Securitizing the democratic peace: democratic identity and its role in the construction of threat

UnrestrictedThe democratic peace -- the finding that democracies do not use force against each other -- has emerged as one of the most promising research programs in the study of international relations. The vision the democratic peace offers of a world sustainably and durably at peace has universal significance. In academe, the democratic peace offers the prospect of a social ‘law’ as well as a solution to one of the central problématiques in the study of international relations: the causes and means to prevent war. In the policy world, the democratic peace offers the possibility of the elimination of a major source of insecurity and, in the process, a peace dividend unlike any other.; Not surprisingly, given the potential embodied in the democratic peace, scholars have directed significant energies toward determining if the democratic peace is real, and if so what causes it. These efforts, however, have been incomplete. The large-N, quantitative studies attempting model possible causes of the phenomenon dominate the field, but these models generally do not access the underlying mechanisms of the democratic peace. As a result, explanations of the phenomenon remain unconvincing. It is into this gap that the present dissertation steps.; The dissertation presents a theoretical framework novel to the study of the democratic peace. Drawing on Copenhagen School securitization theory under the metatheoretical aegis of Mario Bunge’s systemism, the dissertation argues that the democratic identity of the public plays a critical role in shaping security policy in democracies. In short, shared democratic identity inhibits the ability of political leaders to argue an external democracy poses an existential threat. This dynamic, if accurate, should produce specific discursive patterns in the security arguments of political leaders. Testing the approach using case studies drawn from U.S.-India and U.S.-China relations, the findings support the central theoretical expectations. These findings, and the argument behind them, fuse several disparate lines of theorizing into a coherent approach and offer significant and powerful insight as to why democracies have been remarkably free from war, clarifying the policy options of decision-makers who seek to take advantage of the democratic peace phenomenon