Peace among Friends: A Feminist Interpretation of the “Democratic Peace”

Abstract

That democracies, though just as belligerent as non‐democracies, are unlikely to fight one another is practically law in the study of international relations. Yet prevailing liberal explanations for this democratic peace, which focus primarily on democratic political institutions and culture, remain incomplete. Most importantly, these explanations emphasize a rights‐based ethic, which has significantly limited our comprehension of the link between domestic politics and international relations to empirical generalizations. International relationships, however, are intrinsically interdependent and therefore thoroughly knowable only in the context in which they occur and are experienced. In this article I interpret the “democratic peace” as a single thread, albeit a highly visible and important one, in the dense fabric of international relations. More specifically, I enlarge the context in which domestic politics is connected to international relations to include the politics of care—itself a practice that is usually understood to be private, i.e., particular, often emotional, and contextually moral. The result is a more refined understanding of the conditions for peace among all nations—democratic or not.