"Democracy as civilisation"

Global Society

Volumn 22, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 75-95

  Hobson, Christopher ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CIVILIZATION; DEMOCRACY; INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS; POLITICAL ORGANIZATION; VIOLENCE; WAR;

EID: 37849004972     PISSN: 13600826     EISSN: 1469798X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13600820701740746     Document Type: Article

References (135)

1. George W. Bush, "State of the Union Address", 2 February 2005, available: 〈http://www.white house.gov/news/releases/2005/02/ 20050202-11.html.〉 (accessed 15 January 2006).
2. Amartya Sen, "Democracy as a Universal Value", Journal of Democracy Vol. 10, No. 3 (1999), p. 5.
3. This is not to deny the challenge posed by Islamic extremism, but to suggest that it does not represent the same, unified and complete ideational alternative in the way fascism and communism were. As Dunn puts it, "at this point democracy's ideological triumph seems bewilderingly complete. There is little immediate danger, of course, of its running out of enemies, or ceasing to be an object of real hate. But it no longer faces compelling rivals as a view of how political authority should be structured, or of who is entitled to assess whether or not that authority now rests in the right hands." John Dunn, Setting the People Free: The Story of Democracy (London: Atlantic Books, 2005), p. 162.
4. Barry Gills, Joel Rocamora and Richard Wilson (eds.), Low Intensity Democracy (London: Pluto Press, 1993)
5. William Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
6. Ibid.
7. Tarak Barkawi and Mark Laffey, "The Imperial Peace: Democracy, Force and Globalization", European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 5, No. 4 (1999)
8. idem, Democracy, Liberalism, and War (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2001).
9. Susan Marks, The Riddle of All Constitutions: International Law, Democracy, and the Critique of Ideology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
10. Hazel Smith, "Democracy and International Relations", Global Society, Vol. 12, No. 2 (1998), p. 156.
11. Ian Clark, Legitimacy in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
12. Jacinta O'Hagan, Conceptualizing the West in International Relations: From Spengler to Said (New York: Palgrave, 2002), p. 2.
13. Samuel Huntington, "The Clash of Civilizations?", Foreign Affairs Vol. 72, No. 3 (1993) pp. 22-49.
14. Jacinta O'Hagan, "Discourses of Civilizational Identity", in Patrick Jackson and Martin Hall (eds.), Writing Civilizations (New York: Palgrave, 2007).
15. Ibid., p. 3.
16. Ibid., pp. 3-4.
17. Brett Bowden, Expanding the Empire of Civilization, Manuscript (copy held with author, 2004), p. 7.
18. Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics, Vol. 1: Regarding Method (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 148.
19. Jan Ifversen, Civilisation and Barbarism, Discourse Politics Identity Working Paper No. 1 (Lancaster: Institute for Advanced Studies in Social and Management Sciences, Lancaster University, 2005), pp. 7-9.
20. Mark Salter, Barbarians and Civilization in International Relations (London: Pluto Press, 2002), p. 18.
21. Reinhart Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1985).
22. Gerrit Gong, The Standard of "Civilization" in International Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), p. 3.
23. Ifversen notes that while "civilisation" is still regularly used, "barbarism" is used much less frequently. The latter concept, however, has been making something of a comeback since the "war on terror" commenced. See Ifversen, op. cit., p. 9.
24. Gerrit Gong, "Standards of Civilization Today", in Mehdi Mozaffari (ed.), Globalization and Civilizations (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 80.
25. Chris Brown, "World Society and the English School: An 'International Society' Perspective on World Society", European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 7, No. 4 (2001), p. 427.
26. Christian Reus-Smit, The Moral Purpose of the State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 36-39
27. For a discussion of "practical" and "purposive" forms of association, see Terry Nardin, Law, Morality, and the Relations of States (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983).
28. Hedley Bull's oft-quoted definition of international society emphasises the importance of common values as a defining feature: "a society of states (or international society) exists when a group of states, conscious of certain common interests and common values, form a society in the sense that they conceive themselves to be bound by a common set of rules in their relations with one another, and share in the working of common institutions". Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society (London: Macmillan, 1977), p. 13.
29. Bowden, op. cit., ch. 5.
30. Quoted in ibid., p. 124.
31. Ibid., p. 122.
32. Gong, The Standard of "Civilization" in International Society, op. cit., pp. 14-15.
33. Bowden, op. cit., p. 123
34. See also Brett Bowden, "In the Name of Progress and Peace: The 'Standard of Civilization' and the Universalizing Project", Alternatives, Vol. 29, No. 1 (2004) pp. 43-68
35. and Antony Angie, "Finding the Peripheries: Sovereignty and Colonialism in Nineteenth-century International Law", Harvard International Law Journal, Vol. 40, No. 1 (1999) pp. 1-71.
36. Edward Keene, Beyond the Anarchical Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 147.
37. Bowden, Expanding the Empire of Civilization, op. cit.
38. Paul Keal, European Conquest and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
39. Shogo Suzuki, "Japan's Socialization into Janus-faced European International Society", European Journal of International Relations Vol. 11, No. 1 (2005) pp. 137-164.
40. Ibid., p. 155.
41. Keene, op. cit.
42. Salter, op. cit., pp. 38-42.
43. Quoted in ibid., p. 38.
44. Hedley Bull and Adam Watson (eds.), The Expansion of International Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984).
45. Gong, The Standard of "Civilization" in International Society, op. cit.
46. Jack Donnelly, "Human Rights: A New Standard of Civilization?", International Affairs, Vol. 74, No. 1 (1998) pp. 1-23.
47. Ibid., p. 5.
48. Bull and Watson, op. cit., p. 427.
49. John Hobson and J.C. Sharman, "The Enduring Place of Hierarchy inWorld Politics: Tracing the Social Logics of Hierarchy and Political Change", European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 11, No. 1 (2005), p. 92.
50. A similar point is made from a legal perspective in Gerry Simpson, Great Powers and Outlaw States: Unequal Sovereigns in the International Legal Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
51. Tim Dunne, "The New Agenda", in Alex Bellamy (ed.), International Society and its Critics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 75.
52. Salter, op. cit., pp. 82-83.
53. Donnelly, op. cit., p. 12.
54. Martin Wight, "International Legitimacy", International Relations Vol. 4, No. 1 (1972) pp. 1-28.
55. Christian Reus-Smit, "Liberal Hierarchy and the Licence to Use Force", Review of International Studies, Vol. 31 (2005), pp. 2-6.
56. Simpson, op. cit., p. 272. This account differs from Simpson in suggesting that a standard of civilisation did not cease to exist, but instead became more relaxed and implicit than in its earlier "classical" guise.
57. Clark, op. cit., p. 180.
58. Anthony Langlois, "Human Rights without Democracy? A Critique of the Separationist Thesis", Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 4 (2003) pp. 990-1019.
59. Clark, op. cit., ch. 8.
60. Simpson, op. cit.
61. Ibid., p. 77.
62. Ibid., p. 78.
63. Thomas Franck, "The Emerging Right to Democratic Governance", American Journal of International Law, Vol. 86, No. 1 (1992) pp. 49-91.
64. George W. Bush, "State of the Union Address", 29 January 2002, available:, http://www.white_house.gov/news/releases/2002/01/ 20020129-11.html. (accessed 25 November 2007).
65. Jack Donnelly, "Sovereign Inequalities and Hierarchy in Anarchy: American Power and International Society", European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 12, No. 2 (2006) pp. 139-170.
66. John Dunn, Western Political Theory in the Face of the Future, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 11.
67. Ivor J.C. Brown, The Meaning of Democracy (London: Richard Cobden-Sanderson, 1920), pp. 175-176.
68. Dunn, op. cit., p. 2.
69. C.B. Macpherson, The Real World of Democracy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966).
70. "As mankind approaches the end of the millennium, the twin crises of authoritarianism and social central planning have left only one competitor standing in the ring as an ideology of potentially universal validity: Liberal democracy." Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992), p. 42.
71. Peter Fenves, "The Tower of Babel Rebuilt: Some Remarks on 'The End of History'", in Timothy Burns (ed.), After History? Francis Fukuyama and His Critics (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994), p. 229.
72. Without denying the importance of other versions of democracy, especially the model more common in Continental Europe, it has been the liberal version that has largely prevailed and become hegemonic. For example, in international law democracy is understood in such a manner which emphasises political rights, while largely ignoring economic and social ones.
73. David Held, Models of Democracy, 2nd edn (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996)
74. Macpherson, op. cit.
75. Kimberly Hutchings, "Modelling Democracy", Global Society, Vol. 12, No. 2 (1998), p. 174.
76. Matthew Todd Bradley, "'The Other': Precursory African Conceptions of Democracy", International Studies Review, Vol. 7, No. 3 (2005), p. 407.
77. Close ties exist between academic and policy-making communities in relation to democracy promotion and democratisation. See Robinson, op. cit., ch. 1 and Nicolas Guilhot, The Democracy Makers: Human Rights and International Order (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005).
78. The classic procedural definitions come from Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1943) and Robert Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971).
79. H. Smith, op. cit., p. 155.
80. Charles Maier, "Democracy since the French Revolution", in John Dunn (ed.), Democracy: The Unfinished Journey, 508 BC to AD 1993 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992) pp. 125-153
81. Bhikhu Parekh, "The Cultural Particularity of Liberal Democracy", in David Held (ed.), Prospects for Democracy: North, South, East, West (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993) pp. 156-175.
82. Jason Ralph, "'High Stakes' and 'Low Intensity Democracy': Understanding America's Policy of Promoting Democracy", in Michael Cox, G. John Ikenberry and Takashi Inoguchi (eds.), American Democracy Promotion: Impulses, Strategies, and Impacts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) pp. 200-207.
83. The manner in which the form of democracy reflected in a new standard is suited to the economic interests of the core is beyond the scope of this article. Critical work on democracy promotion has dubbed the type of democracy being promoted most notably by the United States as "low intensity democracy", a regime type geared towards transnational economic interests rather than the demos. There is, however, an important tension here between the economic and political interests emerging from the West. The political one centres on the desire for a homogeneous international society made up of peaceful liberal democratic states. The economic one is a desire for regimes that are compatible and, indeed, favour the interests of theWest. The problem is that the latter may actually undermine the former, in so far as such a weak, hollow, uninstitutionalised form of democracy is unlikely to conform to the good and peaceful behaviour that is expected from democratic states.
84. Mehdi Mozaffari, "The Transformationalist Perspective and the Rise of a Global Standard of Civilization", International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Vol. 1, No. 2 (2001), pp. 254, 262-263.
85. Deon Geldenhuys, Deviant Conduct in World Politics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 31-33.
86. The democratic dimensions of the Iranian regime could be seen in the results of the twin votes for local councils and the Assembly of Experts on 15 December 2006. The results indicated a major backlash against the hardline policies of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with support moving towards moderate conservatives and reformers. This is not to say whether or not Iran is a democracy, but to point out that it can make plausible claims to being at least partly democratic.
87. Bush, "State of the Union Address", 29 January 2002, op. cit.
88. Donnelly, "Sovereign Inequalities and Hierarchy in Anarchy", op. cit.
89. Bush, "State of the Union Address"v, 29 January 2002, op. cit.
90. Two new books appeared after this paper was largely finished which offer arguments very compatible with those presented here. These are: Anna Geis, Lothar Brock and Harald Müller (eds.), Democratic Wars: Looking at the Dark Side of Democratic Peace (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan 2006)
91. and Tony Smith, A Pact with the Devil: Washington's Bid for World Supremacy and the Betrayal of the American Promise (New York: Routledge, 2007).
92. Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 4.
93. Bruce Russett and John Oneal, Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations (New York: Norton, 2001), p. 43.
94. This is most obviously the case in the post-ColdWar foreign policy of the United States, with the DPT clearly influencing both the Clinton and Bush administrations.
95. In legitimating a certain type of domestic regime, the DPT therefore also legitimates a certain set of actors - the United States, Australia and the other "perfect" democracies.
96. GeorgeW. Bush, "President Discusses Second Term Accomplishments and Priorities", 3 August 2005, available: 〈http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/08/ 20050803.html.〉
97. Strobe Talbott, "Democracy and the National Interest", Foreign Affairs, Vol. 75, No. 6 (1996), pp. 48-49.
98. See Christopher Hobson, "A Forward Strategy of Freedom in the Middle East: US Democracy Promotion and the 'War on Terror'", Australian Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 59, No. 1 (2005) pp. 39-53.
99. Charles Krauthammer, Democratic Realism: An American Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute Press, 2004).
100. George W. Bush, "Remarks by the President at the 20th Anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy", 6 November 2003, available:, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/11/print/20031106-3.html. (accessed 25 November 2007).
101. Fukuyama, op. cit., ch. 26.
102. Max Singer and Aaron Wildavsky, The Real World Order: Zones of Peace, Zones of Turmoil (New Jersey: Chatham House, 1993).
103. James M. Goldgeier and Michael McFaul, "A Tale of Two Worlds: Core and Periphery in the Post-Cold War Era", International Organization, Vol. 46, No. 2 (1992) pp. 467-491.
104. John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (London: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 52-54.
105. Bowden, Expanding the Empire of Civilization, op. cit., ch. 7, runs a parallel argument about how recent scholarship on different zones of peace and war replicate distinctions found in the classical standard. He does not, however, relate these distinctions to the DPT. The argument here, however, is that the DPT plays a crucial role in defining and separating these zones.
106. Beate Jahn, "Kant, Mill, and Illiberal Legacies in International Affairs", International Organization, Vol. 59, No. 1 (2005) pp. 177-207.
107. Bowden, Expanding the Empire of Civilization, op. cit., ch. 7.
108. Salter, op. cit., p. 155.
109. Michael Williams, "The Discipline of the Democratic Peace: Kant, Liberalism and the Social Construction of Security Communities", European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 7, No. 4 (2001) pp. 525-553.
110. For an extended discussion of the consequences of this, see Christopher Hobson, "The 'Sorry Comforters' of the Democratic Peace", Unpublished manuscript.
111. Bowden, Expanding the Empire of Civilization, op. cit., p. 189.
112. Barkawi and Laffey, "The Imperial Peace", op. cit.
113. Ido Oren, "The Subjectivity of the 'Democratic' Peace: Changing U.S. Perceptions of Imperial Germany", International Security, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995).
114. There is a considerable failure to recognise the ethnocentricity of the definition of democracy taken. See also Miyume Tanji and Stephanie Lawson, "'Democratic Peace' and 'Asian Democracy': A Universalist-Particularist Tension", Alternatives, Vol. 22, No. 1 (1997) pp. 133-155.
115. Russett, op. cit., p. 14.
116. Russett is referring to Dahl, op. cit.
117. Spencer Weart, Never at War: Why Democracies Will Not Fight One Another (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), p. 296.
118. One of the justifications for the coercive democratisation of Iraq was the possibility of its acting as a trigger to bringing about a new wave of democratisation in the Middle East, and with it, the longer term possibility of peace and stability in the region. See Hobson, "A Forward Strategy of Freedom in the Middle East", op. cit., pp. 40-45.
119. Robert Ivie, "Democratizing for Peace", Rhetoric and Public Affairs Vol. 4, No. 2 (2001), p. 315.
120. Donald Rumsfeld "Remarks as Delivered by Secretary of Defense at National Defense University, Fort McNair, Washington, D.C.", 31 January 2002, available:, http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/2002/ s20020131-secdef.html. (accessed 25 November 2007).
121. Michael Doyle, "Kant, Liberal Legacies and Foreign Affairs, Part 2", Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 12, No. 4 (1983), pp. 323-337
122. Russett, op. cit., p. 136
123. idem, "Bushwhacking the Democratic Peace", International Studies Perspectives, Vol. 6, No. 4 (2005) pp. 395-408
124. Weart, op. cit., ch. 15.
125. The inability of the DPT to deal with the means-ends dilemma it raises is considered in more detail in Hobson, "The 'Sorry Comforters'", op. cit.
126. Russett, "Bushwhacking the Democratic Peace", op. cit.
127. Doyle, op. cit.
128. Russett and Oneal, op. cit., p. 52.
129. Doyle, op. cit., p. 330; emphasis added.
130. Harald Müller, "Kant's Rogue State: The 'Unjust Enemy' and Liberal Missionarism in International Affairs", Paper presented at the ISA conference, March 2005, p. 4.
131. Ibid., pp. 4-5.
132. Harald Müller, "The Antinomy of Democratic Peace", International Politics, Vol. 44, No. 4 (2004) pp. 494-520.
133. Roland Paris, "International Peacebuilding and the 'Mission Civilisatrice'", Review of International Studies, Vol. 28, No. 4 (2002), p. 654.
134. Ibid., pp. 653-654.
135. Mark Salter, "Not Waiting for the Barbarians", in Jackson and Hall (eds.), op. cit.