| Publication |
2006.
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| Summary/Abstract |
As policymakers are increasingly tempted to act on the apparent pacifying virtues of democratization, some scholars struggle to give them reliable reasons for why it occurs while others warn of the dangers of acting on empirical regularities whose nature and cause are not fully understood. This essay undertakes a review of the democratic peace literature in order to document its largely implicit, but sometimes explicit, conceptualizations of the role of democratic citizens in achieving or frustrating the democratic peace. Because citizenship is a distinctive and defining characteristic of democracy, it may well, and perhaps ought to, be the main source of explanation for the democratic peace. The essay begins by showing that the Enlightenment social contract tradition (for example, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Kant) is oriented toward the achievement of domestic and international peace and that the parties to the contract-the citizens-are responsible for desiring, achieving, and maintaining peace. The essay then proceeds to categorize and review the democratic peace literature according to the degree of support found for this proposition and the role of citizens in achieving or obstructing peace.
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