Cosmopolitanism is the Key: How Right Wing Nationalism Explains Exceptions to Democratic Peace.

Critics of democratic peace theory have identified several cases of clearly democratic states threatening or using force against each other. What they have failed to notice is that usually if not always, pressure to escalate came from the political right. Neither realism nor non-normative theories of democratic peace explain this. I argue that the key lies in conservative nationalism. Liberals respect the autonomy of fellow democracies. They also believe war is unjustified except for defensive or humanitarian reasons. Since democracies rarely commit large-scale human rights violations, at any rate at home, liberals see no grounds for attacking them. Right-wing nationalism, however, can short-circuit both normative mechanisms, even within democracies. I show the pattern and conduct a preliminary test of my arguments by examining the crises over Venezuela, Fashoda, South Africa and the Ruhr. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]