Why does global democracy not inspire explanatory research? Removing conceptual obstacles toward a new research agenda

Abstract

Democratic practices exist in politics within and beyond individual states. To date, however, it is only the democratic practices within states that have been analyzed in search for causal explanations of political outcomes, for example, peace and human rights protection. Having established the problematic nature of this situation, the purpose of this article is to explain why the situation emerges in political science and then to suggest a strategy to overcome it. The lack of attention to global democracy, or democracy beyond the state more generally, in explanatory theory is suggested to depend on prevalent but unnecessary conceptual delimitations of democracy which contradict standard assumptions about international politics. Those contradictions can be avoided, however, by defining democracy as rule by the largest group. It is argued that the concept of rule by the largest group, while protecting traditional virtues of democracy such as freedom and equality of individual persons in politics, allows scholars to describe a wider range of international practices than have been available for empirical research based on the dominating conceptions of democracy in normative and empirical literatures. Most fundamentally, it frees future research on the effects of democracy beyond the state from a key risk of self-contradiction.

Democratism

“…Ideas of democracy beyond the state were constructed to supply tentative explanations while using conventional testing methods that could just as well have led to the abandonment of those ideas and to a reinforced reason for status quo in IR. Before throwing myself into writing this book, it was therefore essential to pursue some smaller enquires in article format (Agné 2016(Agné , 2018(Agné , 2020; my rights to extend portions of that material in this book have been gratefully recognised by the original publishers). If the basic idea had not survived the initial tests, there would have been little reason to elaborate and extend the analyses in a book format.…”

“…The relevant starting definition is that democracy provides a method for addressing or solving political disagreement while respecting individual freedom and equality among the individuals who disagree. That concept also certainly applies to describe or regulate situations in which people disagree upon whom should be included or represented in politics (Agné 2010b(Agné , 2020. Just as people to the left disagree with people to the right on just taxation, people who identify with France may disagree with others who identify with Germany on whom to include as citizens in either state (as happened, for instance, in Alsace and Lorraine after the wars of 1871 and 1914).…”