Antinomies of Democratic Peace and Just Peace Governance
The "democratic peace" theory is based on the observation that democracies hardly ever wage wars against one another. It is argued that this is due to the calculation of interests and the value orientation of the citizens of these states, and to the effects of democratic institutions. PRIF's current research programme is committed to the democratic form of governance and accepts the basic premises of this theory. When one looks more closely at the evidence, however, contradictions start to appear which need to be examined and explained in more detail. It is true that democracies do not wage wars against each other, but they do engage in wars against undemocratic regimes, and they sometimes do this in particularly aggressive ways. In addition, democratization, the path leading to democratic peace, is often an especially violent process. And while international organizations can function as the institutional basis for peaceful cooperation, they also involve the risk of a loss of democratic control. These and other contradictions which had attracted very little attention in the past have been the central concerns both of PRIF's basic research work and of the institute's policy advisory activities since 2000.
In the course of 2009, PRIF will start its new research programme "Just Peace Governance". Under this title PRIF will analyse the tensions between these three terms/concepts which have always had considerable theoretical significance and praxeological outreach for peace and conflict research. As in the case of “Democratic Peace”, PRIF seeks to reveal hidden frictions and contradictions within as well as between the three concepts. The aim is to find out under what conditions implicit or explicit ideas of justice held by political stakeholders lead to violent conflicts and under what circumstances they can form the basis for sustainable peace.
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// Antinomies of Democratic Peace.pdf