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Democratic practices exist in politics within and beyond individual states. To date, however, it is only the democratic practices within states that have been analyzed in search for causal explanations of political outcomes, for example, peace and human rights protection. Having established the problematic nature of this situation, the purpose of this article is to explain why the situation emerges in political science and then to suggest a strategy to overcome it. The lack of attention to global democracy, or democracy beyond the state more generally, in explanatory theory is suggested to depend on prevalent but unnecessary conceptual delimitations of democracy which contradict standard assumptions about international politics. Those contradictions can be avoided, however, by defining democracy as rule by the largest group. It is argued that the concept of rule by the largest group, while protecting traditional virtues of democracy such as freedom and equality of individual persons in politics, allows scholars to describe a wider range of international practices than have been available for empirical research based on the dominating conceptions of democracy in normative and empirical literatures. Most fundamentally, it frees future research on the effects of democracy beyond the state from a key risk of self-contradiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International politics has often been viewed as a brutal place where might trumps right and where, as a consequence, questions of democracy are irrelevant to ask. In the last decades, however, scholars and political leaders have increasingly suggested that elements of democracy exist in governance beyond individual states. If this is so, how does democracy beyond the state shape international politics? This article suggests conceptual preliminaries for theorising consequences of democracy beyond the state in general and their implications for problems of peace and conflict in particular. The purpose is twofold: first, to begin reconstructing existing normative democratic theory into an explanatory perspective sensitive to international politics; second, to indicate how this new perspective is able to explain empirical observations pertaining to conflict and cooperation among states; international institutions; foreign policies; human rights protection; and the violence of transnational terrorist networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is it even logically possible for democracy promotion policies to succeed in the sense that they increase democracy in other countries? Empirical research on the conditions for success in democracy promotion must assume an affirmative answer to this question. To study something empirically, it must be logically possible in the first place. Some critical and normative theorists, on the other hand, answer the same question negatively. They suggest that promotion of democracy from the outside is a contradiction in terms, in particular cases or more generally. This article offers a framework for clarifying this disagreement and for facilitating dialogue across empirical research and normative and critical theory. I draw on this framework also to suggest a conception of democracy that maximizes the political relevance of both normative and empirical analyses of democracy promotion (DP), while freeing that same research from the intellectual blockages of potential contradictions. Such intellectual advantages follow, I argue, by defining democracy as an ideal while making its institutional implications explicit; as an exercise of either constituent or constituted power, depending on the political phase being studied; and as located in the internal relationships of world politics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the empirical and conceptual issues involved in the proposition that democratically legitimate states must be democratic in their founding. It examines the two arguments commonly used against democratic founding which are the question of logical possibility and its relevance for political practice. It refutes the assertion that democratically founded states can be established by internal actors alone.

This article examines and questions a principle in democratic theory which has become particularly fashionable in analyses of globalization and European integration, namely that everyone affected by a decision should be able to participate in making it. It is found that this principle is too strong to fit with the meaning of democracy, leads to tautological arguments, is indeterminate in politically important cases and, if its indeterminacy is rectified, fails to support ideas of political equality and accountability. Removing this principle from the concept of democracy implies, among other things, that empirical analysis becomes more significant, indeed necessary, for assessment of effects of globalization on democracy. Parallel to the development of critical arguments is the defence of a theoretical alternative according to which the delimitation of democratic communities should be decided on the grounds of what effect it produces in terms of autonomy for everyone, those included as well as those excluded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]