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• How to resolve conflicts in a democratic society - eg the right to own a muscle dog? |
| Answer» DEMOCRATIC political processes regulate competition among groups with conflicting PREFERENCES. Although much of the competition occurs peacefully within existing political institutions, democratic practices can also facilitate the resolution of intense conflict when the political system is challenged from within by groups fighting against the established government, and when it is challenged from without and on the brink of interstate war. This chapter provides an overview of the scholarly literature linking democracy to peace and conflict resolution, including pertinent THEORETICAL propositions and the balance of evidence generated by EMPIRICAL researchers. The promise of peace associated with civil liberty, political openness, and the foreign policies of democratic states has long figured into the writings of moral and political philosophers, perhaps most notably in Immanuel Kant’s essay Perpetual Peace, published in 1795. But the burgeoning academic literature in recent decades is largely the product of social scientific research, much (but not all) of which is built upon the analysis of large quantitative data sets. Our primary focus, then, is what social science, and in particular political science, tells us about the relationship between democracy, conflict resolution, and peace between and within states. DEMOCRACY AND CONFLICT BETWEEN STATES The REALIST school of thought in international relations, which greatly influenced both scholarship and policymaking during the cold war, maintains that state behavior is primarily driven by the balance of power among rivals in the international system (Morgenthau 1948; Waltz 1979; Mearsheimer 2001). Realists assume that states resemble unitary rational actors in pursuit of a single overriding objective: survival and security in an anarchic system. The strenuous demands of the international system lead all states to behave in a similar fashion regardless of their particular political institutions, economic structure, ideological orientation,Explanation: | |