Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
International Relations and International Organization
Academic Skills
Written Assignment
Israel, Palestine and the Democratic Peace Theory
How can the Israel-Palestine relationship be explained
in the context of the Democratic Peace Theory?
Rachel Koehoorn
S3360652
Academic Skills- LYX022P05
Dr. Carel Horstmeier
Written Assignment
17th October 2017
Words count: 1602/1500
Introduction
The Democratic Peace Theory originates from Immanuel Kant’s 1796 essay, ‘On perpetual peace’ and states that liberal democracies tend not fight each other. Though widespread and respected it continues to be debated due to several controversial aspects. In this paper three paper; Rummel , Layne and Russett will be compared and analysed. Consequently the Democratic Peace Theory will be considered in the light of the Israel-Palestine relationship. Drawing upon Turner , Piki-Ish Shalom and John Randolph LeBlanc will be examined whether it is possible to explain the Israeli-Palestinian relationship in the context of the Democratic Peace Theory.
Literature review
Democratic peace
From the contradicting titles of the following publications we can already get a sense of the mixed opinions that exist on the topic of the democratic peace theory. Layne’s “Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace” seems to name the theory of democratic peace a myth, whereas Russett’s first chapter is named “The Fact of Democratic Peace”, which seems to imply the factuality of the theory.
The Democratic Peace Theory revolves around possible explanations for the following anomaly; while democratic states are not less war-prone than other kinds of states, they will not fight or threaten each other. Scholars disagree on whether the theory only applies in the case of an absolute absence of violence or if rare occurrences of violence would be acceptable whilst still upholding the theory.
According to Layne, “there are two strands to the theory's causal logic. One attributes the absence of war between democracies to institutional constraints: the restraining effects of public opinion, or of the checks and balances embedded in a democratic state's domestic political structure. The other poses that it is democratic norms and culture and a shared commitment to the peaceful adjudication of political disputes that accounts for the absence of war between democratic states.” In other words, the structural or normative dimensions of democratic states causes these states to refrain from violence. This is also the terminology employed by Russet, in Russett’s view these strands are intertwined even though they are not the same analytically.
The democratic norms explanation holds that "the culture, perceptions, and practices that permit compromise and the peaceful resolution of conflicts without the threat of violence within countries come to apply across national boundaries toward other democratic countries." The normative dimension of democracy, its tendency to find compromises to political conflicts, regulate political competition and peaceful transfer of power are externalized by democracies in their international relations, while nondemocracies may not necessarily do so.
Because of that, shared norms may result into conflicts between democracies to not escalate. In the case of a conflict with a democratic state and a non-democratic state there are no shared democratic norms and the democratic state may find itself obliged to apply the non-democratic norms of the other state. It may do so because of the fear of being overruled by the nondemocratic actor.
Rummel tests the Democratic Peace Theory by testing two propositions; the “joint-freedom proposition” and the “freedom proposition” . The first relates to interstate violence, and the assumption that libertarian systems mutually preclude violence, and the latter relates to the overall violence of a state. On the basis of these propositions Rummel sets up three hypotheses, the first being “libertarian states have no violence between them” . His conclusion on this hypothesis is that it is indirectly supported because, while there was no real violence, there were threats of violence. The usage of threats of violence was not included in the hypotheses, and therefore it is supported. The second hypotheses is “the more libertarian a state, the less its foreign violence”, and the third is “the more libertarian two states, the less their mutual foreign violence”. This hypotheses imply that there are degrees in libertarianism. He concludes that there is significant direct and indirect support for all three hypotheses.
Rummel also states that there is a big increase in conflict behaviour between libertarian states are beginning to lose their freedom, and that maximum conflict occurs when both states are no longer free at all . Rummel also addresses economic freedom a an important factor in the decrease of overall violence of a state, but not necessarily for the decrease of intrastate violence.
Layne states that some democratic peace theorists, such as Russett, believe that in an international system with a large quantity of democratic states it would be possible to eliminate anarchy and the so called “security dilemma” of states. He also argues that in de end, most of the proponents of the theory admit to the fact that the democratic peace theory is based on hope, and not on facts .
Overall, Rummel and Russett tend to agree with the democratic peace theory whereas Layne is a critic. To come to this conclusion, Rummel uses a quantitative method of research as opposed to Layne and Russett, who use a qualitative method.
Israel and Palestine
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a particular controversial one, especially when investigated in the light of the Democratic Peace Theory. If democracies, generally speaking, do not fight each other, how then can this conflict between two supposedly democratic states continue to exist?. In trying to answer this question an important ontological issue is raised: what we define to be a democracy. An issue that comes up is the question whether we classify Palestine as a full functioning democracy. Another debated issue is whether the Democratic Peace Theory still applies if there were to be some exceptions on this theory, such as is possibly the case with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Basically it comes down to the extend to which we can correlate the Israeli-Palestinian situation with the Democratic Peace Theory.
In order to investigate the question of whether the Democratic peace theory applies, it will first be established to which extend Israel and Palestine can be seen as democracies, and which consequences this can have.
The Western democracies, especially the US, assumed that “building a democratic Palestinian state would buttress the peace process” . By becoming a democracy, Palestine and Israel would automatically cease to fight each other in accordance to the logic of the Democratic Peace Theory.
In 2006 there were elections that took place in Palestine and the winner of those elections was Hamas. Hamas, however, was a proscribed terrorist organization and western democracies, generally speaking, were not pleased with this outcome. It could be stated that from the western perspective the Palestinian people, by electing Hamas, “rejected the peace process” . This was disturbing to western democracies because the democratization of Palestine did not lead to the desired and expected effects. Western democracies responded by refusing to work with the Hamas-led government and cutting off aid to Palestine until the existence of Israel would be recognized by the Palestinian authorities.
Israeli democracy on the other hand was created on the land of dispossessed Palestinians by a mandate from the United Nations, and serves as the “beacon of democracy in the Middle East”. Israel gets support of major democracies and because of its existence, many of the dispossessed Palestinians do not have a place to practice democracy. The support that Israel gets from the US is mainly based upon the acceptance of the assumptions of the Democratic Peace Theory
The refusal of Western democracies to accept the outcome of the Palestinian elections, shows the validity of the conclusion that the West is “the arbiter of what is and is not democratic” . This leads to the question if institutional arrangements is an adequate measure of how democratic an environment is or is not. “The democratic, then, remains an idea, a theory, and as such may take different forms in different environs.” Both Palestinian democracy and Israeli democracy view each other as illegitimate. Western democracies do not support the outcome of these particular Palestinian elections and from the perspective of Palestine “the Western democracies support a version of the democratic that wilfully engages in exclusionary and overtly undemocratic (from the perspective of the promise) practices—especially vis-à-vis the Palestinians. ”
The structural argument of democratic peace does not apply in the Israeli-Palestinian case since the governed have given their consent to the government in resorting to violence by means of conquering or protecting “their” land. The normative argument does not seem to apply either since both Israel and Palestine are quite prone in using violence to resolve conflict.
Conclusion
Since Israel is seen as the “beacon of democracy” in the Middle East, and Palestinian democracy is widely seen as illegitimate by Western democracies, the Theory of Democratic Peace is not applicable in this case. The theory states that democracies do not fight each other, but that they are not less war prone towards non-democratic states. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be explained in this context, since Israel and Western democracies do not think of Palestine as a democracy. Therefor, the usage of violence does not refute the Democratic Peace Theory
Though Some scholars would argue that violence between democracies occurs, in rare cases such as with the Israeli-Palestinian situation, the Democratic Peace Theory could possibly still apply. For this to be the case, one would need to accept exceptions to the statement of absolute absence of violence. The statement “democracies do not fight each other” would then become “democracies rarely fight each other”.
As Rummel states, libertarian systems often resort to violence when their freedom is being threatened. In the case of Israel and Palestine this could also be a possible explanation for their usage of violence.
Concluding, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a controversial case, in which ontological questions about democracy are raised.