This book demonstrates the importance of democracy for understanding modern international relations and recovers the pluralist tradition of L.T. Hobhouse, G.D.H. Cole, and David Mitrany. It shows that pluralism’s typical interest in civil society, trade unionism, and transnationalism evolved as part of a wide-ranging democratic critique that representative democracies are hardly self-sustaining and are ill-equipped to represent all entitled social and political interests in international relations. Pluralist democratic peace theory advocates transnational loyalties to check nationalist sentiments and demands the functional representation of social and economic interests in international organizations. On the basis of the pluralist tradition, the book shows that theories about domestic democracy and international organizations co-evolved before scientific liberal democratic peace theory introduced new inside/outside distinctions.
Table of Content
1. Introduction.- 2. The Nineteenth Century and the Origins of Modern Democracy.- 3. L.T. Hobhouse’s Qualification of the Democratic Peace Thesis.- 4. Nationalism, Liberal Democracy, and the Prospects for International Cooperation.- 5. G.D.H. Cole’s Wars: At the Homefront.- 6. Narratives of Democratic Decline and Reconstruction.- 7. David Mitrany and the Purposes of Functional Pluralism.- 8. Twentieth-Century Representative Democracy and the Democratic Legitimacy of the United Nations.- 9. Conclusion.
About the author
Leonie Holthaus is Senior Research Fellow at TU Darmstadt, Germany, and the Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders” at Frankfurt University, Germany. Her articles have appeared in the
European Journal of International Relations, the
Review of International Studies, and the
International History Review.
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