Democracy in world politics

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject Politics - International Politics - General and Theories, grade: 1.0, The Australian National University, language: English, abstract: This text concerns itself with answering two central questions of the democratic principle in the current arena of world politics. The questions are: Is international politics ultimately all about

power and interest, such that democracy

should

remain of marginal importance to international

relations?

And

If democratic states are ¿morally reliable¿, do

we need democratisation of the international

system itself, or can we just rely on coalitions

of these ¿reliable¿ states? The study of International Relations (IR) has long been concerned with Realpolitik, a form of

political realism, which puts the self-help (military power) and survival (interest) motives of

states at the centre of its inquiry to explain the structural realities of the anarchic international

system, which is seen to exist under a constant threat of war. (Waltz, 1979) [Market] liberalism,

on the other hand, opposes the realist tradition and aims for the emancipation of humanity. In the

liberal tradition, the authority of democratic nations and the proliferation of free-markets are

believed to need to extend to the international system, in order to bring about peace, security

(Fukuyama, 1989) and happy consumers. The Neo-conservatives within the US administration

seem to have embraced both realism and market liberalism and combined the two into a mesh

that is hard to disentangle. Therefore, an obvious observation of the current era of US hegemony

does indeed reaffirm that power and the interest of agencies in the international arena are

prominent attributes of international politics. Powerful states, such as the US in Iraq, wage

unilateral wars to secure their strategic interests and at the same time support market liberalism,

while the biggest beneficiaries, multinational corporations (MNCs), smile broadly in the

background. In this regard, it appears as if notions of democracy, power, and interest are not only

juxtaposed, but are in fact feeding on each other, perpetuating but one form of democracy ¿ that

of market liberalism.