The revenge of ‘democratic peace’

Abstract

The Russo-Ukrainian war may have given democratic peace a new lease of (research) life. The stronger-than-expected reaction of liberal democracies coupled with the poorer-than-expected battlefield performance of the Russian military, invites us to re-apply the logic of democratic peace. To understand the strong reactions of liberal democracies, I apply a militant interpretation of Kant’s perpetual peace and reexamine the role of trade interdependence in capitalist peace. To understand the battlefield performance of Ukraine, I examine theories of war-fighting with an emphasis on the legitimacy mechanism. To understand the battlefield performance of Russia, I examine the deleterious impact of corruption and preference falsification ( vranyo). To the extent that the field is still generating novel research that advances our understanding of the impact of regime type on international conflict, democratic peace remains a progressive research programme.