Macintosh HD:Users:Graham:Public:GRAHAM'S IMAC JOBS:15554 - EUP - HOBSON:HOBSON NEW 9780748692811 PRINT The RISE of DEMOCRACY REVOLUTION, WAR AND TRANSFORMATIONS IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS SINCE 1776 CHRISTOPHER HOBSON Macintosh HD:Users:Graham:Public:GRAHAM'S IMAC JOBS:15554 - EUP - HOBSON:HOBSON NEW 9780748692811 PRINT THE RISE OF DEMOCRACY Macintosh HD:Users:Graham:Public:GRAHAM'S IMAC JOBS:15554 - EUP - HOBSON:HOBSON NEW 9780748692811 PRINT Macintosh HD:Users:Graham:Public:GRAHAM'S IMAC JOBS:15554 - EUP - HOBSON:HOBSON NEW 9780748692811 PRINT THE RISE OF DEMOCRACY Revolution, War and Transformations in International Politics since 1776 Christopher Hobson Macintosh HD:Users:Graham:Public:GRAHAM'S IMAC JOBS:15554 - EUP - HOBSON:HOBSON NEW 9780748692811 PRINT © Christopher Hobson, 2015 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road 12 (2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ www.euppublishing.com Typeset in 11 /13pt Monotype Baskerville by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 9281 1 (hardback) ISBN 978 0 7486 9282 8 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 0 7486 9283 5 (epub) The right of Christopher Hobson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498). Macintosh HD:Users:Graham:Public:GRAHAM'S IMAC JOBS:15554 - EUP - HOBSON:HOBSON NEW 9780748692811 PRINT CONTENTS Preface vi 1 Introduction: Beyond the ‘End of History’ 1 2 Thucydidean Themes: Democracy in International Relations 18 3 Fear and Faith: The Founding of the United States 45 4 The Crucible of Democracy: The French Revolution 74 5 Reaction, Revolution and Empire: The Nineteenth Century 106 6 The Wilsonian Revolution: World War One 140 7 From the Brink to ‘Triumph’: The Twentieth Century 171 8 Conclusion: Democracy and Humility 204 Bibliography 221 Index 245 Macintosh HD:Users:Graham:Public:GRAHAM'S IMAC JOBS:15554 - EUP - HOBSON:HOBSON NEW 9780748692811 PRINT PREFACE Layers upon layers. Much like the concept I have been studying, this work is marked by different periods, experiences and places. It repre- sents my first substantive attempt to come to grips with democracy: a beguiling, ambiguous and slippery idea and reality that I expect to be grappling with for a long time to come. While commencing from international relations (IR), this book is not much concerned with dis- ciplinary questions, except in so far as the artificial line we have drawn between the domestic and international realms has limited our ability to fully understand democracy. Most IR scholars have either ignored democracy or employed a shallow conception of it, devoid of most that marks it as worthy of study. Meanwhile, political theory has – until recently – largely failed to deal with the wider international context, a crucial condition of possibility for state- based democracy. This book seeks to chart a course between these problematic tendencies and in doing so, tends to blur between international relations, political theory and history. In this regard, perhaps I have accidentally been overly influenced by the approach of early English school thinkers, especially Hedley Bull and Martin Wight. Yet the book departs from these scholars in ultimately having a more critical intent. In this regard, the purpose of this study is not to explain or theorise, but to contrast, disrupt and denaturalise. For instance, how can we so easily talk of the Arab Spring – referencing the earlier European experience – but still be dismayed that the outcome of these political transitions remains unclear only a few years later? It took Europe more than a century to arrive at something approaching stable democratic government; why should it be expected that other countries can reach a similar destina- tion in a fraction of the time? This reflects an overwhelming tendency to view democracy as something freestanding, almost devoid of a past. vi Macintosh HD:Users:Graham:Public:GRAHAM'S IMAC JOBS:15554 - EUP - HOBSON:HOBSON NEW 9780748692811 PRINT Preface vii Strangely enough, in such a situation simply providing a historical contrast becomes a valuable and necessary corrective. This is what the book’s cover is meant to convey. The image is hardly how we might depict democracy today; even contemporary critics would portray their scepticism in different terms. Yet we tend to forget that it is the current situation which is the historical anomaly, and not the other way around. In reminding us of this, my aim is not to bolster the lazy scepticism towards democracy that is too often evidenced by those of us lucky enough to have the freedoms that allow us to be so blasé. The book very consciously avoids that quote by Winston Churchill, which tends to become a cheap crutch for doubters who have yet to abandon democracy but find little left to love in it. Even if we have legitimate grounds for being frustrated with the many failings of democracy, outright cynicism is not the solution. Democracy has its flaws, but one of its greatest virtues is precisely that it provides space to complain, identify problems and hopefully induce change. To this end, here I provide the foundations and the first cut of a normative defence of democracy. The chief technique employed is to ask us to look at democracy through the foreign eyes that history provides. There are perhaps no remarkable discoveries here; much like democ- racy, its contribution is modest and straightforward, but hopefully still of value. This book has been completed in iterations over the past decade across three countries, three democracies: Australia, the United Kingdom and Japan. This work bears the marks and influences of these different periods. Unfortunately one consequence of my globe- trotting is that I have been stripped of my right to vote in Australia, and I remain a denizen in my current home of Japan. As I can no longer vote, teaching and writing is perhaps where my voice can be best heard. In this sense, this book is partly meant to be a democratic act. Scholarly endeavours like this are for the most part thoroughly soli- tary, but are punctuated by – and ultimately reliant upon – the input and support of others. This book has been made possible through decisive and valuable interventions from those around me, while the flaws and limitations found within are ones I am solely responsible for. My sincere thanks to loved ones, friends, mentors and colleagues who have supported me, to varying degrees and in different ways, during the slow process of seeing this project to completion. I am also very Macintosh HD:Users:Graham:Public:GRAHAM'S IMAC JOBS:15554 - EUP - HOBSON:HOBSON NEW 9780748692811 PRINT viii The Rise of Democracy appreciative of the considerable patience and assistance shown to me by the staff at Edinburgh University Press. The book is dedicated to my parents, Paul and Vivien. I am deeply grateful for the opportunities and love they have given me. Macintosh HD:Users:Graham:Public:GRAHAM'S IMAC JOBS:15554 - EUP - HOBSON:HOBSON NEW 9780748692811 PRINT ‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’ ‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ ‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master – that’s all.’ Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking- glass, and What Alice Found There (1871) Macintosh HD:Users:Graham:Public:GRAHAM'S IMAC JOBS:15554 - EUP - HOBSON:HOBSON NEW 9780748692811 PRINT Macintosh HD:Users:Graham:Public:GRAHAM'S IMAC JOBS:15554 - EUP - HOBSON:HOBSON NEW 9780748692811 PRINT Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION: BEYOND THE ‘END OF HISTORY’ We have suffered in the past from making democracy into a dogma, in the sense of thinking of it as something magical, exempt from the ordinary laws which govern human nature. (Lindsay 1951: 7) The exponents of liberal democracy make the mistake of ignoring the all- important fact that democracy is not something given once and for all, something as unvarying as a mathematical formula. (Hogan 1938: 10) INTRODUCTION Little over 200 years ago, a quarter of a century of war fundamentally reshaped the European international order. That conflict was triggered by the advent of popular doctrines in revolutionary France, and fears that it might seek to export ‘all the wretchedness and horrors of a wild democracy’, as the British ambassador Lord Auckland described it at the time (quoted in MacLeod 1999: 44). In stark contrast, today ‘rogue regimes’ are defined by the fact that they arenot democratic. In the intervening period a remarkable series of revisions took place in the way democracy was understood and valued in international society. In a relatively short space of time, popular sovereignty went from being a revolutionary and radical doctrine to becoming the foundation on which almost all states are based, while democratic government, long dismissed as archaic, unstable and completely inappropriate for modern times, came to be seen as a legitimate and desirable method of rule. This book examines these changes in the concept of democ- racy, and considers how these processes have interacted with the structure and functioning of international society. Put differently, this 1 Macintosh HD:Users:Graham:Public:GRAHAM'S IMAC JOBS:15554 - EUP - HOBSON:HOBSON NEW 9780748692811 PRINT 2 The Rise of Democracy study is structured around the historical contrast between, on the one hand, the high degree of acceptance and legitimacy that democracy now holds, and on the other, the strongly negative perceptions that defined democracy when it reappeared in the late eighteenth century, which should have seemingly limited the possibilities of it becoming understood so positively.