Global Society, Vol. 22, No.

1, January, 2008

“Democracy as Civilisation”

CHRISTOPHER HOBSON!

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, democracy has come to embody the very idea
of legitimate statehood in international politics. It has done so largely through defining
a new standard of civilisation, in which “democraticness” determines the limits of
international society and helps to construct relations with non-democracies “beyond
the pale”. Like the “classical” standard, this new version again reflects a considerable
interest in the socio-political organisation of states. Central in this shift back to a
more “anti-pluralist” international society has been the democratic peace thesis,
which emphasises how the internal (democratic) characteristics of states influence
their external behaviour. Against more optimistic interpretations, it is argued that the
democratic peace is a distinctly Janus-faced creature: promoting peace between democra-
cies, while potentially encouraging war against non-democratic others. Within the
democratic peace, non-democracies become not just behaviourally threatening but also
ontologically threatening. Non-democracies are a danger because of what they are
(or are not). In sum, the argument presented is that democracy, positioned as the
most legitimate form of domestic governance in international society, has become
caught up and used in global structures of domination, hierarchy and violence. Thus,
the role of “democracy” in international politics is much more complicated, and, at
least in its current guise, less progressive than often portrayed.

The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our
form of government on anyone else . . . Our aim is to build and preserve a
community of free and independent nations, with governments that
answer to their citizens, and reflect their own cultures. And because
democracies respect their own people and their neighbors, the advance
of freedom will lead to peace.1

!
Earlier versions of this paper were presented to the Oceanic Conference on International Studies,
University of Melbourne (July 2006) and the Critical and Cultural Politics Research Group, University
of Wales, Aberystwyth (October 2006). I would like to thank the participants at these meetings, as well
as the reviewers and editor for their useful suggestions and feedback. Special thanks go to Cindy
O’Hagan and Raymond Apthorpe for encouraging me to pursue this argument.
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).

ISSN 1360-0826 print/ISSN 1469-798X online/08/010075– 21 # 2008 University of Kent

DOI: 10.1080/13600820701740746
76 C. Hobson

Introduction
What the failed attempt at coercive democratisation in Iraq has helped to reveal is
a fundamental tension in how the idea of democracy operates in world politics.
On the one hand, something called “democracy” is almost universally accepted
as a normative good. As Sen puts it, “in the general climate of world opinion,
democratic governance has now achieved the status of being taken to be generally
right”.2 Established democracies seek to confirm their status through constantly
reaffirming their “democraticness” at home, while attempting to promote it
abroad. States that have recently transited to democracy hope to consolidate
their hard-fought position through continuing reforms, internationally monitored
elections and a host of other mechanisms supported by a transnational web of
democracy promoters. These same actors that assist recently democratised
states—older liberal democracies, international organisations and a plethora of
NGOs—also encourage moves towards democracy in the states that have so far
resisted this global trend. The hope is to continue and consolidate the sizeable
shift towards liberal democracy that has occurred in recent decades, which has
resulted in a host of benefits—the growth of human freedom, greater respect for
human rights and a decline in interstate war—to name a few of the most
prominent.
At the same stage, the end of the Cold War also meant the disappearance of
major ideational challenges to the liberal democratic model.3 Increasingly a stric-
ter understanding of what democracy means, and what one should look like, has
emerged from the United States and other influential liberal democracies. The
entry ticket to the “community of free and independent nations” Bush speaks of
is a type of democracy that corresponds to the model found in America and its
liberal democratic allies. The grouping of transnational actors promoting democ-
racy has tended to do so through offering a version that reflects the standards and
interests of the most powerful democracies.4 With democracy becoming the legit-
imate form of domestic governance in international politics, its emancipatory
potential has been distinctly curtailed, through being caught up and used in
global structures of domination, hierarchy and violence. Democracy, usually
seen as being demanded from “below”, is now clearly also something demanded
from “above”. Thus, a serious tension emerges from the contradictory practices
and discourses surrounding democracy in international politics. On the one
hand, the emancipatory intent of democracy is symbolised in events like the
recent “colour revolutions”. On the other hand, there is the disastrous Iraq misad-
venture, partly motivated and justified in the name of democracy. Both represent a
face of “democracy” in world politics at present.

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 rep-
resent 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); William Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
 “Democracy as Civilisation” 77

Without denying the positive uses of the idea(l) of democracy, more attention
needs to be given to its less progressive, more coercive dimension. The normative
“goodness” of democracy means the way the concept is implicated in processes of
domination, hierarchy and violence is regularly lost. Admittedly, there have been
important contributions highlighting the less salutary dimensions of democracy
promotion,5 the democratic peace thesis6 and the democratic entitlement in inter-
national law.7 To date, however, these studies have remained discrete and too
small in number. The “theoretical and empirical lacunae . . . in respect of the inter-
relationship of democracy and international relations in post-Cold War politics”,
which Hazel Smith and her colleagues considered in a special issue of Global
Society, remains significant a decade later.8 What needs to be further reflected on
is the way these separate, albeit interrelated, discourses and practices all feed
into and reinforce the pre-eminent position of democracy in world politics. One
particularly vital matter, with which this article concerns itself, is the role of
democracy in defining legitimate statehood, and, in so doing, helping to structure
relations between democratic and non-democratic states. The part played by this
powerful idea(l) in informing a new standard of civilisation is examined, with it
being argued that “democraticness” is now central in determining the limits of
international society and in constructing relations with those “beyond the pale”.
It is shown that democracy’s position in international politics is much more
complicated, and, at least in its current guise, less progressive than regularly por-
trayed. Against readings which see democracy’s global entrenchment as opening
possibilities for greater levels of international peace, stronger international law
and more secure protection of human rights, it is argued that its place at the
heart of a new standard of civilisation means “democracy” also can, and does,
promote processes of exclusion, hierarchy and violence. Put simply, the overwhel-
mingly bright aura that surrounds “democracy” should not blind us from this
darker side.
The argument will proceed as follows. First, discourses of civilisation(s) in inter-
national politics will be briefly outlined. This will lead to a discussion on stan-
dards of civilisation, with the “classical” standard of the 19th and 20th centuries
being considered. Only through understanding properly how it has existed will
we then be able to comprehend the features that inform the standard in its
present guise. In reflecting on this latest iteration of the standard, it will be
argued that democracy plays a central and determining role. The manner in
which this new standard is constituted and operates will be analysed through
examining how democracy is bringing together the two faces of international
legitimacy, what Clark terms “rightful membership” and “rightful conduct”.9
Specifically, the way the democratic peace thesis encourages a strengthening
between these two dimensions will be highlighted, with emphasis placed on
the less progressive outcomes of this highly influential discourse. It will be

5. Ibid.
6. Tarak Barkawi and Mark Laffey, “The Imperial Peace: Democracy, Force and Globalization”,
European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 5, No. 4 (1999); idem, Democracy, Liberalism, and War
(Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2001).
7. Susan Marks, The Riddle of All Constitutions: International Law, Democracy, and the Critique of
Ideology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
8. Hazel Smith, “Democracy and International Relations”, Global Society, Vol. 12, No. 2 (1998), p. 156.
9. Ian Clark, Legitimacy in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
78 C. Hobson

argued that the democratic peace is a distinctly Janus-faced creature, promoting

peace between democracies but also capable of encouraging war against non-
democratic others. In concluding, we shall return to the tension noted at the
outset between democracy being implicated in processes of hierarchy and exclu-
sion, while also remaining a powerful counter-hegemonic and emancipatory ideal
in world politics.

Civilisational Discourses in International Politics

The discipline of International Relations (IR) has traditionally been rather quiet on
questions of civilisation, due largely to the state-centricism that has long domi-
nated thinking on international politics.10 Following Samuel Huntington’s infa-
mous “clash of civilizations” thesis11 and its seeming confirmation with the
attacks of 11 September 2001 and the ensuing “war on terror”, the role played
by civilisation(s) in world politics is now starting to garner more attention. In
this regard, O’Hagan draws a useful distinction between two ways in which IR
has sought to understand civilisation(s).12 The first takes the concept of civilisation
“in its pluralist sense to define and distinguish political communities, their
boundaries, characters, and their likely interaction with one another on the
basis of their cultural identity”.13 Notable exemplars of this approach are
Toynbee, Spengler and, more recently, Huntington. The second sees “civilization
as a singular conception of progress relating to the political, economic and social
institutions and practices of societies”.14 This article is concerned with civilisation
in this latter sense.
Civilisation in the singular is an ideal or standard that defines boundaries of
inclusion and exclusion. It is a value-laden concept that has an inherent “norma-
tive quality”.15 “Civilisation” is what Skinner calls an “evaluative-descriptive”
term as “whenever they are used to describe actions . . . they have the effect of
evaluating them at the same time”.16 It is impossible to separate these two
speech acts—when used to describe something, the term also passes judgement
on it, and vice versa. In the case of civilisation, clearly describing something or
someone as “civilised” has strong positive connotations, associating it with a
range of laudatory and desirable adjectives. In this regard, Ifversen identifies
four meanings central to “civilisation”, namely “evolution, ideal, action and
space”. First, it implies a process of evolution—it is a temporal concept associated
with progress. Second, it represents the ideal state—the civilised society. Third, it
means acting—the action of civilising. Finally, civilisation means “a cultural
10. Jacinta O’Hagan, Conceptualizing the West in International Relations: From Spengler to Said
(New York: Palgrave, 2002), p. 2.
11. Samuel Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?”, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 72, No. 3 (1993)
pp. 22–49.
12. Jacinta O’Hagan, “Discourses of Civilizational Identity”, in Patrick Jackson and Martin Hall
(eds.), Writing Civilizations (New York: Palgrave, 2007).
13. Ibid., p. 3.
14. Ibid., pp. 3–4.
15. Brett Bowden, Expanding the Empire of Civilization, Manuscript (copy held with author, 2004),
p. 7.
16. Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics, Vol. 1: Regarding Method (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2002), p. 148.
 “Democracy as Civilisation” 79

macro-entity”—the plural sense of the term identified above.17 What these

meanings point to is that the concept of “civilisation” is particularly potent,
loaded with suggestions of progress, telos and action.
Civilisation does not make sense without its other—barbarism—with which it is
compared, and against which it is defined. These two counter-concepts are
co-constitutive. In reflecting each other they help to define themselves. As Salter
puts it, “barbarity is the mirror to civilization”.18 At the same stage, the relation-
ship between the two is not an equal one. Rather, they are what Koselleck terms
“asymmetrical counter-concepts”.19 Such conceptual pairs make claims to uni-
versality, covering humanity and its limits. The two concepts, however, stand in
an asymmetric relationship, with barbarism being placed as inferior, filled with
connotations that are all negative. The progressive traits of “civilisation” are
thus constituted in part through their antithesis being found in “barbarism”.
And if the former implies a subject to engage in “civilising”, the latter is the
logical object for this action. What this discussion suggests is that “civilisation”
differentiates, evaluates, includes and excludes. Those located within civilisation’s
bounds are looked upon favourably, associated with temporal progress, cultural
superiority and a host of other laudable traits. Those barbarians beyond,
however, are judged and condemned as inferior, backwards and, often,
dangerous.
Civilisation has manifested itself most explicitly in international politics in the
form of a standard which has both defined identities internally, and boundaries
externally. Gong explains that the standard of civilisation is “an expression of
the assumptions, both tacit and explicit, used to distinguish those that belong to
a particular society from those that do not”.20 It identifies what characteristics
or attributes define a certain international society and its members, as well as
demarcating who or what lie beyond and in the realm of barbarism. Considering
this, the common tendency to talk in terms of “old” and “new” standards of civi-
lisation is somewhat misleading. The implication is that such practices have oper-
ated only during certain historical periods. Rather, the manner in which a
standard differentiates insiders from outsiders, separating “civilised” states
worthy of respect from inferior “barbarous” ones, makes it an ever-present
feature of international politics, even if it is not always framed explicitly in this
language.21 As Gong notes, “the processes by which an international system
establishes standards to define and codify its operating interests, rules, values,
and institutions are continuing ones”.22 In so far as states together form something

17. 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.
18. Mark Salter, Barbarians and Civilization in International Relations (London: Pluto Press, 2002),
p. 18.
19. Reinhart Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
1985).
20. Gerrit Gong, The Standard of “Civilization” in International Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1984), p. 3.
21. 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.
22. Gerrit Gong, “Standards of Civilization Today”, in Mehdi Mozaffari (ed.), Globalization and
Civilizations (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 80.
80 C. Hobson

akin to a “club”,23 the standard of civilisation can be likened to membership

criteria. This reflects that international society has never been a purely “practical
association”; it has always included a “purposive” element.24 What changes over
time is not the existence of a standard but its character. It may be more or less
exclusive, and more or less explicit, depending on a number of factors, the most
notable being the “thickness” or “thinness” of the common values that exist
between states in international society.25 Recognising both the continuity of the
standard of civilisation and the different forms it has taken over time is crucial
if one is to understand the role it still plays in international politics. As such, let
us now consider the history of the “classical” standard. Only through compre-
hending how it has operated will we be able properly to grasp its current
character.

The “Classical” Standard of Civilisation

Some form of civilisational standard, or similar process of self/other differen-
tiation, has existed continuously in international politics, helping to construct
state identities and the system within which they have interacted. It was not
until approximately the mid-19th century, however, that a standard of civilisation
came to operate in an explicit manner in determining entry into the then European
system of states. While this marked the beginning of the “classical” standard of
civilisation, Bowden makes the important point that clear precursors can be
found in medieval times in relations between Christendom and the Infidels,
and even more noticeably in European encounters with the New World.26 These
earlier interactions between “civilised” and “barbarian” communities were criti-
cal in structuring the explicit standard that accompanied and followed Europe’s
more robust engagement with the rest of the globe, in the form of imperialism
and empire building. From the mid-19th century the “classical” standard came
to be codified in international law, and in its juridical guise it lasted until the
middle of the 20th century. “Civilised” states were distinguished from “semi-
civilised” and “uncivilised” outsiders, excluded from the European system of
states. The most explicit example of this coding can be found in the legal
opinion of James Lorimer: “as a political phenomenon, humanity, in its present
condition, divides itself into three concentric zones or spheres—that of civilised
humanity, that of barbarous humanity, and that of savage humanity”.27

23. 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.
24. Christian Reus-Smit, The Moral Purpose of the State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999),
pp. 36–39. 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).
25. 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.
26. Bowden, op. cit., ch. 5.
27. Quoted in ibid., p. 124.
 “Democracy as Civilisation” 81

This distinction between “civilised” and “uncivilised” peoples was so widely

found in the work of publicists at the time that it was “virtually beyond
contention”.28
To be recognised as “civilised”, non-European peoples had to meet the require-
ments of the standard. Gong identifies five main criteria that a state needed to
satisfy.29 It must:

1. guarantee basic rights, especially for foreign nationals.

2. have basic institutional capacities, i.e. a bureaucracy.
3. adhere to accepted international law.
4. maintain and engage in diplomatic exchange.
5. conform to “the accepted norms and practices of the ‘civilized’ international
society”.

The key elements of the standard thus centred on “the degree of socio-political
organisation and the form of government”.30 And the model for this was, of
course, to be found in Europe. To be acknowledged as “civilised”, non-European
states had to replicate European forms of internal governance and external sover-
eignty. The result was that being “civilised” essentially meant being “European”,
in form at least.
Those that did not reach or conform to the model of civilised statehood were
denied full standing in the European international system. This did not,
however, prevent interaction between political communities seen to be at different
levels of civilisation. In practice there were two sets of rules, one of which applied
between “civilised” states, and the other to “civilised” states dealing with “barba-
ric” outsiders. Keene explains that “within Europe, international order was sup-
posed to provide for peaceful coexistence in an anarchic and plural world by
encouraging toleration . . . Beyond Europe, international order was intended to
promote civilization.”31 Imperialism, colonisation, capitulation, unequal treaties
and civilising missions—these were the dominant features of interaction
between “civilised” states and “uncivilised” communities that failed to conform
to the model found in, and provided by, the Europeans. The “classical” standard
of civilisation did considerably more than regulate entry into the European inter-
national system. It also legitimated a different set of rules, norms and practices for
dealing with “uncivilised” parts of the world.
What is convincingly demonstrated in recent critical scholarship on the “classi-
cal” standard is how detrimental this dual system of exclusion, and inclusion
through assimilation, was. Bowden emphasises the extent to which it perpetuated
and justified violent acts of imperialism in the name of “civilising” the other.32 In a
similar vein, Keal identifies the particularly severe impact the imposition of
28. Ibid., p. 122.
29. Gong, The Standard of “Civilization” in International Society, op. cit., pp. 14–15.
30. Bowden, op. cit., p. 123. See also Brett Bowden, “In the Name of Progress and Peace: The ‘Stan-
dard of Civilization’ and the Universalizing Project”, Alternatives, Vol. 29, No. 1 (2004) pp. 43–68; and
Antony Angie, “Finding the Peripheries: Sovereignty and Colonialism in Nineteenth-century Inter-
national Law”, Harvard International Law Journal, Vol. 40, No. 1 (1999) pp. 1–71.
31. Edward Keene, Beyond the Anarchical Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002),
p. 147.
32. Bowden, Expanding the Empire of Civilization, op. cit.
82 C. Hobson

“civilisation” has had on the world’s indigenous populations.33 Suzuki,

meanwhile, notes the “Janus-faced” nature of the European international
society to which Japan was admitted.34 Japanese entry involved meeting the stan-
dard’s criteria when dealing with “civilised” Europeans, but also resulted in
similar “civilising” behaviour towards their “barbarian” neighbours in Asia.
The insights of Suzuki build on the work of Keene who recognises the “dualistic
manner”35 in which international law operated, whereby a different set of rules
and conduct applied for peoples beyond the limited boundaries of European
international society.36 One clear example of this is highlighted by Salter, who
shows that the rules and norms regulating “civilised” warfare were not con-
sidered to apply when facing “barbarians”, who were portrayed as brutal and
ignorant of codes of war.37 On this point, Osterhammel notes that “methods of
warfare that in Europe were morally and legally barred were considered legiti-
mate in the face of an enemy who did not seem to subscribe to the same cultural
code”.38 These analyses all point in the same direction, namely that under the
guise of “civilisation” a hierarchised international society enforced and perpetu-
ated systematic processes of exploitation, exclusion and imperial violence.
The tendency found in Bull and Watson,39 Gong40 and, more recently,
Donnelly41 to portray the “classical” standard as part of an ultimately progressive
expansion of the state system, while paying lip service to its more coercive side, is
insufficient. The way the standard enforced European hierarchy and exclusionary
boundaries, legitimating violence and dispossession in the name of “civilisation”,
makes it difficult to focus solely on its “less sinister”42 side. Bull and Watson are
much too sanguine in suggesting that seeing the “classical” standard as nothing
more than a “cloak” for Western aggression is a “shallow view”.43 Rather, it is
in not appreciating the full extent to which the “classical” standard was fatally
tainted and implicated in practices of imperial and colonial violence that leads
to a “shallow” comprehension of its role and significance. Moreover, the story
told by Bull and Watson of an anarchic system of sovereign states existing in
Europe which then gradually expanded to incorporate the globe does not
match with the realities of a very long and recent history of colonialism and
imperialism.44 What a broader and more critical perspective on the “classical”
standard reveals is an “intimate relationship between international society and

33. Paul Keal, European Conquest and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003).
34. Shogo Suzuki, “Japan’s Socialization into Janus-faced European International Society”,
European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 11, No. 1 (2005) pp. 137–164.
35. Ibid., p. 155.
36. Keene, op. cit.
37. Salter, op. cit., pp. 38 –42.
38. Quoted in ibid., p. 38.
39. Hedley Bull and Adam Watson (eds.), The Expansion of International Society (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1984).
40. Gong, The Standard of “Civilization” in International Society, op. cit.
41. Jack Donnelly, “Human Rights: A New Standard of Civilization?”, International Affairs, Vol. 74,
No. 1 (1998) pp. 1–23.
42. Ibid., p. 5.
43. Bull and Watson, op. cit., p. 427.
44. John Hobson and J.C. Sharman, “The Enduring Place of Hierarchy in World Politics: Tracing the
Social Logics of Hierarchy and Political Change”, European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 11, No.
1 (2005), p. 92. A similar point is made from a legal perspective in Gerry Simpson, Great Powers and
 “Democracy as Civilisation” 83

domination”.45 In so far as a standard of civilisation shapes practices of inclusion

and exclusion, determining which states are accorded full rights and recognition,
and which are not, it is heavily implicated in the structures of power that
constitute these hierarchical relationships. The very nature of the concept of
“civilisation”, combined with the way the standard has historically operated,
means that these troubling features are not specific to the “classical” standard,
but fundamental to the character and functioning of any standard of civilisation.

The “New” Standard of Civilisation

In a relatively explicit juridical form the “classical” standard operated until the
middle of the 20th century. Two movements were instrumental in its demise.
First, during the First World War Europeans began describing each other as bar-
barian, which started to unravel the distinction between a “civilised” Europe
and a “barbaric” other.46 Second, and of considerably more importance, the
horrors perpetuated and visited on the world by the “civilised” European
powers during the Second World War fatally undermined the suggestion that
the majority of non-European peoples were too “uncivilised” to be considered
full members of international society.47 To reiterate, this did not mean a standard
of civilisation ceased to exist. The “classical” standard was only the most overt
manifestation of a more general desire for a degree of homogeneity amongst
states.48 This version, grounded in international law, became basically extinct,
but a much more limited pluralist standard remained. This was based primarily
on juridical sovereignty, with the emphasis on sovereign independence and equal-
ity.49 Exemplified by the UN Charter and decolonisation, it was the external
characteristics of states, rather than their internal makeup, which determined
full recognition and international legitimacy. Article 2 of the UN Charter estab-
lished the organisation as “based on the principle of the sovereign equality of
all of its members”. It clearly respects the territorial and political independence
of all sovereign states, pledging that nothing “shall authorise the United
Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdic-
tion of any State”. In sum, Simpson suggests that “it is possible to see the period
1945 –1989 as one marked by a rejection of standards of civilisation, culture and
democracy as a criterion for membership of the international community”.50
With the conclusion of the Cold War and the apparent triumph of the Western
model of market capitalism and liberal democracy, there was what Ian Clark terms
“the reinvention of a restrictive international society”.51 A considerable
Outlaw States: Unequal Sovereigns in the International Legal Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004).
45. Tim Dunne, “The New Agenda”, in Alex Bellamy (ed.), International Society and its Critics
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 75.
46. Salter, op. cit., pp. 82– 83.
47. Donnelly, op. cit., p. 12.
48. Martin Wight, “International Legitimacy”, International Relations, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1972) pp. 1–28.
49. Christian Reus-Smit, “Liberal Hierarchy and the Licence to Use Force”, Review of International
Studies, Vol. 31 (2005), pp. 2– 6.
50. Simpson, op. cit., p. 272. This account differs from Simpson in suggesting that a standard of civi-
lisation did not cease to exist, but instead became more relaxed and implicit than in its earlier “classi-
cal” guise.
51. Clark, op. cit., p. 180.
84 C. Hobson

resurgence in the confidence of liberal values, combined with a sizeable power

differential favouring key democratic states, has led to the (re)emergence of a
more explicit and restrictive standard of civilisation, which again largely reflects
the values and interests of these core states. Lacking the juridical status of the
“classical” standard, it is in the political realm that it is primarily found,
centred on the principles of democracy, capitalism and individual human
rights. Of these, democracy has been the unifying feature of this new standard.
Democracy is widely accepted as the most suitable form of governance for
liberal capitalism, in so far as it provides the necessary institutional framework
while allowing the freedom, autonomy and space that liberal economics seeks.
Similarly, democracy is seen to be essential for the full protection and respect of
human rights, with such rights only being considered totally secure when they
are not dependent on the benevolence of an unaccountable ruler.52 These compat-
ibilities, along with a host of other goods this form of rule is seen to provide—
freedom, stability, accountability, openness, some level of social justice, inter-
national peace, stronger international law and so on—make democracy the
focal point for the new standard. In providing a set of socio-political institutions,
democracy becomes the framework and mechanism through which these other
values and interests are transmitted. Put simply, in the 21st century it is the
ballot box that is becoming the symbol of legitimate statehood.
These moves towards a “restrictive international society” has meant a tighten-
ing and strengthening of the principles that inform “rightful membership”, with
the growing belief that the internal (democratic) makeup of states plays a crucial
role in bringing about “rightful conduct”.53 This has led to a renewed emphasis on
the socio-political organisation of states. A pervading desire for liberal democracy
in the political sphere and market capitalism in the economic one has been man-
ifested in the policies and rhetoric of individual states, international organisations
and NGOs. This increasing push towards a far greater level of socio-political uni-
formity across states clashes with the more pluralist framework inherited from the
UN Charter system. In these shifts are reflected a continuing tension between two
versions of liberalism that help to define international society, what Simpson
terms “liberal pluralism” and “liberal anti-pluralism”.54 The former corresponds
to classical liberalism which emphasises “the virtues of tolerance, diversity, open-
ness together with an agnosticism about moral truth”.55 As noted, this was more
prominent in the post-1945 order based on sovereign equality and independence.
It was a pluralist ethic framed in terms of coexistence, not inquiring too heavily
into the domestic makeup of states. Following the end of the Cold War,
however, we have witnessed the rise of “liberal anti-pluralism”. This version of
liberalism is imbued with a “moralistic fervour” and a conviction in the truth
and “rightness” of liberalism and liberal polities.56 It encourages an exclusiveness
and an intolerance towards non-liberal regimes. Once again, we inhabit a world of
civilised and barbarous communities, only now it is understood in terms of
democracies and non-democracies.

52. Anthony Langlois, “Human Rights without Democracy? A Critique of the Separationist
Thesis”, Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 4 (2003) pp. 990–1019.
53. Clark, op. cit., ch. 8.
54. Simpson, op. cit.
55. Ibid., p. 77.
56. Ibid., p. 78.
 “Democracy as Civilisation” 85

In the post-Cold War era, marked by this liberal anti-pluralism, there has been a
far greater interest in the internal makeup of states, with liberal jurists even claim-
ing the emergence of a “right” to democracy.57 This has also meant a much heavier
emphasis placed on labelling, ostracising and, when necessary, confronting pariah
states that do not conform to the new standard. An increased concern with such
outlaw states has been most prominent in US foreign policy, with President
Bush’s “axis of evil” being the obvious example. Indeed, one characteristic that
unified this “axis” against “the civilized world” was the “non-democratic” label
that America applied to them.58 Reflecting on this anti-pluralist trend, Donnelly
makes the useful distinction between “behavioural” and “ontological” outlaw
states. The former “violate particular international norms”, while the latter “are
outlaws more for who they are than what they have done”.59 The manner in
which international society is reformulating, with a more explicit and stricter
standard based around democracy, is one that leads to states being more easily
classified as “ontological outlaws”. It is what these states are—non-democratic—
that becomes the essential problem and the basis of their pariah status.

Democracy as Civilisation
Democratic governance has become the benchmark for full international legiti-
macy in a world where “a democracy is what it is virtuous for a state to be”.60
Democracy has taken on the conceptual characteristics of “civilisation”, associated
with notions of progress, development, modernisation and a host of other laud-
able traits. The phenomenon of democratic states being considered “virtuous”,
however, is hardly a new one. Ivor Brown wrote shortly after the First World
War of a “world in which every one is trying to show that he is more democratic
than everybody else”.61 This trend quickly declined with the rise of fascism, but
with the end of the Second World War an ideological contest drawing on different
understandings of democracy soon emerged. Central to the dynamics of the Cold
War were two competing visions of this concept—liberal democracy was cham-
pioned by the United States and its allies against the people’s democracies of
the Soviet Union and its satellites. Neither side actively denied “democracy”,
but rather contested its boundaries by attempting to redescribe it in such a
manner as to include one camp, whilst excluding the other. Commenting on the
situation in 1979, Dunn noted that “democratic theory is the moral Esperanto of
the present nation-state system, the language in which all Nations are truly
United”.62 Writing a decade earlier, Macpherson had highlighted three types of
democracy in existence, since along with the liberal and communist versions of
57. Thomas Franck, “The Emerging Right to Democratic Governance”, American Journal of Inter-
national Law, Vol. 86, No. 1 (1992) pp. 49–91.
58. 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).
59. Jack Donnelly, “Sovereign Inequalities and Hierarchy in Anarchy: American Power and Inter-
national Society”, European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 12, No. 2 (2006) pp. 139 –170.
60. John Dunn, Western Political Theory in the Face of the Future, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1979), p. 11.
61. Ivor J.C. Brown, The Meaning of Democracy (London: Richard Cobden-Sanderson, 1920),
pp. 175 –176.
62. Dunn, op. cit., p. 2.
86 C. Hobson

democracy, there was also a Third World model.63 With the conclusion of the Cold
War, it was liberal democracy that proved victorious, a perhaps obvious, but
necessary point made by Fukuyama.64 Models of democracy were replaced by a
model of democracy. In this regard, Fenves suggests that Fukuyama hit upon
an important “linguistic fact”, namely “the absence of any universalizable alterna-
tive to the language of liberal democracy for the legitimization of political insti-
tutions”.65 What the end of the Cold War signified was not simply that
democratic states were confirmed as “virtuous”, but also the rise of a much
more limited understanding of what “democracy” as an institution, and in prac-
tice, means. It is one variant—the Anglo-American liberal one—that is promoted
as democracy and the benchmark of fully legitimate statehood.66
Liberal democracy, supposedly exemplified by the United States, has become
hegemonic to the extent that the “liberal” is regularly dropped out, with this
model naturalised as democracy. What is lost is that there are multiple types of
democracy, of which the liberal version is only one.67 In this regard, Hutchings
gives the important caution not “to become closed to the appreciation of alterna-
tive ways of thinking about what democracy means”.68 To do this, it must be
recognised that liberal democracy has been conditioned, shaped and determined
by its primarily Anglo-American heritage. In considering alternative conceptions
of democracy within Africa, Bradley makes the point that it is “a configuration of
governance moulded by the general values, biases, and nuances of a given
culture”.69 What this suggests is that the model of democracy promoted not
only by the United States but also the European Union, United Nations and a
host of other countries and international bodies is not politically and culturally
neutral but one that distinctly reflects the experiences, interests and values of
these promoters. In the case of the world’s most prominent and forceful promoter,
democracy is viewed through an American lens, with an understanding that
closely corresponds to the dominant liberal, procedural definition found in
American political science.70 And clearly the way democracy is promulgated by
63. C.B. Macpherson, The Real World of Democracy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966).
64. “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.
65. 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.
66. 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.
67. David Held, Models of Democracy, 2nd edn (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996); Macpher-
son, op. cit.
68. Kimberly Hutchings, “Modelling Democracy”, Global Society, Vol. 12, No. 2 (1998), p. 174.
69. Matthew Todd Bradley, “‘The Other’: Precursory African Conceptions of Democracy”, Inter-
national Studies Review, Vol. 7, No. 3 (2005), p. 407.
70. 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). 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).
 “Democracy as Civilisation” 87

the leading power has considerable ramifications for the way it is received and
interpreted by other actors in world politics. An understanding that closely corre-
sponds to American experience and the politics of the United States, which
emphasises political and civil rights at the same time as giving less importance
to economic ones, becomes naturalised as democracy. In the process “alterna-
tives”, as Hazel Smith notes, “are made invisible”.71
The relationship between liberalism and democracy found in this version of
democracy is an historically contingent one. Even if one does not fully accept
this argument, instead following Fukuyama and suggesting the universality of
liberal democracy, there will still be differences across societies in terms of the
weighting given to the two parts. Within the American tradition, liberalism has
been hegemonic, structuring democracy.72 Yet there is no reason why in other
societies the two components may not be combined differently. They may be
related more equally, or the democratic dimension could instead structure the
liberal one. The regimes found in Scandinavia offer the most notable real-world
example of prosperous democracies where the liberal dimension is not necessarily
prioritised. Forms of social democracy, along with models that emphasise a far
greater level of activity and participation by the people, are viable alternatives
hidden behind the dominant version. Variations within and between the different
models found in Western democratic states largely disappear when democracy is
exported, with the type promoted being one that corresponds closely to the
Anglo-American standard. And whereas the dominance of liberalism was not a
problem for America at its founding due to exceptionally fortunate circumstances,
it is highly questionable whether similar conditions now exist in most of the
world.73
A new standard of civilisation based on democracy thus retains the Western-
centricism that marked its “classical” iteration. Like the earlier version of the stan-
dard which reflected the interests and values of the dominant European powers,
now democracy is understood and promoted in a similar fashion.74 Within the
new standard, democracy is viewed largely through an American, or more gener-
ally Western, lens. And in so doing, once again a socio-political form of organis-
ation is encouraged, promoted or dictated that conforms to a model emerging
from a core of powerful Western states. This new standard is not asking states

71. H. Smith, op. cit., p. 155.

72. 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; 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.
73. 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 Democ-
racy Promotion: Impulses, Strategies, and Impacts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) pp. 200–207.
74. The manner in which the form of democracy reflected in a new standard is suited to the econ-
omic 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 the West. 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.
88 C. Hobson

to meet some objective criteria but is asking (or telling) “them” to become more
like “us”. It is for this reason that Mozaffari is mistaken in suggesting that the
new standard operates more through “attraction” than “coercion”.75 Rather,
democracy’s progressive label and the universalising language with which it is
cloaked means that the structures of power it operates in and with are overlooked.
Behind the seemingly benign universal standard of democracy is a specific con-
ception of what democracy is and what democratic states should be. Coercion
operates through defining and limiting what democracy is and can be.
States that do not conform to this liberal democratic standard now struggle to be
recognised as fully legitimate. Indeed, a “sin” that presently unites all rogue and
pariah states is their undemocratic nature.76 Particularly instructive is the case of
Iran, which has claims to being considered democratic,77 but is refused this label
as it does not conform to dominant perceptions of what democracy should be.
When identifying it as part of the “axis of evil”, Bush singled it out as a country
where “an unelected few repress the Iranian people’s hope for freedom”.78
States like Iran that are judged to be non-democratic or insufficiently democratic
are becoming, in the terminology of Donnelly, “ontological outlaws”.79 It is what
these states are, or perhaps more accurately are not, that removes them from, in
Bush’s words, “the civilized world”.80 One major reason for this is that the internal
makeup of states is now widely seen as determinative of external behaviour. Thus,
democracies are threatening precisely because they are non-democratic. At the
heart of these perceptions is the hugely influential Democratic Peace Thesis
(DPT), which proposes that the internal (democratic) character of states has a cau-
sative role in helping to generate international peace. It is necessary to consider
the democratic peace in more detail, as it plays a crucial part in cementing
democracy’s pre-eminent position in international politics. The pacifist nature
of democratic states, identified by the DPT, helps to represent and inform their
“virtue”, while non-democracies increasingly are targeted as obstacles on the
road to “perpetual peace”.

The Janus-faced Nature of the Democratic Peace81

The DPT has probably been one of the most important and influential arguments
to emerge from the social sciences in the last quarter of a century. The central
proposition, forwarded primarily by liberal scholars, highlights the rarity of
75. 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.
76. Deon Geldenhuys, Deviant Conduct in World Politics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004),
pp. 31–33.
77. 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.
78. Bush, “State of the Union Address”, 29 January 2002, op. cit.
79. Donnelly, “Sovereign Inequalities and Hierarchy in Anarchy”, op. cit.
80. Bush, “State of the Union Address”, 29 January 2002, op. cit.
81Two new books appeared after this paper was largely finished which offer arguments very com-
patible with those presented here. These are: Anna Geis, Lothar Brock and Harald Müller (eds.), Demo-
cratic Wars: Looking at the Dark Side of Democratic Peace (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan 2006); and
 “Democracy as Civilisation” 89

war between democratic states: “in the modern international system, democracies
have almost never fought each other”.82 While a powerful causal explanation for
this phenomenon has yet to be fully provided, studies tend to demonstrate a very
robust correlation between democracies and peace. This leads Russett and Oneal
to suggest “that democracies rarely fight each other is now generally, if not univer-
sally accepted”.83 This may be somewhat of an overstatement considering the
extensive and continuing debate over the DPT’s empirical and theoretical validity.
Perhaps what is more relevant, however, is that the DPT is now generally perceived
as being true. So Russett and Oneal may be justified in their assertion, at least in
regard to key policy-making circles.84 To the extent that democracy is seen to
facilitate and encourage peace internationally, the DPT helps to construct such
states as being “virtuous” and desirable.85 Democracies are lauded for their role
in contributing to the Grundnorm of peace and their part in the recent global
downturn in interstate violence.
The DPT helps to validate and entrench democracy’s place at the heart of a new
standard of civilisation. Within the realm of foreign policy, one of the central
justifications for democracy promotion is, as President Bush explains, the belief
that “if you look at history, democracies are peaceful nations. The spread of
democracy yields peace”.86 The DPT encourages and legitimates the spread of
democracy as a foreign policy aim, with the basic logic being that a growth in
the number of democracies will lead to an expansion of the zone of peace. This
thinking has been most evident in the foreign policy of the United States, where
the promotion of democracy has occupied an especially prominent position
since the end of the Cold War. Writing when Deputy Secretary of State under
the Clinton administration, Strobe Talbott argued that “the larger and more
close-knit the community of nations that choose democratic forms of government,
the safer and more prosperous Americans will be”.87 With the Bush presidency it
was expected that democracy promotion would be less central, but this quickly
changed following the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. The spread of
democracy to the Middle East was the consensual long-term solution to the violence
threatened by terrorists and rogue regimes.88 As neo-con Charles Krauthammer
put it, “there is not a single, remotely plausible, alternative strategy for attacking
the monster behind 9/11”.89 At the base of this new, more robust form of democ-

Tony Smith, A Pact with the Devil: Washington’s Bid for World Supremacy and the Betrayal of the American
Promise (New York: Routledge, 2007).
82. Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 4.
83. Bruce Russett and John Oneal, Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International
Organizations (New York: Norton, 2001), p. 43.
84. This is most obviously the case in the post-Cold War foreign policy of the United States, with the
DPT clearly influencing both the Clinton and Bush administrations.
85. 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.
86. George W. Bush, “President Discusses Second Term Accomplishments and Priorities”, 3 August
2005, available: ,http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/08/20050803.html..
87. Strobe Talbott, “Democracy and the National Interest”, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 75, No. 6 (1996),
pp. 48 –49.
88. See Christopher Hobson, “A Forward Strategy of Freedom in the Middle East: US Democracy Pro-
motion and the ‘War on Terror’”, Australian Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 59, No. 1 (2005) pp. 39–53.
89. Charles Krauthammer, Democratic Realism: An American Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World
(Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute Press, 2004).
90 C. Hobson

racy promotion are the findings of the DPT. With the spread of democracy,
through arms or otherwise, the zone of peace and civilisation is expanded. As Pre-
sident Bush tells us, “in Europe, as in Asia, as in every region of the world, the
advance of freedom leads to peace”.90 The logic of the DPT is seemingly an inclus-
ive one, with a ticket to the zone of peace being a successful transition to
democracy.
The potential openness of the zone of peace identified by the DPT, and encour-
aged by a transnational web of democracy promoters, is premised, however, on
the domestic makeup of states corresponding to a specific liberal democratic
model, presented as the source of a pacifistic international order. This form of
inclusion through assimilation is matched by the drawing of stricter boundaries
between “peaceful” liberal democracies and “war prone” non-democracies. The
former inhabit an increasingly Kantian world, while the latter are left to fight it
out on a Hobbesian battleground. Fukuyama separates “post-historical states”
that have achieved liberal democracy from non-democratic states lagging behind,
“mired in history”. Central to this distinction is that in the “post-historical” world
peace exists, in comparison to the “historical” world where Realpolitik dominates
and force remains the “ultima ratio” in state relations.91 This demarcation between
a “zone of peace” and “zone of turmoil” is drawn explicitly by Singer and
Wildavsky in identifying the nature of the “real” post-Cold War environment,92
with Goldgeier and McFaul making a parallel distinction between the two worlds
of “core” and “periphery”.93 A similar divide also exists in John Rawls’ “law of
peoples”, which excludes those that are not liberal or “decent”. Citing work on
the DPT, Rawls suggests that “the absence of war between major established democ-
racies is as close as anything we know to a simple empirical reality in relations
among societies” and that this “underwrites the Law of Peoples as a realistic
utopia”.94 Without labouring the point, what needs to be emphasised is that in all
these influential accounts of the “real” world, the DPT plays an explicit role in sep-
arating “peaceful” liberal democracies from their “war prone” others.95 A zone of
peace exists within the civilised democratic core, but beyond lies threatening,
violent non-democratic barbarians. Between the two worlds there is a liberal refor-
mulation of the classically realist security dilemma, which now comes to exist
between democratic and non-democratic states.96 Once again we find ourselves
inhabiting a dualistic international order where toleration and coexistence are

90. George W. Bush, “Remarks by the President at the 20th Anniversary of the National Endow-
ment for Democracy”, 6 November 2003, available: ,http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/
2003/11/print/20031106-3.html. (accessed 25 November 2007).
91. Fukuyama, op. cit., ch. 26.
92. Max Singer and Aaron Wildavsky, The Real World Order: Zones of Peace, Zones of Turmoil (New
Jersey: Chatham House, 1993).
93. 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.
94. John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (London: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 52–54.
95. 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 stan-
dard. 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.
96. Beate Jahn, “Kant, Mill, and Illiberal Legacies in International Affairs”, International Organiz-
ation, Vol. 59, No. 1 (2005) pp. 177–207.
 “Democracy as Civilisation” 91

the norm within the liberal democratic zone of peace, while Realpolitik and
21st-century civilising missions mark dealings with the non-democratic zone of war.
With the DPT separating the world into “peaceful” democracies and “war prone”
non-democracies, there are obvious parallels and continuities with the previous
civilised/barbarian pairing.97 Indeed, “democracy” has come to embody many of
the meanings of “civilisation”—progress, telos and action. More generally, the
zone of peace, made up of democracies, is partially constituted through the nega-
tion of itself in the opposing zone of war. The world that the “peaceful” democra-
cies inhabit is a civilised one, temporally advanced and spatially separated from
the one that “violent” non-democracies find themselves in, with the latter’s “pro-
gress”, or lack thereof, understood in comparison to the standard upheld by the
former. Not only does this “two worlds” image unify the enemy/other but it also
confirms and reifies the identities of the liberal democratic states that make up
the zone of peace.98 Liberal democratic states are reassured of their “virtue” and
“democraticness” by displacing on to non-democracies the violence and discontent
that can threaten or undermine the democratic order from within. In much the
same way as states previously defined themselves as “civilised” in reference to a
“barbaric” other, the distinction drawn through the DPT helps to confirm the iden-
tities of these states as democratic. This becomes increasingly important when the
gap widens between the ideals of democracy and actual practices, a problem which
has grown considerably during the “war on terror”. Non-democracies, temporally
behind and spatially removed, come to represent and embody exactly what the vir-
tuous and peaceful democracies are not. In so doing, the existence of these non-
democracies also strengthens the bonds between liberal democracies by reassuring
them of their mutual “likeness”.99 These constitutive dimensions of the DPT are
ones that tend to be missed, with most proponents being quiet on fundamental
questions of identification and recognition that underlie their theory.
One of the greatest strengths of the DPT lies in its claims to objectivity, with
almost all studies being firmly based on rigorous social scientific methodology.100
From this perspective, the accounts of zones of peace and war that emerge are
merely corresponding to empirical realities. As Bowden astutely notes,
however, “on another level there is a normative side to the story that promotes
the West as the gatekeeper of liberal international order”.101 This is reflected in
the definitions of the key concepts of war, peace and democracy that underpin
the empirical results of the DPT.102 War is understood so narrowly as to exclude
important instances of aggression and violence by democracies. Conceiving of
peace, meanwhile, in relation to the absence of war removes from sight the struc-
tural violence caused by democracies in situations such as tough sanction regimes,
or, less obviously, in the harsh neoliberal economic reform packages imposed on
states transiting to democracy. Democracy, of course, is a highly contested

97. Bowden, Expanding the Empire of Civilization, op. cit., ch. 7.

98. Salter, op. cit., p. 155.
99. 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.
100. For an extended discussion of the consequences of this, see Christopher Hobson, “The ‘Sorry
Comforters’ of the Democratic Peace”, Unpublished manuscript.
101. Bowden, Expanding the Empire of Civilization, op. cit., p. 189.
102. Barkawi and Laffey, “The Imperial Peace”, op. cit.
92 C. Hobson

concept. In almost all studies on the democratic peace, however, this contestation
and mutability is removed, and democracy is defined in a very fixed and specific
manner. The understanding taken is liberal and procedural, tending to reflect a
certain configuration of American values, institutions and experiences.103
Representative is the definition provided in Russett’s influential study:

For modern states, democracy (or polyarchy, following Dahl 1971) is

usually identified with a voting franchise for a substantial fraction of citi-
zens, a government brought to power in contested elections, and an
executive either popularly elected or responsible to an elected legislature,
often also with requirements for civil liberties such as free speech.104

The core liberal democracies become exemplars of the model that “perpetual
peace” necessitates. Peace is bought at the price of difference. Liberal democracy
becomes the required condition, as this is the type of regime that offers a possible
end to interstate warfare. And who does not like peace?
The logic of the DPT is thus twofold. First, it creates and encourages a clear
separation between the two “worlds” inhabited by democracies and non-
democracies. The former are recognised as more legitimate due to their
supposedly peaceful behaviour, the latter are trapped in a cycle of war and vio-
lence, temporally and morally behind the civilised liberal democracies that have
progressed towards peaceful relations. History is used to highlight the failings
of non-democracies and to vindicate the “virtuousness” of democracies. At the
same stage, the division that emerges between the two “worlds” is not a fixed
or immutable one. Rather, the narrative told is distinctly teleological, with the
global expansion of democracy being accompanied by a gradual spread of more
peaceful interstate relations. This leads to the second point, namely that within
the DPT there lies a clear and persuasive invitation to expand the zone of peace
and civilisation. Through transiting to the model of democracy found in the zone
of peace, an escape route is offered from the zone of war. And if there is an unwill-
ingness or inability to make this move—which is most likely to be perceived as a
result of temporal backwardness—liberal democracies may be willing to speed
up history and bring democracy forcibly. Thus, in the DPT lie the seeds of a new
mission civilisatrice. With democratic peace scholars holding out the possibility
that a “preponderance of democracies will transform the entire system of inter-
national relations”,105 confident liberal democratic states are faced with the tempta-
tion of accelerating the arrival of a “perpetual peace” by actively bringing
civilisation to the uncivilised, democracy to the non-democratic. Seen in this
light, the war in Iraq is the clearest manifestation of a more basic logic of attempting
to extend the zone of peace through distinctly non-democratic means.106
103. Ido Oren, “The Subjectivity of the ‘Democratic’ Peace: Changing U.S. Perceptions of Imperial
Germany”, International Security, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995). 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.
104. Russett, op. cit., p. 14. Russett is referring to Dahl, op. cit.
105. Spencer Weart, Never at War: Why Democracies Will Not Fight One Another (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1998), p. 296.
106. 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
 “Democracy as Civilisation” 93

As Ivie notes, the DPT contains within in it a “troublesome tendency toward

perfection—the quest for perfect peace—which becomes itself a potential motive
for war”.107 So in the words of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld,
“the best, and in some cases, the only defense, is a good offense”.108
Despite the warnings and protestations of democratic peace theorists against
crusading for democracy,109 there is a failure to realise that a civilising intent
can emerge directly from the logic of the theory.110 Russett’s complaint that the
DPT has been hijacked by the Bush administration misses the point that the
theory has not so much been distorted as taken to one possible logical
extreme.111 In this regard, it is instructive to return to Michael Doyle’s seminal
article, which is somewhat more considered than much of the work it has inspired.
The most influential argument made by Doyle is the one that democracies almost
never fight each other. There is, however, an important corollary to this: while
democracies may act peaceably towards each other, this behaviour does not
extend to relations with non-democracies.112 Democracies can be just as warlike
as non-democracies when not dealing with their “own kind”. This dyadic
version of the DPT has been overshadowed in policy-making circles by the
monadic account, even though the empirical findings underpinning the claims
of the latter are much less persuasive. Nonetheless, two prominent democratic
peace theorists have suggested that there was a “failure early on to recognise
that democracies are more peaceful in general”.113 The argument here, however,
is that Doyle’s second proposition is not mistaken, but intimately linked to his
first, more popular, one.
A lack of tolerance towards non-democracies stems from two interrelated
threats that are perceived by the democratic core. First, is the danger (real, appar-
ent and imagined) that these war-prone rogues, pariahs and outlaws pose. These
states are behaviourally threatening, in so far as their non-democratic existence pre-
vents the further spread of peace, while also remaining a menace towards those
within the existing zone of peace. Second, these non-democracies are ontologically
threatening. Doyle is especially revealing on this point: “liberals do not merely
distrust what they do; we dislike what they are”.114 Their non-democratic existence
clashes with the currently dominant “anti-pluralist” strain of liberalism that is
confident in liberal democracy being the only model of historical progress and
development. Thus, along with the seductive lure of a universal peace, the
desire to protect and confirm the virtue of “our” democracy can encourage a

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.
107. Robert Ivie, “Democratizing for Peace”, Rhetoric and Public Affairs, Vol. 4, No. 2 (2001), p. 315.
108. Donald Rumsfeld “Remarks as Delivered by Secretary of Defense at National Defense Univer-
sity, Fort McNair, Washington, D.C.”, 31 January 2002, available: ,http://www.defenselink.mil/
speeches/2002/s20020131-secdef.html . (accessed 25 November 2007).
109. Michael Doyle, “Kant, Liberal Legacies and Foreign Affairs, Part 2”, Philosophy and Public
Affairs, Vol. 12, No. 4 (1983), pp. 323–337; Russett, op. cit., p. 136, idem, “Bushwhacking the Democratic
Peace”, International Studies Perspectives, Vol. 6, No. 4 (2005) pp. 395 –408; Weart, op. cit., ch. 15.
110. 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.
111. Russett, “Bushwhacking the Democratic Peace”, op. cit.
112. Doyle, op. cit.
113. Russett and Oneal, op. cit., p. 52.
114. Doyle, op. cit., p. 330; emphasis added.
94 C. Hobson

greater will to civilise/democratise those without. On a deeper, more constitutive

level, it could also be that liberal democracies dislike “what they are” because it is
“what we were” and “what we may be”. Non-democracies may offer an
unwanted reminder of the fragility and historical contingency of democracy.
The overall result of this anti-pluralist logic is that within the DPT, Donnelly’s dis-
tinction between “behavioural” and “ontological” outlaws collapses, with non-
democratic states being the one and the same.
The violence that democratic states bring on their others can stem from the same
characteristics that promote peace between them. The liberalism that encourages
peace inside can lead to war outside, expanding the zone of peace through enga-
ging in the zone of war. On this point Müller notes that the universalism inherent
within liberalism makes it a “genuinely missionaristic ideology” and as such,
“liberal missionarism . . . belongs to democracies as their constitution”.115 He
then highlights an opposition that exists at the heart of liberalism between this
universalism and the value of individualism, which calls for toleration and a
respect for heterogeneity.116 The balance reached between these principles indi-
cates where certain democratic polities rest on a spectrum between the ideal
types of “pacifist” and “militant” democracies.117 The Scandinavian democracies
would be examples of the former, the United States of the latter. This tension
between competing strains of liberalism replicates the one Simpson suggests
exists at the international level between “pluralism” and “anti-pluralism”. In
the same way that a domestic balance in favour of universalism leads to a more
militant form of democracy, the post-Cold War rise of anti-pluralist tendencies,
apparent in a stricter standard of civilisation formulating around democracy
and encouraged by the DPT, is perhaps leading towards a more militant
international society. Seen in this light, the coercive attempted democratisation
of Iraq was the logical extreme of a more general tendency to perceive non-
democracies as (post)modern-day barbarians.

Conclusions
Democracy’s determining role in a new standard of civilisation means it cannot be
the completely progressive force it is regularly painted or presumed to be. Any
standard—democratic or otherwise—will be deeply implicated and infused
with power, hierarchy and varying degrees of violence. In so far as democracy
has become the defining feature of “what a state should look like and how it
should act”,118 it plays a particularly influential role in determining the makeup
of international society—deciding who is in and who is out, who lives in a
Kantian world of peace and who remains “mired in history”, who are “our” onto-
logical allies and who are “our” ontological enemies, who retains the rights to the
protection that sovereignty (supposedly) provides, and who may need to be
civilised or democratised in the name of peace and progress. These discourses
115. Harald Müller, “Kant’s Rogue State: The ‘Unjust Enemy’ and Liberal Missionarism in Inter-
national Affairs”, Paper presented at the ISA conference, March 2005, p. 4.
116. Ibid., pp. 4 –5.
117. Harald Müller, “The Antinomy of Democratic Peace”, International Politics, Vol. 44, No. 4 (2004)
pp. 494–520.
118. Roland Paris, “International Peacebuilding and the ‘Mission Civilisatrice’”, Review of Inter-
national Studies, Vol. 28, No. 4 (2002), p. 654.
 “Democracy as Civilisation” 95

and practices framed by “democracy” reinforce and perpetuate existing

asymmetrical relations and power imbalances, with the new standard being
only somewhat less explicit than its classical predecessor. Here, Paris makes a
similar point in regard to international peacebuilding, seeing it as a “new phase
in the ongoing and evolving relationship between the core and the periphery of
the international system, with the core continuing to define the standards of
acceptable behaviour”.119 Viewed in this light, democracy promotion and
democratic interventions become the means to the end of a more homogeneous
international society in which “perpetual peace” can emerge. And this obser-
vation becomes rather troubling when we recall that the ends of civilisation
have frequently justified uncivilised means.120
The implication of this analysis is that the involvement of the idea of democracy
in maintaining hegemony and hierarchy, justifying neo-imperial violence and
perpetuating exclusion means it cannot deliver the emancipatory goals often por-
trayed as being at the heart of democracy. Democracy’s role in influencing the
makeup and identity of “our” ontological allies and enemies leaves it unable to
avoid the darker side inherent to any standard of civilisation. “Democracy” evalu-
ates, judges, classifies, orders and excludes. On the other hand, one cannot deny
the popularity of democracy and the value placed in it by much of the world’s
populace. Something called “democracy” motivates struggle, resistance and
counter-hegemonic movements across the globe. Signified in the meaning we
find in the very etymology of the word, the idea of democracy remains particu-
larly positive and potent. The result is a fundamental tension between democracy
as an emancipatory ideal and democracy as a discourse implicated in structures of
power and domination. The contested and indeterminate character of democracy,
as well as its inherent normativity, means the term can be legitimately invoked for
acts as different as war in Iraq and resistance in Nepal. It is only through first
recognising, however, that the discourses and practices of democracy are
implicated in domination and exclusion, as well as emancipation and inclusion,
that we can begin to move towards a fuller understanding of the role this incred-
ibly powerful idea(l) plays in world politics.

119. Ibid., pp. 653 –654.

120. Mark Salter, “Not Waiting for the Barbarians”, in Jackson and Hall (eds.), op. cit.