SOAS Research Online

Abstract

To date, the only account of the `zone of peace' among states in the core of the international system is that found in the democratic peace debates. We rework the conceptual parameters through which the object of analysis — the zone of peace — is defined in the democratic peace debates. Specifically, we historicize the concepts — `democracy' and `war' — that enable the identification of zones of peace and war, and contextualize those histories in processes of globalization. This enables us to offer an alternative account of the emergence of zones of peace and war in the international system and of the central unit of analysis in the democratic peace debates, the sovereign and territorial liberal democratic state. This account conceives of the international system as a whole and recognizes the mutually constitutive character of relations between the zones. It opens up a research agenda focused not on why democratic states do not war with one another but on the international relations of democracy and war.