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Thoughts on the Liberal Peace

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Thoughts on the Liberal Peace The Liberal Peace: Ethical, Historical, and Philosophical Aspects Markus Fischer 2000-07 April 2000 CITATION AND REPRODUCTION This document appears as Discussion Paper 2000-07 of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. BCSIA Discussion Papers are works in progress. Comments are welcome and may be directed to the author in care of the Center. This paper may be cited as: Markus Fischer. “The Liberal Peace: Ethical, Historical, and Philosophical Aspects” BCSIA Discussion Paper 2000-07, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, April 2000. The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and publication does not imply their endorsement by BCSIA and Harvard University. This paper may be reproduced for personal and classroom use. Any other reproduction is not permitted without written permission of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Publications, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, telephone (617) 495-4708, telefax (617) 496-4403 or email: [email protected]. Since the publication of Michael Doyle's seminal articles in 1983 and 1986,1 a growing number of students of international relations have argued that democracy causes states to live in peace with each other. For the United States and France have not been at war since 1798, the U.S. and Britain since 1812, and Britain and France since 1815. France ended its historical conflict with Germany as the latter became democratic after 1945. Indeed, war seems to have become almost unthinkable among the democratic nations of the West. This democratic peace argument is of the greatest significance for our understanding of foreign affairs, for it suggests nothing less than suspension of anarchic constraint—the fact that fear induces every state to perceive all others at least as potential enemies. Moreover, since such a suspension cannot be plausibly claimed for any other period of history—be it antiquity with its perpetually warring city-states, tribes, and empires, the middle ages with its feudal anarchy, or modernity with its cataclysmic contests between nation-states—a fundamental change of international politics seems to be taking place before our eyes. Democracy and Liberalism Whereas Michael Doyle—in keeping with his Kantian inspiration—was careful to attribute this peace in large part to liberal norms, most writers have pointed to the democratic character of the states in question. Likewise, policy makers regularly speak of the need to promote democracy 1 Michael W. Doyle, “Kant, liberal legacies, and foreign affairs,” Philosophy and Public Affairs vol. 12, no. 3 (1983), pp. 205–35; Michael W. Doyle, “Kant, liberal legacies, and foreign affairs, part 2,” Philosophy and Public Affairs vol. 12, no. 4 (1983), pp. 322–53; and Michael W. Doyle, “Liberalism and world politics,” American Political Science Review vol. 80, no. 4 (December 1986), pp. 1151–69. for the sake of peace, rather than liberalism.2 This conflation may seem insignificant since both theorists and practitioners refer quite obviously to the liberal kind of democracy that has come to prevail in the West. Nonetheless, it is important to appreciate the significant differences between the democratic and the liberal aspect of these regimes in order to grasp the peace that prevails among them. Simply put, democracy prescribes the rule of the people in the sense that every member of a collective should have equal weight in deciding how it is to be governed. In the direct democracies of antiquity, such decisions were made by assemblies where each male citizen had one vote; in the representative democracies of modernity, they are made by public officials who are periodically elected by the citizens who care to go the polling stations. Accordingly, democratic institutions promote every citizen's equal capacity to determine government by means of: open, fair, and competitive elections at all levels of collectivity (from legislators and chief executives to judges, town sheriffs, city clerks, and school boards), the concentration of supreme authority in the people and its representatives, referenda and plebiscites that allow the people to decide important issues directly, measures aimed at enhancing the representatives' responsiveness to the electorate (e.g., shortening their terms of office and reducing the number of voters in their electoral districts), widening the franchise, and taxation and welfare policies that promote equality. In contrast, liberalism aims at the freedom of the individual from oppression, especially from the rulers, and enshrines this freedom in a number of rights that must be respected under almost all circumstances: the right to life or immunity from violence, the right to assemble freely, to speak one's mind, to move about and choose one's abode, to acquire and dispose of property, to engage in arts, crafts, and commerce without hindrance, to profess and practice one's chosen faith, to educate one's children as one sees fit, etc. Liberal institutions guarantee and promote these rights through: a constitution that enumerates the basic rights of the citizens and limits the powers of government (usually dividing it into separate institutions, such as parliament, executive, and courts), the strict rule of law, separation of church and state, protection of private 2 See, for instance, Ronald Reagan, “Address to Parliament,” New York Times, June 9, 1982; Howard Baker on February 5 and April 21, 1992, as quoted by Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 128–29; Anthony Lake, “From containment to enlargement,” U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs, Dispatch 4, no. 39 (September 1993), p. 3; William Jefferson Clinton, “Confronting the challenges of a broader world,” U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs, Dispatch 3, no. 39 (September 1993), p. 3; “Excerpts from President Clinton's State of the Union Message,” New York Times, January 26, 1994, A17; and Anthony Lake, “The reach of democracy: Tying power to diplomacy,” New York Times, September 23, 1994, A35. 2 property, the free exchange of goods and services on an open and competitive market, and keeping regulation and taxation at a minimum. As a result of this laissez faire attitude, a free market society develops, where individuals compete for goods that satisfy their desires while government provides security and procedural justice. In Western modernity, these two approaches to government have been regularly combined in what are called “liberal democracies.” This combination is congenial in the sense that a democracy must, at a minimum, grant its citizens the freedom to vote in order to function as the rule of the people. In addition, it may allow them to form parties that compete for votes, voice political opinions, and publish newspapers. Conversely, liberalism enshrines these liberties as the right to vote, to practice free speech, to assemble, and to associate. Further, the liberal principle of equality before the law (which derives from respect for rights in abstraction from men's concrete attributes), tends to agree with the democratic passion for equality (which arises from resentment of whatever exceeds the common measure), but only insofar as the latter does not lead to a levelling of all social and economic conditions. Thus, the democratic impulse contains at least three illiberal tendencies as well. First, the plenitude of power asserted by the democratic assembly tends to diminish the rights of individuals, especially those in the minority, and may even put the will of the majority above the law; for power corrupts commoners just as much as princes, perhaps even more since they taste it for the first time. Second, the democratic tendency to equalize all conditions curtails the kind of freedom that issues in or thrives on distinctiveness, as when the diligent and enterprising have to yield the fruits of their labor to support the lazy and incompetent, or when the creative and wise are forbidden to express what offends the majority. Third, the common people are easily swayed by demagogues, who stir their passions and mislead their reason in order to gain power or pursue policies that sacrifice the common good to the ambition of the few—contrary to the rational deliberation prized by liberals. Athens, the world's first democracy, instantiates each of these illiberal tendencies only too well. Its citizens were free to participate in political life and enjoyed the protection of laws. Yet, its assembly acted not only as legislature but also as magistrate and judge, leading to such abuses as condemning to death generals who had lost in battle, expelling undesirable but otherwise innocent individuals, and executing Socrates for using reason to challenge popular pieties. In other words, it was the Athenian experience that gave rise to the 3 classical view that democracy degenerates by nature into the despotic rule of the mob.3 Until the end of the nineteenth century, liberals used to share this view. For instance, Alexander Hamilton called for vigorous government on the grounds that “of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.”4 James Madison assumed that “the instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished,” as policies are decided by the “superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.”5 Thus, although democracy may imply some of the rights that liberalism holds dear, it tends to infringe so many others that it cannot be considered a cause of liberty. The deeper reason for this illiberal tendency of democracy is this: liberalism assumes human beings to be individuals, whereas democracy not only permits the assumption that they think and act collectively but positively thrives on it; for the more opinions are alike, the more they can be said to express the will of “the people” as a unitary actor.
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