing on where liberal theories produce conflicting expectations should provide clearer understandings of the insights and limitations provided by the different approaches.  This article applies several strands of liberal thought to the international politics of ethnic conflict to determine which ones provide better accounts not only of this particular issue, but of foreign policy in general. 

Immanuel Kant on international law

By Amanda Perreau-Saussine[1]

 

Forthcoming in John Tasioulas and Samantha Besson eds. The philosophy of international law (OUP 2008)

 

Introduction

In 1754, Jean Jacques Rousseau arranged with the Saint-Pierre family to edit the Abbé de Saint Pierre’s works, focussing on his proposal for the creation of a Europe-wide federal government designed to respect both sovereignty and individuals’ basic rights[2].  Rousseau did indeed publish extracts from Saint-Pierre’s works, including the details of this scheme for a perpetual European alliance in which states would make financial contributions to a congress for the resolution of disputes, a congress with a president, legislative powers, a “coercive force” to compel obedience to the federation’s laws and a prohibition on any state’s withdrawal from the federation.[3] 

Key to his proposal, Saint-Pierre argued, was a hard-headed understanding of human nature.  He assumed human beings to be “as they are, unjust, grasping and setting their own interest above all things”: if the project remained unrealised, “that is not because it is utopian; it is because men are crazy, and because to be sane in a world of madmen is in itself a kind of madness.”[4]  But Rousseau concluded that Saint-Pierre underestimated the insanity of the world.  For the scheme to be put into action:

it would be essential that all the private interests concerned, taken together, should not be stronger than the general interest, and that everyone should believe himself to see in the good of all the highest good to which he can aspire for himself.  But this requires a concurrence of wisdom in so many heads, a fortuitous concourse of so many interests, such as chance can hardly be expected ever to bring about.  But, in default of such spontaneous agreement, the one thing left is force; and then the question is no longer to persuade but to compel, not to write books but to raise armies.[5]

Faced with the barbarities of warfare, optimistic writings of philosophers came to seem themselves obscene in their detachment from reality: “Barbarous philosopher! Come and read us your book on the field of battle!”[6]

Immanuel Kant’s “Toward Perpetual Peace”, structured like Saint-Pierre’s essay as if itself a peace treaty, aims to show how writing books really could challenge a Prince’s confidence in his own wisdom, and as such help to transform a perpetual state of war into one of perpetual peace.  Following both Rousseau and Saint-Pierre, Kant treats international insecurity and competition as the self-perpetuating results of bad counsel, the advice of “political moralists” or “moralising politicians” who pretend that “human nature is not capable of good” and whose advice can lead ultimately only to annihilation, the peace of the graveyard (8:378,373,357). 

Who Yields? Democracies in International Crises

By Joanne Gowa                                                        

Bendheim Hall Princeton University Princeton, NJ 08544 jgowa@princeton.edu       

 

Abstract

The recent crisis-bargaining literature predicts that crisis behavior will vary by regime type.  Because leaders of democratic states incur audience costs at higher rates than do their counterparts in other states, the latter will be more likely to yield in international crises.  This argument rests on weak microfoundations. The incentives that motivate leaders of different regime types engaged in crises seem to be similar in important respects. An empirical analysis generates results that are inconsistent with recent literature.  The relationship between regime type and crisis outcomes varies across time.                                 

 

Who Yields? Democratic States in International Crises

            Long ago, Kenneth N. Waltz argued that neither the behavior of leaders nor the structure of domestic polities could adequately explain international outcomes (1959, 1979).  He maintained that interactions among states could be understood using the same approach that economists applied to study oligopolies.  Students of international relations did not need to attend to variations among domestic polities any more than observers of oligopolies needed to take into account different ownership structures among firms.[1]  Partly because it encouraged the application of formal models to the study of international relations, Waltz’s approach led to new insights into such basic problems as the origins of war, the effect of different power distributions on system stability, and the role of international institutions (e.g., Fearon 1992; Keohane 1984; Morrow 1994; Oye 1986; Powell 1999).

            Nonetheless, a resurgence of interest in the effects of domestic politics on international outcomes has occurred, prompted in part by the democratic-peace literature.  Although recent studies have cast doubt on the existence of a democratic peace (e.g., Gartzke 1999; Gowa 1999; Layne 1996; Senese 1997), efforts to establish a relationship between domestic polities and international outcomes continue unabated.  In what is perhaps the most important addition to this literature, variations in crisis bargaining and outcomes are attributed to differences in the regime types of the disputing states (Fearon 1994; Schultz 1998; Smith 1998).  As in the case of the democratic peace, the recent crisis-bargaining literature suggests that democratic systems are appealing not only because of the political processes they establish at home but also because of the effects they exert abroad.

            In this paper, I examine the argument that regime type influences the behavior of states engaged in international crises.  More specifically, I examine the claim that democratic states are less likely to back down than are other states.  To do so, I first analyze the microfoundations of the argument that disparate audience costs create cross-polity variation in yield rates.  I show that this argument relies upon a solution to an agency problem which creates an incentive for leaders to “gamble for resurrection.”  I show that this incentive is not unique to democratic polities. I also argue that ex post sanctions may be credible only in nondemocracies.  As a result, resistance to backing down would seem to be uniformly distributed across regime types.

            Next, I analyze the data. I find that the effect of polity type on crisis outcomes varies across time.  Before World War II, democracies yield in about 8 percent of the crises in which they engage, while nondemocracies yield almost 13 percent of the time. This difference is in the direction the audience-cost literature predicts, and it is statistically significant.  After 1945, however, yield rates are much lower for both polity types, and the difference between them is not statistically significant: democracies yield just 1.5 percent of the time, while nondemocracies do so at a rate of 2.8 percent.   

Democracy Promotion: A Key Focus In A New World Order

By Thomas Carothers

Americans always have had a strong interest in promoting democracy, especially as their country assumed an increasingly important role on the world stage. President Woodrow Wilson, who pledged to make the world safe for democracy, was clearly a man ahead of his time. In this thought-provoking piece focusing on democracy promotion in the last years of the 20th century, Thomas Carothers, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of Aiding Democracy Abroad: The Learning Curve, examines where we are headed and looks at how Wilson’s original call has been transformed into a national policy upon the world stage.

 

Introduction

Since the mid-1980s, especially, democracy assistance has become a significant element of U.S. foreign aid and foreign policy. By the end of the 1990s, the U.S. government was spending over $700 million a year on democracy aid in approximately 100 countries — primarily through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), but also through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the Department of State, the Department of Defense, the Asia Foundation and the Eurasia Foundation.

Although the current wave of democracy programs has forerunners — the Marshall Plan of the early post-World War II period, for example, and the political development or “modernization” programs of the 1960s — the current effort is the most extensive, systematic commitment the United States has ever undertaken to foster democracy around the world.

And the U.S. is not alone. Other countries, especially the prosperous democracies of Western Europe as well as a myriad of international institutions supported by many governments, also have embarked on a major effort to support democracy, especially in transitional countries that have recently embarked on the arduous process of renouncing totalitarian and authoritarian forms of rule.