The Contested Roots of Democratic Peace: Foreign Policy and Democratic Accountability > Journal

In this article, we review recent literature on the questions of whether existing democratic publics a) care about peaceful relations with other democracies, and b) whether their preferences are aptly translated by existing democratic institutions. Our conclusions lead us to propose an amended theory of democratically constrained foreign policy. We revisit the challenged presuppositions of the democratic peace at a moment of transnational democractic erosion. We survey the origins of the liberal republican (and later representative democratic) views emerging during the Enlightenment, highlighting Kant’s “Perpetual Peace.” We then examine the lively debate about the efficacy of democratic foreign policy-making focusing both on the preferences and values of the public and the capacity of democratic institutions to reflect the public’s wills.

Enlightenment Origins

The Empirical Democratic Peace

Information: The General Public’s Knowledge about Foreign Policy 

Preferences: What the Public Wants from Foreign Policy

Elites, Foreign Policy, and Accountability

Democratic Institutions, Proposed Reforms, and Foreign Policy Accountability

Immanuel Kant, “Perpetual Peace”, democratic peace, representation, accountability