Liberal Peace, Liberal War: American Politics and International Security (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs) - Softcover

Owen IV, John M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0801486904 ISBN 13: 9780801486906

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2000

Synopsis

Liberal democracies very rarely fight wars against each other, even though they go to war just as often as other types of states do. John M. Owen IV attributes this peculiar restraint to a synergy between liberal ideology and the institutions that exist within these states. Liberal elites identify their interests with those of their counterparts in foreign states, Owen contends. Free discussion and regular competitive elections allow the agitations of the elites in liberal democracies to shape foreign policy, especially during crises, by influencing governmental decision makers.

Several previous analysts have offered theories to explain liberal peace, but they have not examined the state. This book explores the chain of events linking peace with democracies. Owen emphasizes that peace is constructed by democratic ideas, and should be understood as a strong tendency built upon historically contingent perceptions and institutions. He tests his theory against ten cases drawn from over a century of U.S. diplomatic history, beginning with the Jay Treaty in 1794 and ending with the Spanish-American War in 1898. A world full of liberal democracies would not necessarily be peaceful. Were illiberal states to disappear, Owen asserts, liberal states would have difficulty identifying one another, and would have less reason to remain at peace.

About this title

About the Author:

JOHN M. OWEN IV is Assistant Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia.

Review:

"John Owen's Liberal Peace, Liberal War is the best empirical test of the effects of liberal principles and representative institutions on war and peace yet to be produced. Painstaking in its attention to the historical record, insightful in its treatment of theoretical disputes, and provocative in its conclusions, this study is a must-read for the 'democratic peace debate.' For students of international relations it not only illustrates the powerful effects of perceptions on policy, it is a model for how to conduct systematic case study research."

(Michael W. Doyle, Director of the Center of International Studies at Princeton Universty and author of Ways of War and Peace)

"Liberal Peace is a noteworthy and original addition to the small but growing number of books... on the apparent absence of war between democratic states... Owen's work provides strong evidence that liberalism exerts significant influence on the crisis behavior of liberal states. It should stimulate further research on the influence of liberal ideas and institutions on foreign policy more generally."

(Sean M. Lynn-Jones, Harvard University. American Political Science Review, Vol. 94, No. 4. December 2000)

"Contributes distinctively to the growing body of evidence on democratic peace."

"This book offers a rigorous exploration of the possible reasons why liberal states, for most of the time anyway, do not fight each other; it considers carefully how policy-makers come to recognize particular foreign states as liberal; and it backs all this up with an examination of ten war-threatening crises involving the U.S. between 1790 and 1900.... The writing is succinct; the historical accounts are clear and to the point; and the investigation of the causal links between liberalism and war is admirably thorough.... This book will help take the idea of democratic peace out of the land of political and academic hype, and into the realm of serious study."

(Adam Roberts, The Times Literary Supplement)

"A fascinating study of the janus-masked character of 'liberal' states' international relations, arguing that the famous 'democratic peace' is due to both structural and ideological factors."

About this edition

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0801486904
• ISBN 13: 9780801486906
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 264