The “democratic peace” as a justification narrative

Project leader: Prof. Dr. Christopher Daase

With reference to Immanuel Kant’s essay “On Perpetual Peace” (1795), the contemporary theory of democratic peace (DF) claims that consolidated democracies do not wage wars against each other or are even inherently more peaceful than other types of rule. This theory draws on numerous idealizing rationality assumptions about the institutions, political culture and action orientations of citizens and elites of liberal-democratic democracies. The roots of this branch of research in the civilization-optimistic legacy of the Enlightenment are unmistakable, but have problematic scientific and political consequences: Scientifically, it leads to questionable explanatory approaches and prognoses and politically to the consolidation of an overly positive self-image of Western states. In extreme cases, DF research is used to justify violent democratization or to justify demands for a “club of democracies”. In this respect, the DF theory serves to underpin a conflict-aggravating identity politics of democratic actors. Overall, since the end of the Cold War, research on democratic peace, which has become almost unmanageable, has become an influential justification narrative for Western foreign policy strategies and world order concepts: Global democracy promotion is seen as the long-term key to achieving greater stability and peace within the framework of a liberal world order.

This project took a critical look at the (meta-)theoretical foundations of DF theory and deconstructed its assumptions of rationality with the help of arguments and insights from state theory, democratic theory and the sociology of modernity. The aim was to show that the micro-theoretical foundations of DF rest on more than fragile ground. It was shown that potentially violence-promoting exclusion processes and threat constructions mean that peace within and between democracies will always be precarious. As a result, the project showed that political claims about the peace achievements of democracies are therefore idealized.

Dr. Geis wrote her habilitation thesis as part of the project and was habilitated in 2012. She has been a professor of political science at Helmut Schmidt University Hamburg since 2016.

The project’s most important publications include:
*Geis, Anna (2011): “Of Bright Sides and Dark Sides: Democratic Peace beyond Triumphalism”, in: International Relations, 25(2), 18-25.
*Geis, Anna /Wagner, Wolfgang (2011): “How far is it from Königsberg to Kandahar? Democratic Peace and Democratic Violence in International Relations”, in: Review of International Studies, 37(4), 1555-1577.
*Geis, Anna/Wolff, Jonas (2011): “Demokratie, Frieden und Krieg. Der “Demokratische Frieden” in der deutschsprachigen Friedens- und Konfliktforschung”, in: Peter Imbusch/ Peter Schlotter/ Simone Wisotzki (eds.): Friedens- und Konfliktforschung – ein Studienbuch, Baden-Baden: Nomos (Series Forschungsstand Politikwissenschaft), 112-138.
Daase, Christopher (2011): ‘Neue Kriege und neue Kriegführung als Herausfoderungen für die Friedenspolitik’, in: Werkner, Ines-Jacqueline/ Kronfeld-Goharani, Ulrike (eds.), The ambivalent peace. Peace research faces new challenges Wiesbaden: VS-Verlag, 21- 35.