Military Intervention and the Question of Democratization and Inter-Ethnic Peace

• Author: Frederic Pearson, Scott Walker, Stephanie Stern
• Pages: 243-269

Frederic Pearson • Scott Walker • Stephanie Stern 243243

243243

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Military Intervention and the Question

of Democratization and Inter-Ethnic Peace

FREDERIC S. PEARSON, SCOTT WALKER, STEPHANIE STERN

Wayne State University

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Introduction

Questions about the link between

democracy and ethnic conflict or cooperation

are legion and represent a fascinating area

for future policy studies. The very notion of

‘pluralistic’ democracy as conceived in the West

implies a secure role and status for both

majorities and minorities in the context of

ethno-cultural diversity. At its best, it has been

argued by scholars such as David Hackett-

Fischer,1 democracy can represent a compact

of sorts among ethnic communities, working

out rules of co-existence and mutual security.

At worst, however, democratic institutions can

themselves become the object of inter-ethnic

battles for control of the state apparatus. States

such as India have seen both phenomena, as

in carefully derived policies to balance rival

potential language and religious groups for

example, but with periodic outbreaks of vicious

communal and tribal violence as well. Policies

designed to balance or placate groups at the

national level can have the opposite effects in

regions, as when regional languages are

recognized but subgroups in the region cannot

agree on which languages are legitimate. One

key factor in determining whether the path of

reform is peaceful or bloody can be the type

of policies and legislation democracies adopt

regarding ethnicity questions, such as

language, property, education, citizenship

norms or the devolution of autonomy to regions

or sub-regions.2

Thus western liberal democracy is no

panacea regarding inter-ethnic peace, but it

can offer the potential for constructive and

mutually satisfactory relations among cultural

and identity groups. Indeed, a great deal of

scholarly attention has been paid recently to

processes and consequences of ‘democratization’.

This ranges from supposed international and

even domestic ‘democratic peace’ outcomes,

to the potential for bringing about democratic

reform through policy and even military

initiatives. The latter has come to involve

arguments that various sorts of international

intervention, and particularly military

intervention, can promote new or renewed

democracies. A variant of these assumptions

appears to be at work in current US policy in

the Gulf area of the Middle East. However, a

fundamental dilemma of democratic theory

is reflected in such arguments and policies:

does pluralistic liberal democracy develop

primarily from within a state, usually through

slow evolution over time and requiring full

development of conditions such as a robust

bourgeoisie; or can external forces bring about

meaningful democratic change often at a

relatively rapid pace? Thus, assuming that

democracy might be good for conflict

resolution, can we first determine the prospect

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for democratic imposition in developing states

in the coming years?

The idea of external imposition of

democracy goes back to the origins of liberal

theory in international politics, and has been

especially prevalent in US foreign policy

making, whether in Woodrow Wilson’s

attempts to draw ‘self-determination’ maps for

Eastern Europe following the first world war;

Kennedy-Johnson attempts to ‘nation-build’

forcefully in Vietnam; or most recently George

W. Bush’s apparent belief that Iraq or

Afghanistan can be remade in a Western

democratic image. This is not to say, of

course, that US action has always matched

rhetoric or that there has been consistent

support for democracies over autocracies. In

US policy, for example, lip service is frequently

paid to democratization, as in Kennedy-

Johnson’s Alliance for Progress in Latin

America and Clinton Administration

preferences for ‘big emerging markets,’ but

the priority of democracy is questionable when

put to the test. How sincerely would Washington

abide by democratic principles if ‘free

elections’ brought a Communist or even an

alleged ‘leftist’ to power (for example, Chile

and Dominican Republic), or an Islamic

theocracy (for example, Algeria), or an

assertive anti-American nationalist (for

example, Haiti)? It has been argued that

American preference for democrats gives way

to acceptance of autocrats before acceptance

of radicals.3

Even taking the policy at face value,

however, determining the effectiveness of

democratic implantation is complicated by a

number of factors, including uncertainty over

what causes political changes in developing

states, definitions of what constitutes

‘democracy,’ and confusion about the

underlying goals of the intervening power. The

growth of democracy appears to be a

complicated historical process, often requiring

periods of advancement and retrenchment,

of war and peace (as indeed in the American

civil war). Hence when Marc Peceny4 (1999)

and others5 argue that certain types of US

military interventions, through direct use of

force and indirect military support, appear to

have at least partly improved the democratic

standing of the states receiving the

interventions, it raises intriguing possibilities

and nagging questions regarding such effects.

Indeed, Peceny even argues that the

democratic changes wrought by military

intervention have been long-lived and

persistent over a 60-year period.

A number of these studies measure

democracy along the dimensions of the Polity

III or IV data set devised by Gurr,6 which

gauges general political openness through the

institutionalization of free elections or executive

change mechanisms, functional balance on

executive power, and competitive political

parties. Indeed, while Hermann and Kegley

show that intervention increases liberalization

in states receiving the intervention, the mean

Polity IV scores for these target states on a

combined democracy-autocracy scale remain

on the autocratic side, indicating that

democratic improvement does not necessarily

translate to democracy. Peceny goes further,

however, and dichotomizing outcomes as

either democratic or non-democratic, argues

that military intervention tends to bring

improvement in the target states above what

would be considered minimum for democratic

standing. The implication of these sets of

findings, therefore, is that one can ‘force’

states to be ‘free’, or more modestly ‘freer’.

This would appear to open policy relevant

options for powers purportedly seeking to

promote democracy abroad, as in the recent

cases of Iraq or Afghanistan.

As with the democratic peace hypothesis,7

however, such a finding at least initially seems

counter-intuitive and bears further

examination. For one thing, many critics of

twentieth-century, and particularly cold-war