Democratic Peace Theory and Democratization

The Subjectivity of the "Democratic" Peace: Changing U.S. Perceptions of Imperial Germany Author(s): Ido Oren Source: International Security, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Fall, 1995), pp. 147-184 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2539232 Accessed: 16-07-2017 20:34 UTC

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The Subjectivity of the Ido Oren "Democratic" Peace

Changing U.S. Perceptions of Imperial Germany

Few claims about in- ternational relations are as widely accepted as the claim of a democratic peace.

Many scholars are convinced, along with President Clinton, that "democracies

rarely wage war on one another."' This proposition provides an important

rationale for promoting "democratization" as a pillar of American foreign

policy: "ultimately the best strategy to insure our security and to build a

durable peace is to support the advance of democracy elsewhere."2

However, the search for a democratic peace, scientific though it may be, is

not value-free. I argue that the democratic peace claim is not about democracies

per se as much as it is about countries that are "America-like" or of "our kind."

The apparently objective coding rules by which democracy is defined in fact

represent current American values.

The democratic peace claim is ahistorical; it overlooks the fact that these

values have changed over time. In no small part, this change has been

influenced by changing international political realities. The values embodied

in the current definition of democracy were historically shaped by the need to

distance America from its adversaries. They are products, more than determi-

nants, of America's past foreign political relations. The reason we do not fight

"our kind" is not that "likeness" has a great effect on war propensity, but rather

that we from time to time subtly redefine our kind to keep our self-image

consistent with our friends' attributes and inconsistent with those of our ad-

versaries.

Ido Oren is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. He is currently an SSRC-MacArthur Foundation Fellow on Peace and Security in a Changing World.

I thank the following individuals (some of whom disagreed with my argument) for helpful counsel: William Dixon, Geoff Eley, Scott Gates, Jeff Legro, Rhona Leibel, Yair Magen, John Mearsheimer, Andy Moravcsik, Dick Price, Diana Richards, Bruce Russett, Marc Trachtenberg, Stephen Van Evera, Bill Wohlforth, Amy Zegart, two anonymous referees, and especially Raymond Duvall and James Farr. Ethan Cherin and Luigi Cocci extended excellent research assistance.

1. William Clinton, Confronting the Challenges of a Broader World (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of State, 1993). 2. President Clinton's State of the Union Message, January 1994, quoted in John M. Owen, "How Liberalism Produces Democratic Peace," International Security, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Fall 1994), p. 87.

International Security, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Fall 1995), pp. 147-184 ? 1995 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

147

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International Security 20:2 | 148

In 1917 President Wilson denounced German autocracy, and declared war

on Germany to "make the world safe for democracy." Wilson's legacy is

embraced by the present proponents of the democratic peace theory.3 I show,

however, that as a political scientist Wilson viewed Germany not as an autoc-

racy, but as a most advanced constitutional state, and that he admired Prussia's

statism, administration, and its unequal suffrage. In the 1890s Wilson's political

values were different from those currently associated with "democracy," and

Germany as he perceived it was significantly more "normal" by his standards

at the time than it appears by present norms. Only after U.S.-German political

rivalry developed did Wilson begin to differentiate a democratic America from

an autocratic Germany. Indeed, America's very self-portrayal as a democracy

and the norms by which it defines democracy were in part shaped by the

conflict with Imperial Germany These norms, I argue, came to be selected

because the difference between America's political system and its adversary's

was greatest when measured against them.

In the following section I criticize the democratic peace literature and elabo-

rate my argument. Then, I reconstruct the political theories and perceptions of

Germany held by two prominent political scientists of the late nineteenth

century: Woodrow Wilson, later U.S. president, and John Burgess, founder of

the first graduate program in political science in the United States. I conclude

with the theoretical and policy implications of the argument, especially that

"democratization" provides but a frail foundation for U.S. security policy The

democratic character of foreign countries depends on the peacefulness of their

foreign policies, no less than their foreign policies toward the United States

depend on their democratic character.

The Appearance of a Democratic Peace

A remarkable finding emerged from recent empirical research in international

relations: democracies do not wage war on one another.4 In these studies,

3. For example, the motto of chapter 1 in Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), is excerpted from Wilson's 1917 war message to Congress. 4. Key studies include: Michael Doyle, "Liberalism and World Politics," American Political Science Reviezv, Vol. 80, No. 4 (December 1986), pp. 1151-1169; Zeev Maoz and Nasrin Abdulali, "Regime Types and International Conflict, 1815-1976," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 33, No. 1 (March 1989), pp. 3-35; T. Clifton Morgan and Valerie L. Schwebach, "Take Two Democracies and Call Me in the Morning: A Prescription for Peace?" International Interactions, Vol. 17, No. 4 (1992), pp. 305- 320; William Dixon, "Democracy and the Settlement of International Conflict," American Political

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The Subjectivity of the "Democratic" Peace | 149

polities are coded on a scale that typically takes competitiveness and fairness

of electoral processes, as well as constraints on the freedom of executive action,

as the defining empirical features of democracy.5 It is then shown statistically

that, controlling for other variables, the likelihood of war between democratic

countries is significantly smaller than between non-democracies or between

democracies and non-democracies.

There is no consensus on explaining this finding. Two lines of explanation

have emerged: one highlights the normative respect that democracies harbor

toward each other,6 while the other focuses on institutional features charac-

teristic of democratic regimes.7 The differences between these two strands

notwithstanding, their proponents use essentially identical rules for coding

regimes.8 I question the objectivity and trans-historical validity of these coding

rules, and hence my argument does not discriminate between the two expla-

nations. It is the empirical claim of a democratic peace that I challenge, what-

ever its explanation.

Science Review, Vol. 88, No. 1 (March 1994), pp. 14-32; Zeev Maoz and Bruce Russett, "Normative and Structural Causes of Democratic Peace, 1946-1986," American Political Science Review, Vol. 87, No. 3 (September 1993), pp. 624-638; and Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace. The recent studies by Russett and his collaborators are indicative of the high methodological sophistication attained by the literature. The technical quality of the statistical studies is not challenged here. 5. These features are central to Ted Robert Gurr's coding scheme, which is the most widely used in studies of the democratic peace. See Ted R. Gurr (Principal Investigator), Polity II: Political Structures and Regime Change, 1800-1986 (Codebook) (Ann Arbor: ICPSR No. 9263, 1990). Gurr's data are used, for example, by Dixon, Maoz and Abdulali, and Maoz and Russett (see fn. 4). Other researchers employ coding schemes that assign greater weight to indicators of civic, political, and economic freedom (e.g., Doyle, "Liberalism and World Politics," p. 1164). But despite the lack of definitional uniformity, the assignment of countries to the democratic/liberal or to the auto- cratic/illiberal ends of the continuum must be consistent across the various studies or else the consensus on the robustness of the democratic peace finding would not have been as strong as it is. 6. See, e.g., Doyle, "Liberalism and World Politics"; Dixon, "Democracy and the Settlement of International Conflict;" Maoz and Russett, "Normative and Structural Causes of the Democratic Peace." For a helpful review of the theoretical debate see T. Clifton Morgan, "Democracy and War: Reflections on the Literature," International Interactions, Vol. 18, No. 3 (1993), pp. 197-203. 7. See, e.g., Morgan and Schwebach, "Take Two Democracies and Call Me in the Morning." Much of the work on the structural-institutional explanation of the democratic peace is formal-deductive, most notably: Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and David Lalman, War and Reason: Domestic and Interna- tional Imperatives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), chap. 5; David Lake, "Powerful Pacifists: Democratic States and War," American Political Science Review, Vol. 86, No. 1 (March 1992), pp. 24-37. These formal studies are imaginative, and their normative content-residing in the axiomatic assumptions-is less opaque than in the verbal explanations. Still, to verify their impli- cations the formal studies rely on the same data used by the purely statistical studies. 8. For example, Gurr's Polity data are employed both by Morgan and Schwebach, "Take Two Democracies and Call Me in the Morning," and by Maoz and Russett, "Normative and Structural Causes of the Democratic Peace," proponents of the structural-institutional and of the normative arguments respectively.

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International Security 20:2 | 150

CRITIQUE

The appearance of a democratic "zone of peace" is the product of three inter-

related biases. First, the scientific claim of peace among democracies, let alone

the claim's articulation by policy makers, is not value-free. This is hinted by

the fact that in all studies America receives virtually perfect scores on the

democracy scale.9 America is the norm against which other polities are meas- ured. American scholars are busier searching for a democratic peace rather

than, say, a Moslem peace not least because democracy enjoys strong normative

approval in present-day America. Furthermore, the selection of the empirical

criteria by which this abstract concept is described-primarily fair electoral

processes and executive responsibility-is consistent with the dominant image

of democracy in current American culture.

The second bias of the democratic peace literature is betrayed by the fact that

America's perfect democracy scores are applied to its past as much as to its

present.10 Current American values are projected backward and other polities, past and present, are ahistorically compared to the present American ideal.

Considerable historical experience suggesting that political norms are elastic

over time is ignored.11 Thus, the tastes of present researchers, disguised as

impartial coding rules, are conflated with the rather different tastes of past (and

arguably of future) actors.12 Third, the studies of the democratic peace not only disguise elastic values as

fixed coding rules; they risk mistaking the cause of these values for their effect.

In postulating "regime type" as an independent variable, they rule out a priori

9. In Gurr's Polity II data set, for example, the United States receives a perfect score on the democracy scale and the lowest score on the autocracy scale. See Gurr, Polity II. Interestingly, on an alternative scale of democracy constructed by a Finnish author (not used in democratic peace studies), it is Finland that scores the highest, far higher than the United States. See Tatu Vanhanen, The Process of Democratization: A Comparative Study of 147 States (New York: Crane Russak, 1990). I thank Chris Lindborg for calling my attention to the book. 10. In Doyle's data set the United States (north of the Mason-Dixon line) is one of only two countries that are classified as "liberal regimes" continuously from the eighteenth century (the other is Switzerland). In Gurr's Polity II data set the United States is the only great power that consistently receives perfect democracy scores for the pre-World War I period. See Doyle, "Liber- alism and World Politics," p. 1164; Gurr, Polity II. 11. Terrence Ball, James Farr, and Russell Hanson, eds., Political Innovation and Conceptual Change (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989). The essays in that volume document how both the empirical meanings and the moral signs attached to concepts such as democracy, the state, and representation have changed in time. 12. I fully share John Owen's belief that we must examine how actors "coded" each other at the time. Such historical awareness makes his analysis richer and more nuanced than the statistical ones. But my critique is more radical than Owen's in emphasizing the historical change of the actors' perception of themselves (which Owen assumes constant). See Owen, "How Liberalism Produces a Democratic Peace."

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The Subjectivity of the "Democratic" Peace | 151

the possibility that democratic norms are the products, as much the determi-

nants, of America's past foreign relations.

THE ARGUMENT

Following these three critiques, my argument is in three steps concerning the

"normalizing," historicizing, and endogenizing of the concept of democracy

First, I argue, "democracy" must be "normalized." The democratic peace

proposition is not about democracy per se; rather, it should be understood as a

special case of an argument about peace among polities that are similar relative

to some normative benchmarks. What is special about the benchmarks repre-

sented by the coding rules of "democracy" is that they are American. They

represent "our kind."

Second, I contend that "our kind" changes over time. Both the normative

and empirical content attached to "democracy" by American elites changed

notably over the past two centuries. In the nineteenth century, democracy was

associated with socialism more than with liberalism. It was understood as the

rule of a particular class, the working demos. Democracy was thus deplored by

most American intellectuals, who feared that the untamed rule of mass majori-

ties would lead to tyranny and subvert individual liberty.13 Therefore, in the nineteenth century American elites were reluctant to identify America as a

democracy, and instead associated America with republicanism, constitution-

alism, liberty, and even Teutonism. It was only around the turn of the century

that the moral sign of democracy was reversed. The reversal was facilitated by

a re-conceptualization that cleansed democracy of its class connotation. By

marrying it to the Prussian science of administration and thus insulating wide

areas of decision making from the immature masses, democracy was made safe

for the world before the world could be made safe for democracy.14 Indeed, making democracy safe was precisely the project in which the statist political

science of Woodrow Wilson and his generation was engaged in the 1890s. Still,

13. Russell Hanson, "Democracy," in Ball, Farr, and Hanson, Political Innovation and Conceptual Change, pp. 68-89; Charles S. Maier, "Democracy Since the French Revolution," in John Dunn, Democracy: The Unfinished Journey, 508 BC to AD 1993 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 125-154; James Farr, "From Modern Republic to Administrative State: American Political Science in the Nineteenth Century," in David Easton, John Gunnell, and Michael Stein, Regime and Discipline: Democracy and the Development of Political Science (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), pp. 131-168. A similar sentiment was expressed earlier by the Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant, whose legacy is currently invoked by proponents of the democratic peace: "Democracy is necessarily despotism, as it establishes an executive power contrary to the general will; all being able to decide against one whose opinion may differ." See Kant, Perpetual Peace (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939), p. 15. Emphasis original. 14. Charles Maier, "Democracy Since the French Revolution," pp. 126 and 140.

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International Security 20:2 | 152

the New York Times continued to contrast authoritarianism against "republic"

or "constitutional government" (read: America) until 1917; only thereafter did

"democracy" become America's chief self-portrayal.15

"Democracy" remains a moving target. Today the association of democracy

with a set of classless electoral practices seems to dominate American culture-

and, by extension, the scientific coding rules-but this image is not uncon-

tested. It is challenged by the successors of "Students for a Democratic Society"

and the New Left who wish to re-associate democracy with class, advocating

greater participation of the demos.16 Equally critical, if less radical, are political economists fearful of the atrophy of democracy into "demosclerosis" due to

the malignant effect of "special interests." 17 And critics on the right wish to emancipate the people from "big government," i.e., the very administrative

bureaucracy erected in order to make democracy safe for the world. Historical

experience cannot tell us which challenge to the present vision of democracy

will succeed, but from it we can draw two more modest lessons: that the

present vision is not permanent-the future may bring different under-

standings of democracy or even a renewed disapproval of the concept-and

that the future direction of "democracy" (or "our kind") will not be inde-

pendent of the course of America's foreign relations, the third step of my

argument.

The process by which the definition of "our kind" changes in time is not

entirely an internal one. To a considerable degree it is influenced by foreign

affairs. America's identity has historically developed in ways that made politi-

cal enemies appear subjectively further and friends subjectively closer to it. The

estrangement of democracy from the demos can be better understood if we

recognize that many of America's enemies in the twentieth century identified

themselves as "people's democracies." By the same token, the reason why after

World War I "constitutionalism" has become less central to America's self-

definition must be related to the fact that Imperial Germany was widely

15. See Ithiel de Sola Pool with Harold D. Lasswell and Daniel Lerner, Symbols of Democracy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1952), p. 27. 16. See Hanson, "Democracy," pp. 83-84. 17. See Maier, "Democracy Since the French Revolution," p. 147. For a forceful articulation of this critique see Mancur Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982). Interestingly, the "Asian tigers" appear to be Olson's normative model in that book. For an indication of Olson's influence outside academia see Peter Passell, "Democracy's Hardened Arteries and Washington's Problems," New York Times, June 2, 1994, p. C2. The term "demosclerosis" is from the latter article.

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The Subjectivity of the "Democratic" Peace | 153

regarded as an advanced constitutional state. America's Aryan and Teutonic

identities were purged for the same reason.18

Current American social science is not insulated from this process. Polities

have numerous objective dimensions by which they can be measured. The

dimensions captured by the current empirical measures of democracy came to

be selected through a subtle historical process whereby objective dimensions

on which America resembled its enemies were eliminated, whereas those on

which America differed the most from its enemies became privileged. Thus,

the coding rules defining democracy are better understood as a time-bound

product of America's historical international circumstances than as the timeless

exogenous force that they are presumed to be.

THE CHANGING "CODING" OF IMPERIAL GERMANY

The contrast between the present and past "coding" of Imperial Germany by

American political scientists provides a case in point. Examination of Polity II

scores for the pre-1914 period shows that England and France are ranked close

behind the United States (i.e., the norm) on the democracy scale, whereas

Imperial Germany is significantly behind them, and Austria-Hungary and

Russia are even further behind. Alas, the predecessors of today's coders, the

political scientists of 100 years ago, subscribed to a different concept of the

"good state." To them, Imperial Germany was a member of a select group of

states-modern, constitutional, administrative, cohesive nation-states-that

were politically the most developed on earth. The difference in political devel-

opment between this select group (whose chief members included the United

States, France, Germany, and England) and the rest of humanity was perceived

as far greater than the differences among members of the group themselves.

Certainly, members of this group, Germany included, were considered superior

in their political development to countries such as Greece, Italy, Argentina, and

Chile that are listed by Michael Doyle as members of the liberal club for the

pre-World War I period.19 Within the group of "modern constitutional states," Germany was not necessarily the farthest from the ideal. John Burgess's belief

in the superiority of the German polity and culture was fairly close to the views

of ardent German nationalists such as Treitschke and Droysen. And Woodrow

Wilson's more Anglophile disposition did not exclude Germany from the small

18. On the search for America's Aryan and Teutonic heritage by nineteenth century intellectuals, see Dorothy Ross, The Origins of American Social Science (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), chap. 3. 19. Doyle, "Liberalism and World Politics," p. 1164.

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International Security 20:2 | 154

circle of the most modern nations, nor did it preclude high regard for important

features of the German system. To Wilson circa 1890, for example, the Prussian

administrative model was superior to the French one (not to mention Anglo-

American administrative impotency); the Prussian constitutional state was

preferable to the immature democracy of France; and Prussian local govern-

ment was the shining model of "self-government" not despite but partly because

of its three-class voting system. If any West European country deviated from

Wilson's norms it was France, not Germany.

The "re-coding" of Imperial Germany cannot be attributed to the discovery

of new facts regarding the nature of its political system. The political scientists

of the late nineteenth century knew the facts full well since most of them

trained in Germany, and they all read German. The disagreement between the

current coders and their predecessors is rather about the selection of the facts.

Imperial Germany, like any polity, was a complex multidimensional creature.

What changed over time was not the objective creature as much as the dimen-

sions by which it came to be defined. The selection of such defining dimensions

is a subjective, normative exercise, and it fundamentally affects the classifica-

tion of the creature relative to others: if one selects "constitutionalism," "rule

of law," or "federalism," Imperial Germany appears "normal" relative to Amer-

ica; select "efficient administration," "progressive social legislation," or "aca-

demic freedom," and it becomes the norm; set the norm to Prussia and

"one-person, one vote," and Germany becomes "abnormal" (although not so

different from the United States if the latter's disfranchised black population

is properly accounted for). Social scientists must recognize that their coding

rules constitute such summary measurement norms, and that norm selection is

not unaffected by the scientist's historical context.

The present coding of regime types in general, and of the Imperial German

regime in particular, cannot be understood outside the context of the history

of German-American political relations. Whereas in the 1870s and 1880s friend-

ship between the United States of America and "the United States of Germany"

was taken as axiomatic, around the turn of the century diplomatic tensions

began to mount as both nations were simultaneously emerging on the global

imperial scene (the focal points that triggered the tension included Samoa, the

Philippines, and Venezuela).20 The rising tension brought about a gradual

20. See Manfred Jonas, The United States and Germany: A Diplomatic History (Ithaca: Cornell Uni- versity Press, 1984).

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The Subjectivity of the "Democratic" Peace | 155

erosion of Germany's positive image in America.21 America's entry into the war in 1917 led to a more radical change in its image of Germany, including a

re-characterization of the German political system. It was then that the sharp

dichotomy between "autocratic" Germany and democratic America was born.

Colleges across the country hastily introduced patriotic "War Issues" courses

whose subject matter "presented itself as a clear-cut contest between the forces

of light and the forces of darkness."22 Not only did American social scientists bring war propaganda into their classrooms, some of them also participated in

the administration's propaganda effort abroad.23 Those who dared to take issue

with the anti-German hysteria risked their jobs and professional reputation.

For example, the chairman of the University of Minnesota's department of

political science, William Schaper, was summarily dismissed by the university's

regents for insisting that the blame for the war did not rest wholly upon

Germany.24 John Burgess, the father of the discipline of political science in America, is virtually forgotten today in part because of his unrelenting pro-

Germanism. 25

21. In the prewar years the stellar reputation of German scholarship began sagging, and anti- German books began to supplant the more sympathetic literature of years past. See Konrad H. Jarausch, "Huns, Krauts, or Good Germans? The German Image in America, 1880-1980," in James F. Harris, German-American Interrelations: Heritage and Challenge (Tiibingen: Tiibingen University Press, 1985), pp. 146-149; Frank Trommler, "Inventing the Enemy: German-American Cultural Relations, 1900-17," in Hans-Jurgen Schr6der, Confrontation and Cooperation: Germany and the United States in the Era of World War I, 1900-1924 (Providence: Berg Publishers, 1993), pp. 99-126. 22. David M. Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 53-59; quotation, p. 58. The "War Issues" courses evolved after the war into the "Contemporary Civilization" curricula. See "Columbia to Celebrate 75 Years of Great Books," Nezv York Times, November 16, 1994, p. B9. For a contemporary condemnation of the hysterical "coalescence of the intellectual classes in support of the military programme" see Randolph Bourne, "The War and the Intellectuals," The Seven Arts, Vol. 2 (1917), pp. 133-136, reprinted in David F. Trask, World War I at Home (New York: Wiley, 1970), pp. 73-80. 23. For example, University of Chicago political scientist Charles Merriam served as chief Ameri- can "publicist" in Italy. See Ross, The Origins of American Social Science, p. 454. On the role of leading historians in the propaganda effort at home and abroad, see George T. Blakey, Historians on the Homefront: American Propagandists For the Great War (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1970). See also Jarausch, "Huns, Krauts, or Good Germans?" p. 150. 24. Charles McLaughlin, A Short History of the Department of Political Science (Minneapolis: Univer- sity of Minnesota, 1977). At the University of Minnesota, recording machines were placed in classrooms, and the desks of allegedly unpatriotic professors were rifled at night. See Robert Morlan, "The Reign of Terror in the Middle West," in Arthur S. Link, The Impact of World War I (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), p. 76. On the dismissal and intimidation of professors at Columbia and elsewhere, see "The Case of the Columbia Professors," Nation, October 11, 1917, pp. 388-389, reprinted in Trask, World War I at Home, pp. 159-162. 25. See Albert Somit and Joseph Tanenhaus, The Development of American Political Science: From Burgess to Behavioralism (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1967), p. 3.

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International Security 20:2 | 156

It is the 1917 image of Germany, greatly magnified by the experience of

1933-45, that pervades current American social science.26 The coding rules

employed by the democratic peace literature are heavily influenced by this

image. Gurr's democracy/autocracy scales are explicitly informed by the no-

tion that "the empires of Central and Eastern Europe-Germany, Russia, Aus-

tro-Hungary-implemented the trappings but not the substance of effective

democratic participation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries."27

Now not only is it curious that a "scientific" data set relies so heavily on a

particular interpretation of "trappings" versus "substance," it must also be

recognized that this interpretation is ahistorical. For Wilson and the political

scientists of a century ago did not consider Germany an autocracy, did not lump

the German and Russian regimes in the same category (Russia was an autoc-

racy), and were remarkably ambivalent as to whether mass electoral processes

were the substance, as opposed to "mere trappings," of effective democratic

participation. In sum, the perception of Imperial Germany imprinted in the

present coding rules is grossly colored by hindsight and by contemporary

values, which in no small part became our values because of the benefit of

hindsight.

While the present definition of "democracy" was shaped by the social reality

of past U.S.-German enmity, its endurance and universal appeal derive from

26. Three classics of American social science, their differences aside, single out Germany as a country whose political and economic development sharply diverged from the Anglo-American "norm": Thorstein Veblen, Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1990 [1915]); Alexander Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962); Barrington Moore, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), esp. chap. 8. In the 1960s and 1970s these social-scientific models influenced the writings of German historians who sought to combat the impulse to downplay German guilt for the horrors of Nazism. See, e.g., Hans-Ulrich Wehler, The German Empire, 1871-1918 (Dover, N.H.: Berg Publishers, 1985 [1973]). More recently, English historians led by David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley sought to correct what they regarded as the ahistorical quality of the "special path" interpretation of German history. They argued that the emphasis on past German peculiarity is overly colored by hindsight, that Imperial Germany tends to be judged by the standards of idealized images of the Anglo-American past, and that the German past might look more "normal" if compared to the experience of continental Europe rather than to England. The present essay, inasmuch as it shows that past American scholars regarded Imperial Germany as more normal than do present scholars, provides support for this critique. See David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley, The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in 19th Century Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984); David Blackbourn, Populists and Patricians: Essays in Modern German History (London: Allen and Unwin, 1987); Geoff Eley, "Liber- alism, Europe, and the Bourgeoisie, 1860-1914," in David Blackbourn and Richard Evans, The German Bourgeoisie: Essays on the Social History of the German Middle Class from the Late 18th to the Early 20th Century (London: Routledge, 1991). For helpful reflections on the debate, see Peter Paret, "Some Comments on the Continuity Debate in German History," in James Harris, German-American Interrelations, pp. 83-88. 27. Gurr, Polity II, pp. 36-37.

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The Subjectivity of the "Democratic" Peace | 157

the material reality of America's triumph. America's military victories estab-

lished it as the world's leading military, economic, and academic power. But

consider, as a counterfactual, the possibility of a German victory in 1917-18.

Would Heidelberg not have remained more prestigious than Princeton or

Oxford? Would it be common knowledge that Imperial Germany was auto-

cratic, or would we instead remember Victorian England as the imperialistic

"autocrat of the sea," as John Burgess described it in 1915? Would articles on

peace among "our kind" have sprouted in American political science journals,

or rather in German Staatswissenschaft periodicals? And would "our kind" not have been defined in terms of, say, powerful professional bureaucracies insu-

lated from mass public caprice?

The science of the democratic peace is an American social science.28 Citizens

of small, vulnerable countries tend to be acutely aware of the historical contin-

gency of their present circumstances, but from the perspective of an extraordi-

narily secure, triumphant superpower, counterfactuals such as the above are

almost unimaginable. It is a social science written from the latter perspective

that typically assumes away the historical contingency of the present. And it

is from such a perspective that particular time-bound values can be mistaken

for universal timeless truths.

The bulk of what follows is devoted to reconstructing the political theories

and views of Germany held by two leading American political scientists,

John Burgess and Woodrow Wilson. But first, two methodological issues must

be addressed: why focus on political scientists, and, among them, why these

two?

METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS

The political scientists of the gilded age generally shared the socioeconomic

background of contemporary American political elites. Whether by birth or by

education, they belonged to a cosmopolitan gentry class that was mostly

northeastern in residence, liberal or heterodox in religion, and whiggish in

outlook.29 But the socioeconomic affinity of academic and political elites cannot

alone justify selecting political scientists to represent "America's" perception

28. On this theme, see Stanley Hoffmann, "An American Social Science: International Relations," Daedalus, Vol. 106, No. 3 (1977), pp. 41-60; Ekkehart Krippendorf, "The Dominance of American Approaches in International Relations," Millennium, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Summer 1987), pp. 207-214. 29. Ross, The Origins of American Social Science, chap. 3. Ross's book provides excellent guidance on the intellectual history of American political science, as does (in a more stylized fashion) Farr, "From Modern Republic to Administrative State."

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of Germany; academics, after all, exerted little direct influence over American

diplomacy.

There are, however, two other important reasons for focusing on the views

of past political scientists. First, they constitute the most appropriate "control

group" for today's democratic peace theorists who are also mostly political

scientists. Early American political scientists were deeply committed to induc-

tive, if unimaginative, science "firmly bottomed on fact and experience."30 They

prized precision of definition and measurement no less than their successors.31 Therefore, inasmuch as their account of Germany differs from the present

account the difference cannot be attributed to pre-scientific idle speculation.

Second, while political scientists qua academics had no direct control of the

levers of government, one prominent member of the profession did go on to

make a crucial mark on U.S. foreign policy: the relevance of Woodrow Wilson's

scholarship to assessing the democratic peace proposition need not be re-

hearsed.

An examination of the political theory of John Burgess in addition to Wil-

son's makes the "sample" more representative of early American political

science. Wilson and Burgess represent two distinct, if immediately successive,

professional generations. Burgess was the most prominent member of the

German-trained generation that founded professional political science in Amer-

ica, whereas Wilson belonged to the first Ph.D. cohort "minted in America."

The two scholars also represent two distinct institutional settings. Burgess

founded the graduate school in political science at Columbia University

(1880)-the first, and for many years the leading, political science graduate

program in the country 32 Wilson was trained (1883-85) and for several years

30. Woodrow Wilson, "Of the Study of Politics," November 25, 1886, in Arthur Link, The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, Vol. 5 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), p. 400. (Below, this invaluable comprehensive collection of Wilson's papers is referred to as PWW, followed by volume number.) On the disdain for writing that is unsupported by evidence, which Wilson absorbed as a graduate student at Johns Hopkins, see "Editorial Note to 'The Modern Democratic State'," PWW 5, p. 55. On John Burgess's strong belief in modeling the social after the natural sciences, see Somit and Tanenhaus, The Development of American Political Science, p. 28. 31. What separates the current coders of the democratic peace from their predecessors is the inferential statistical tools that are available to them, more than the very commitment to rigorous empirical science. The common belief that a "scientific revolution" swept political science in the mid-twentieth century unfairly understates the scientific aspirations of earlier generations. See Ido Oren, "Perceptions of Germany in Early American Political Science," paper delivered at the 1994 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, New York. 32. Somit and Tanenhaus, The Development of American Political Science, pp. 7-21. See also Wilfred McClay's introduction to the recent re-issue of John Burgess, The Foundations of Political Science (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1994 [1933]); and Daniel T. Rodgers, Contested Truths: Keywords in American Politics Since Independence (New York: Basic Books, 1987), pp. 164-168.

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The Subjectivity of the "Democratic" Peace | 159

taught at Johns Hopkins University, then Columbia's rival for the discipline's

leadership.33 Burgess was a Germanophile, while Wilson's cultural and senti-

mental compass was more oriented toward England. Burgess and Wilson

epitomize different shades of the theoretical concerns, political views, and

professional experiences of mainstream American political scientists in the late

nineteenth century

Another reason for the inclusion of Burgess in this study is theoretical as

much as methodological. There is one key contrast between Burgess and

Wilson that is more than a matter of shade or nuance. Whereas Wilson's

characterization of Germany changed radically in time, Burgess's positive view

of Imperial Germany withstood the worsening of U.S.-German relations and

even the hysteria of 1917-18. To the end of his life in 1931, Burgess regarded

the German-American conflict, which he considered an intra-Teutonic one, as

a calamitous error. The variation between the shifting views of one individual

and the steadfastness of the other's elucidates an important theoretical point,

namely that my argument operates at the social level more than the individual

one. The contrast between Wilson and Burgess, in other words, suggests that

a sociology rather than a psychology of knowledge may be appropriate if we

wish to understand the process by which values and "coding" of nations

change in time. Burgess's case demonstrates that individual scholars are not

necessarily puppets in the hands of historical forces, nor do they readily revise

their attitudes to accommodate changing political realities. But it also shows

that the knowledge generated by, and clung to, by such individual scholars is

liable to being forgotten by future communities of scholars. John Burgess was

arguably the most important political scientist of his time, and yet few present

political scientists recognize his name, let alone are familiar with his theory.

Woodrow Wilson's legacy, on the other hand, is well remembered by present

political scientists, notably by democratic peace theorists. But even in Wilson's

case, collective historical memory is selective. It is the 1917 image of Wilson

deploring German autocracy that is etched in the present recollection rather

than the earlier Wilson who detested French "democracy," approved German

constitutionalism, and admired Prussian statism.

33. For a concise factual account of Wilson's academic career see August Heckscher, Woodrow Wilson: A Biography (New York: Collier Books, 1991), chaps. 2-3. Henry W. Bragdon, Woodrow Wilson: The Academic Years (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 1967), if somewhat dated, remains an excellent biographical source on Wilson's pre-political career.

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International Security 20:2 | 160

The Nationalist Theory of John W Burgess

Two episodes that critically shaped the life of John Burgess can also be said to

have shaped the origins of academic political science in America: the Civil War

and the encounter with Germany The traumatic experience of disunion and

Civil War "provided American political science at the moment of its birth with

a compelling raison d'etre and a proximate task: formulating the grounds for an

enduring and cohesive national political unit."34 Of the members of his gen-

eration, John Burgess was the most effective in providing the nationalist post-

war impulse with a "complete and scientific" theoretical foundation.35 Born in Tennessee in 1844 into a family that upheld firm Unionist principles,

Burgess enlisted in the Federal army, and observed the horrors of the Civil War

first hand.36 When he graduated from Amherst College after the war there was

virtually no academic institution in America that offered rigorous graduate

training in the social sciences. Like thousands of other young Americans,

Burgess was drawn to Germany, whose universities were the most advanced

in the world.37

Virtually all the founders of academic social science in America studied in

Germany. John Burgess earned his Ph.D. there in the 1870s, and the three young

scholars he recruited in 1880 to join him at Columbia had also studied in

Germany.38 Herbert B. Adams, who was to lead the program in history and

political science at Johns Hopkins and to supervise Woodrow Wilson's studies

there, trained in Germany, as did Wilson's two other teachers.39 Upon their return to the United States these scholars sought to emulate the model of the

34. McClay, "Introduction," p. vii. 35. Charles Merriam, A History of American Political Theories (New York: Macmillan, 1903), p. 299. The preoccupation with national cohesion was shared by American elites in general; it was not limited to political scientists alone. See Trommler, "Inventing the Enemy," p. 110. 36. McClay, "Introduction," pp. xiii-xv. 37. During the nineteenth century about 9,000 American students flocked to German universities, most of them after 1870. Berlin, the national Prussian university, was the most popular destination, with American enrollment totalling 1300 for the 1880s. See Ross, The Origins of American Social Science, p. 55; Somit and Tanenhaus, The Development of American Political Science, pp. 15-16; Jarausch, "Huns, Krauts, or Good Germans," p. 148; Jurgen Herbst, The German Historical School in American Scholarship, 1800-1870 (Port Washington, N.Y: Kennikat Press, 1972), chap. 1. 38. Somit and Tanenhaus, The Development of American Political Science, p. 17. 39. Richard Ely instructed Wilson in political economy and George S. Morris in philosophy. See Niels A. Thorsen, The Political Thought of Woodrow Wilson: 1875-1910 (Princeton: Princeton Univer- sity Press, 1988), chap. 4; John M. Mulder, Woodrow Wilson: The Years of Preparation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), pp. 75, 83.

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The Subjectivity of the "Democratic" Peace | 161

German research university.40 Students in their German-style graduate semi-

nars were required to master the German language, since German scholarship

was held in the highest esteem.41

But Germany's appeal was not limited to academic excellence. Germany also

provided a powerful model of national reunion and consolidation. Upon ar-

riving in Berlin in 1871 Burgess witnessed the victory parade of the troops

returning from the Franco-Prussian war, and compared it favorably to "the

march of the Grand Army of the Republic through Washington six years

before."42 This personal experience foreshadowed a lifelong love affair with German institutions and culture.

NATION, STATE, LIBERTY, GOVERNMENT

The major theoretical work of John Burgess, Political Science and Comparative

Constitutional Law (pub. 1890) contains four sections: "the nation," "the state,"

"liberty," and "Government."43 The first section opens with a "German," i.e., exact and scientific, definition: "A population of an ethnic unity, inhabiting a

territory of a geographic unity, is a nation."44

Nations are not born equal, Burgess argued. They have talents latent in their

character, largely determined by the racial composition of their population. At

the bottom of the racial hierarchy are the peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin

America (who do not even merit "scientific treatment"), while the middle ranks

are populated by the non-Teutonic European races. The Greek and the Slavonic

races excel in the arts, philosophy, and religion, but their form of political

organization "manifests a low order of political genius." The Celts "have never

manifested any consciousness of political principles or developed any con-

stancy in political purpose." The Romans have a gift for building empires. The

most advanced polities were formed by "those nations that may be termed the

political nations par excellence, viz, the Teutonic; and if the peculiar creations of

these nations may be expressed in a single phrase it must be this: that they are

40. Somit and Tanenhaus, The Development of American Social Science, pp. 34-38. 41. Wilson, for example, characterized German scholarship as exceptionally "diligent" and "learned." See "A Book Review," April 17, 1887, PWW 5, p. 494. 42. McClay, "Introduction," p. xvi. 43. In later years Burgess prepared an abridged version of the book, but a contract to publish it was rescinded during World War I because of the author's pro-German sympathy. That version was published only in 1933, posthumously, as The Foundations of Political Science. My discussion below draws on the 1994 re-issue of the latter book, which I refer to as Foundations. 44. Foundations, p. 3.

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the founders of national states." For Burgess, thus, the nation-state is the

highest form of political development, a form that only the Teutonic nations

are capable of approaching.45 Fortunately, in America "an amalgamated Teu- tonic race is the dominant factor," although the Teutonic elements, "the Anglo-

Americans, the Germans, and Scandinavians do not yet mingle their blood

completely."46 Also Teutonic were Germany, England, Holland, Switzerland,

the Scandinavian nations, and France (although French blood is diluted by

Iberian, Celtic, and Roman elements).47

Burgess subscribed to an idealist conception of "the state," subject of the

second section of his treatise. The state is not the aggregate product of a

contract among free individuals,48 but an organic body that grows in historical

time toward the ideal of the perfect state.49 Along the state's evolutionary

growth path, the creation of a national monarchy signals "the beginning of the

modern political era." Then, "a large proportion of the population is awakened

to the consciousness of the state, and feels the impulse to participate in the

work of its objective realization." They "gather about their king" and "make

him but the first servant of the state."50 Once the king turns into a mere office-

holder, subordinate to popular sovereignty, the state can be said to be demo-

cratic. Democracy is embodied in a revolutionary popular act of constitution-

making, and is conditional upon national harmony and cohesion: "the

democratic state must be a national state, and the state whose population has

become truly national will inevitably become democratic."51

On this historical path, Burgess found both Germany and the United States

in the most advanced category of (Teutonic) popular democratic states. For

Burgess, the German process of constitution-making was no less revolutionary

and progressive than its counterpart, a century earlier, in America. In both cases

the people consciously formed a modern national state.52 Moreover, Burgess

45. Foundations, pp. 31-38. On the popularity and legitimacy of racialist ideas in the intellectual discourse of late nineteenth-century America, see Rogers M. Smith, "Beyond Tocqueville, Myrdal, and Hartz: The Multiple Traditions in America," American Political Science Review, Vol. 87, No. 3 (September 1993), pp. 558-560; John Higham, Strangers In the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1988), chap. 6. 46. Foundations, p. 20. 47. Foundations, p. 16. 48. Foundations, p. 66. 49. Foundations, chap. 5. 50. Foundations, p. 70. 51. Foundations, pp. 85-86. 52. The analogy between the German and American experience is most evident in John Burgess, "Laband's Public Law of the German Empire," Political Science Quarterly, No. 1 (March 1888), esp. pp. 124-126.

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The Subjectivity of the "Democratic" Peace | 163

identified the Prussian monarch, whether in his capacity as king of Prussia or

as emperor of Germany, as a constitutional office holder,53 a signal of the

formation of the modern popular democratic state.

Burgess was a staunch defender of individual liberties, and he regarded the

constitutional state as the ultimate guarantor of liberty; it protects individuals

both from the incursion of government and from the tyranny of majorities.

While in all modern nation-states individuals enjoy similar freedoms, it is in

the United States that these freedoms are protected best. In America the fun-

damental principles of freedom "are written by the state in the constitution;

the power to put the final and authoritative interpretation upon them is vested

by the state in a body of jurists, holding their offices independently of the

political departments of the government."54

How do the other modern democratic nation-states measure up? "Of the

three chief European constitutions only that of Germany contains, in any

degree, the guarantees of individual liberty which the constitution of the

United States so richly affords." As much as Germany falls short of the Ameri-

can ideal, its system is superior to France where "there is not the slightest trace

of a constitutional guaranty of individual liberty," or to England where the

trouble is "that the whole power of the state is vested in the government, and

that no sufficient distinction is made between the state and the government."

As far as constitutional liberty is concerned, then, Germany is more America-

like than either France or England (not to mention countries such as Italy and

Greece which are currently coded as having been "liberal" at the time).55

John Burgess went to a great length to distinguish "the state"-an abstract

organic concept-from the actual government. In fact, the form of the state and

the form of the government need not necessarily be in harmony. "It is difficult

to see why the most advantageous political system, for the present, would not

be a democratic state with an aristocratic government, provided only the

aristocracy be that of real merit, and not of artificial qualities. If this be not the

real principle of the republican [read: American] form of government then I

must confess that I do not know what its principle is."56 In expressing a preference for a democratic state with a meritocratic government, Burgess

53. John Burgess, "Tenure and Powers of the German Emperor," Political Science Quarterly, No. 2 (June 1888), p. 335. 54. Foundations, p. 106. 55. Foundations, pp. 106, 108, 109 respectively. Italy and Greece in the late nineteenth century are listed as liberal countries by Doyle, "Liberalism and World Politics," p. 1164. 56. Foundations, pp. 75-76.

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anticipated the program of Woodrow Wilson and his generation-who sought

to erect an efficient administrative state in the service of the nation-but he

himself stopped short of fully articulating this agenda.

Having elaborated the distinction between state and government, Burgess

ends his treatise by assessing the merits of various forms of government. A

"representative government" is only good if it is constitutionally limited, i.e.,

"if the state confers upon the government less than its whole power, less than

sovereignty, either by enumerating the powers of government, or by defining

and safeguarding individual liberty against them." On the other hand, "if the

state vests its whole power in the government, and reserves no sphere of

autonomy for the individual, the government is unlimited; it is despotism in

theory, however liberal and benevolent it may be in practice."57 From Burgess's

earlier discussion of liberty, the identity of the good and bad prototypes of

representative government is unmistakable. The English system where "the

whole power of the state is vested in the government" epitomizes the bad

unlimited representative government; it is despotic in theory and there are no

firm guarantees that would arrest a potential slide toward despotism in prac-

tice. The United States is the good limited representative state, and from

Burgess's earlier discussion of liberty it can be inferred that Germany is closer

to this ideal than either England or France.

Another interesting distinction in Burgess's taxonomy of governments

concerns "the tenure of the persons holding office or mandate. Viewed from

this standpoint, the government is either hereditary or elective." Burgess makes

no normative judgment whatsoever regarding the superiority of one system

relative to the other. Discerning four alternative hereditary principles, he con-

cludes that "primogeniture in the male line appears the most useful and

successful."58 That this is precisely the Prussian principle should come as no

surprise.59 Burgess also made a distinction between presidential and parliamentary

government. In presidential systems "the state, the sovereign, makes the ex-

ecutive independent of the legislature, both in tenure and prerogative, and

furnishes him with sufficient power to prevent the legislature from trenching

upon the sphere marked out by the state as executive independence and

prerogative." Burgess has high praise for presidential government: "it is con-

57. Foundations, p. 114 (both quotations). 58. Foundations, pp. 121-122. 59. See Burgess, "Tenure and Power of the German Emperor," p. 337.

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The Subjectivity of the "Democratic" Peace | 165

servative. It fixes the weight of responsibility upon a single person; and there

is nothing like this to produce caution, deliberation, and an impartial regard

for all interests concerned."60

Now one naturally associates the United States with presidential govern-

ment, but Imperial Germany was also squarely a member of Burgess's "presi-

dential club." In his essay on the "Tenure and Powers of the German Emperor,"

he refers repeatedly to the kaiser as the president of the German union or

"president of a republic."61 That the king of Prussia was the president of Germany was written in the German constitution, and for Burgess to have

referred to him as such (accepting the form of the constitution as its substance)

was entirely uncontroversial in 1888. The kaiser's lack of electoral approval did

not matter to Burgess at all (the kaiser, after all, inherited the crown through

the best hereditary principle); and if one "president of a republic" should

emulate the other, then it was probably the American executive who could

learn from his more powerful German counterpart. Burgess's comment about

the emperor's veto power in his capacity as king of Prussia is instructive:

"These are very wise provisions under existing conditions. I do not see how

the Emperor would be able to discharge his great duties to the nation without

them."62

Parliamentary government was regarded by Burgess as inferior to presiden-

tial government. Conspicuously alluding to England, Burgess suggested that

the successful operation of parliamentary government depended upon peculiar

conditions: a hereditary kingship "possessing the most sincere devotion and

loyalty of the masses," a national religion that preserves "the morality of the

masses," and "limited suffrage through which the intelligent, conservative and

moderate classes shall be the bearers of the political power." The extension of

the franchise was threatening to undermine the system. For "how with the

present degree of popular intelligence in even the most advanced states can

these qualities [stability, civility] be secured in a legislature whose members are

chosen by an universal or a widely extended suffrage?"63 To the extent that Burgess liked liberal England, then, it was the England envisioned by conser-

vative whiggish liberals such as Walter Bagehot, rather than the increasingly

democratic England of the late nineteenth century.

60. Foundations, p. 124. 61. See pp. 334, 335, 347. 62. Burgess, "Tenure and Powers of the German Emperor," p. 349. 63. Foundations, pp. 127-128.

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International Security 20:2 | 166

In sum, for John Burgess, Germany, England, and France were all closer to

the American ideal than Italy, Greece, and the Slavic countries, let alone the

colonial world, and among the ranks of those most advanced nation-states,

Germany was clearly at the top.

GERMANY: EUROPE S BEST GUARANTEE OF PEACE

In "Tenure and Powers of the German Emperor," Burgess discussed the em-

peror's powers in the area of foreign affairs. The emperor was constitutionally

empowered to make "alliances with foreign powers, and to declare [defensive]

war and make peace." But he was "most heavily handicapped in the exercise

of the power of declaring offensive war" since for such an act "the consent of

the Federal Council is necessary" As king of Prussia, the kaiser controlled 17

seats in the Federal Council, yet in order to muster the 30 votes necessary to

declare war, he needed "an agreement between the princely heads of at least

three states besides Prussia." The German princes are not only "old" and

"conservative," they are also "hostile to centralization of power in the Imperial

government, and they know that war tends to that." Hence, the German

constitution provides the best "safeguards against arbitrary, ill-considered,

unnecessary declarations of war" that one could possibly devise.64

Burgess closes the essay with the following evaluation of the character of the

German imperium:

It is full of the spirit of conservatism, and well regulated by law. Its constitution guards it well against personal arbitrariness or vacillation on the part of the Emperor or the princes, or fickleness and violence on the part of the people. It is Europe's best guaranty of peace through the power to enforce peace. In a sentence, it is a constitutional presidency; and if it needs any reform, it is in the direction of more strength rather than less.65

BRITAIN: "AUTOCRAT OF THE SEA"

John Burgess remained an unwavering Germanophile even after the turn of

the century, when the mainstream of political science was beginning to mod-

erate its German accent. His remarks before the Germanic society of America

in 1908 betray a feeling of unease about the erosion of German-American

amity 66 In 1914 Burgess, who had retired from Columbia in 1912, was not alone in sympathizing with the German side. But on balance, when Burgess publish-

64. Burgess, "Tenure and Powers of the German Emperor," pp. 345-347. 65. Ibid., p. 357.

66. John Burgess, Germany and The United States (New York: The Germanistic Society of America, 1908).

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The Subjectivity of the "Democratic" Peace | 167

ed The European War of 1914, he was swimming against the stream of public

opinion.67 Attempting to avert a German-American conflict, Burgess pulled no punches in venting his pro-German and vehemently anti-British views. He not

only depicted England as "despotic" and "navalistic-militaristic," but also

drew a most unflattering comparison between the "autocrat of the sea" and

the "autocrat of the land" (Russia). Germany, however, Burgess proclaimed to

be Britain's "opposing counterpart":

Its economic system is by far the most efficient, most genuinely democratic, which exists at the present moment in the world, or has ever existed. There is no great state in the world today in which there is so general and even a distribution of the fruits of civilization as in the United States of Germany And there is no state, great or small, in which the plane of civilization is so high.68

The Statist Theory of Woodrow Wilson

Born in the South in 1856, young Woodrow Wilson shared his father's Confed-

erate sympathy, but as an adult he came to support the Union's cause.69 The Civil War experience cast a shadow on Wilson's thought no less than it did on

the older Burgess; one theme that recurs throughout Wilson's writings is the

concept of an organic, cohesive nation-state. Yet whereas for Burgess the state

remained an abstract expression of the nation, Wilson sought to endow the

nation with a concrete, efficient, administrative state.70

Woodrow Wilson was a well-published political scientist, but he never com-

pleted The Philosophy of Politics, the treatise he hoped would become his defini-

tive theoretical book. According to the editors of Wilson's papers, the book

would have consisted of a series of essays or addresses on "the modern

democratic state," the historical chapters of his book The State, and above all,

Wilson's notes for his lectures on administration, law, and jurisprudence.71

67. Burgess, The European War of 1914: Its Causes, Purposes, and Probable Results (Chicago: A.C. McClury, 1915). 68. Ibid., pp. 92-94. 69. Upon entering Princeton College, Wilson identified himself as a supporter of Southern seces- sionism. The reason for the subsequent alteration in his view had more to do with nationalism than with concern for racial justice. See Bragdon, Woodrow Wilson: The Academic Years, pp. 11-12, 21. 70. On the shift in the focus of late nineteenth-century political science from the issue of "nation" to that of "state," see Farr, "From Modern Republic to Administrative State." 71. "Editorial Note: Wilson's First Treatise on Democratic Government," PWW 5, p. 58. Wilson, The State: Elements of Historical and Practical Politics (Boston: D.C. Heath, 1889). Perusing Wilson's papers from his academic years, one is struck by the thoroughness of his course notes. They read more like preliminary book drafts than skeletal lecture outlines, and thus they provide an invalu- able insight into Wilson's thought.

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International Security 20:2 | 168

These materials were produced mostly in the decade subsequent to Wilson's

receipt of the Ph.D. (1886), during which he taught at Bryn Mawr College, at

Wesleyan College, and from 1890 onward at Princeton.72 My analysis focuses primarily on Wilson's writings and notes from that period because they con-

stitute the core of his never-completed big book, because the book he did

complete during that period (The State, 1889) is considered his "greatest schol-

arly achievement," and because it was the period of Wilson's greatest produc-

tivity as a political scientist. (In later years he increasingly turned to popular,

largely historical, writing and speaking and to academic administration.)73

Before turning to Wilson's Philosophy of Politics, a few comments are in

order with regard to his earlier writings. Woodrow Wilson is rightly remem-

bered as an Anglophile. His family maintained a strong sentimental attachment

to their Anglo-Scottish ancestry,74 and the young Wilson advocated the adop- tion of the parliamentary system in the United States.75 The fascination with England did not indicate an anti-German attitude, though. Bismarck in par-

ticular was the subject of Wilson's admiration. The chancellor was not above

intrigue and deceit, Wilson wrote, but he was nevertheless a most "creative,"

"insightful," and "energetic" statesman. "We can find on record few instances

in which a comparatively small and virtually dependent kingdom has been

raised in eight years to the proud place of a first class power by the genius of

a single man."76

But even more important is the fact that from his earliest writings Wilson

had displayed extraordinary animus toward France. In his unpublished essay

on "Self-Government in France," Wilson argued that the French people were

72. During 1888-95 Wilson also returned to Johns Hopkins annually to teach administration, thus maintaining a vital connection with a graduate research environment. See Bragdon, Woodrow Wilson, chaps. 8-10. 73. The State was a textbook that made available in English vast amounts of knowledge that were formerly accessible only to advanced scholars. It was very successful, and was revised in 1898 and 1910. The first part of the book is historical, while the second part consists of comparative "country chapters." In writing the comparative chapters Wilson relied heavily on "the great" Handbuch des Oeffentlichen Rechts der Gegenwart, an encyclopedic comparative survey of the theoretical principles and practice of politics and administration. See "Editorial Note: Wilson's 'The State'," PWW 6, p. 245. The State was translated into several foreign languages one of which, ironically, was German. See Bragdon, Woodrow Wilson, pp. 173-178. The opinion that the book was "probably Wilson's greatest scholarly achievement" is due to his biographer Arthur Link, quoted in Mulder, Woodrow Wilson, p. 103. 74. Bragdon, Woodrow Wilson, chap. 1. 75. See especially Congressional Government, which was published in 1885 as a successful book and was later accepted as Wilson's dissertation. The book is fully reproduced in PWW 4, pp. 13-179. 76. "Prince Bismarck," November 1877, PWW 1, p. 313. See also "Congressional Government," PWW 4, pp. 42-43, for a description of Gladstone's status in Parliament as similar to Bismarck's status in the Reichstag.

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The Subjectivity of the "Democratic" Peace | 169

not ready for self-government.77 French peasants are "almost hopelessly igno- rant" and "acquiescent" (p. 529), while members of the bourgeoisie are "not of

the stuff of which trustworthy citizens are made" (p. 527). Inspired by Edmund

Burke, Wilson complains that the French are impetuous.78 They try to install

methods of self-government by way of revolution, methods that can only be

applied successfully in England and America, where they evolved naturally

over time. "The history of France since the opening of the Revolution has been

little more than a record of the alternation of centralized democracy with

centralized monarchy, or imperialism, in all cases of the sway of a virtual

despotism" (p. 523). The parliamentary system fits France "as ill as inde-

pendence of parental authority fits a child" (p. 524); "for more than a century

its forms have been observed" (p. 533; emphasis original).

In various subtle ways, the derogatory language of the essay reappears in

Wilson's later writings. Throughout his more mature scholarship, references to

the French polity are laced with terms like "intoxicated," "poisonous," "me-

chanical," "unstable," and "impetuous."79 The view of the French political system as dissonant with French national character, of France as a democracy

in form only, and of French administration as inferior to Prussia's is a virtual

constant in Wilson's "philosophy of politics." Unlike current social scientists

who tend to single Germany out as an aberrant case of political development,

Wilson rather considered France the "abnormal" case. In his political theory

Germany was in the proper place in its natural trajectory of political develop-

ment; "impetuous" France was not.

Let us now turn to Wilson's "philosophy of politics," written in fragments

at a time when Wilson had conquered the German language, and when his

intellectual horizon expanded to cover foreign polities other than England

alone.80 Wilson's scholarship was typical of his generation in combining a

77. September 4, 1879, PWW 1, pp. 515-538. Page numbers in the text refer to this essay. 78. In later years Wilson adopted Burke as his chief mentor; see Mulder, Woodrow Wilson, pp. 126- 127. 79. French democracy is described as a "quick intoxicant or a slow poison" in "The Modern Democratic State," December 1885, PWW 5, p. 63. "Intoxication" is also attributed to France in "Democracy and Efficiency," October 1900, PWW 12, p. 6. For reference to "unstable" constitution- alism" in France see "An Outline of the Preface to 'The Philosophy of Politics'," January 12, 1891, PWW 7, p. 98. In the same outline Wilson also refers to French political development as "mechani- cally homogenous" (p. 101) and "impetuous" (p. 102). Both terms carry a negative connotation from the perspective of Wilson's notion of "normal" organic political development. 80. On Wilson's struggle with the German language see "WW to Edwin R.A. Seligman," April 19, 1886, PWW 5, p. 163. That he won the struggle and read widely in German Staatswissenschaft, philosophy, and political economy is most evident from Wilson's "Working Bibliography, 1883-90," PWW 6, pp. 562-611. Wilson's writings and lecture notes are loaded with citations of leading German scholars.

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historical account of political development with a current cross-national com-

parison.

Wilson's theory of political development is reminiscent of Burgess's in that

it is racialist-hierarchical in nature. To understand the origins of modern gov-

ernment, Wilson wrote, one need not study the "savage" traditions of "de-

feated" primitive groups but rather the contributions of the "survived fittest,"

primarily the groups comprising the Aryan race.8" From the infancy of Slavonic village communities,82 Wilson traces the Aryan path to political maturity

through the history of the Greeks and Romans, the Germanic tribes, and the

English people. Each group adopted the positive practices of its predecessor

and added the ingredients consistent with its own character. The Teutons

"brought about that fusion of German customs with Roman law and concep-

tion which . . . was to produce the conditions of modern political life."83 They

also bequeathed to England "the principle of representation."84 In England,

"out of the freehold and local self-government grew the constitutional state;

out of the constitutional state grew that greatest of political developments, the

free, organic, self-conscious, self-directing nation, with its great organs of popu-

lar representation and its constitutional guarantees of liberty" Finally the

English nation "gave birth to America."85 In sum, the Aryan race left behind

more backward races and embarked on a slow march toward political progress.

At the pinnacle of Aryan political development is the organic, free, constitu-

tional nation-state, and America is its best exemplar.

Wilson stressed even more emphatically than Burgess the organic nature of

the nation-state.86 The state is "an abiding natural relationship"; it is the eternal "expression of a higher form of life than the individual, namely the common

life which gives leave to individual life."87 The embodiment of the most

fully-grown modern nation-state is the constitutional state: "a self conscious,

adult, self-regulated (democratic) state."88 This definition is important, for it suggests that the "democratic state" was a sub-type, the most radical form of

81. Wilson, The State, p. 2. The Aryan theme is from the British scholars Sir Henry Maine and William Hearn, while the Darwinian theme is from Herbert Spencer; see bibliography in The State, p. 15. All references below to The State are to the 1889 (first) edition, unless noted otherwise. 82. The State, pp. 4-5. 83. The State, p. 154. 84. The State, p. 580. 85. The State, p. 577. 86. Wilson thoroughly rejected the social contract theory of the state. See The State, pp. 11-15. 87. "Notes for Lectures at the Johns Hopkins," 1891-94, PWW 7, p. 124. 88. "Notes for Lectures on Public Law," 1894-95, PWW 9, p. 12.

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The Subjectivity of the "Democratic" Peace | 171

the most advanced political form, the constitutional state. Constitutional states

are characterized by four elements: first, that "the people have some form of

representation. It does not make any difference what the representation is, as

long as it be broad enough";89 second, administration subject to the laws; third,

an independent judiciary with independent tenure; and fourth, a more or less

complete formulation of the rights of individual liberty.90

There is absolutely no doubt that Wilson regarded both the German Federa-

tion and its chief member, Prussia, as members of this elite group of "consti-

tutional states," along with England, the United States, France, Switzerland,

Sweden-Norway, and Austria-Hungary. These are the states that are the sub-

jects of "country chapters" in The State and that are most often used by Wilson

to illustrate his arguments on constitutional law and administration. The most

important of them in Wilson's eyes appear to have been England, the United

States, Prussia/Germany, France, and Switzerland, whose constitutions Wilson

explicitly compares to the U.S. constitution in his lecture on the "modern

constitutional state." These constitutions are not precisely alike; they should

not be, because "they originated in the circumstances of the time." Their

differences notwithstanding, none is inferior to the others. All of these countries

possess the four elements characteristic of the modern constitutional state, and

in all of them the constitution is supreme. For example, "the King of Prussia

cannot change the constitution made by him: it is held fast in its place by the

feeling that it would be unsafe to play with it. Once given forth, it cannot be

withdrawn."91

Wilson's theory of organic political development stressed the importance of

harmony between actual legal and political institutions and the readiness of

the national "habit" to benefit from such institutions. Consider Wilson's com-

mentary on the then new Japanese constitution, "copied, in the main, [from]

the Constitution of Prussia." The chief point of resemblance between the two

is that "the ministers are responsible to the Emperor, not to the legislature....

Here the model is not one of responsible government in the English, French,

Italian sense." Now, from a present perspective this sounds like a serious

indictment of the Prussian and Japanese arrangements, but Wilson says that

"'considering the stage of development in which Japan now finds itself, the

89. "Report of a Lecture at the New York Law School," March 11, 1892, PWW 7, p. 477. 90. "Notes for Lectures on Public Law," PWW 9, p. 13. See also "Report of a Lecture at the New York Law School," PWW 7, pp. 477-479. 91. Ibid., p. 474.

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International Security 20:2 | 172

Prussian constitution was an excellent instrument to copy. Her choice of it as

a model is but another proof of the singular sagacity, the singular power to see

and learn, which is Japan's best constitution and promise of success."92 Notice

that this is not only a direct endorsement of the Japanese constitution but also

an indirect approval of the Prussian one. Prussia is not indicted for deviating

from the English norm, but rather praised precisely for not copying it mind-

lessly Prussia's legal institutions are properly consonant with its national

"habit." In contrast, the history of France illustrates the perils of copying

English arrangements in form only and of adopting legal institutions "not

sustained by habit."93

THE DEMOCRATIC STATE

As noted earlier, in Wilson's thought the "democratic state" is a sub-category

of the "modern constitutional state." The membership of this category is

extremely limited: it includes the United States, Switzerland, Australia, and to

a lesser degree England, where there remain "some rebellious pulses" and "the

drill of liberty has not extended to all classes." (Fortunately, though, "it was

[England's] drilled classes that she sent to America.") France would not become

a democracy unless "she shall have . . . [a] few more hard lessons in self-con-

trol."94 To both France and Spain, moreover, democracy is a "slow poison" and

South America suffers from a "maddening drought" of democratic institu-

tions.95

While Wilson used "democracy" with approval, his understanding of the

term was quite unlike its present meaning. First, the concept of democracy was

as attached to the notion of organic national development as the wider category

of "constitutional state" was. Democracy and "nation" were inseparable, for

democracy is only possible when the nation is ripe for it. Thus, Wilson did not

denounce the continental states for not being democratic enough, since he

recognized that they were disadvantaged by their "hazardous" geographical

and historical circumstances.96 The English race was fortunate (like "closeted" Switzerland) to be insulated from the "fierce contests of national rivalries" that

characterized the continental experience. For the continental countries prema-

92. All quotations are from "WW to Daniel Coit Gilman," April 13, 1889, PWW 6, pp. 169-172. 93. "Minutes of the Johns Hopkins Seminary of Historical and Political Science," March 15, 1889, PWW 6, p. 153. 94. "A Lecture on Democracy," December 5, 1891, PWW 7, p. 358. 95. "The Modern Democratic State," December 1, 1885, PWW 5, p. 63. 96. "A Lecture on Democracy," December 5, 1891, PWW 7, p. 358.

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The Subjectivity of the "Democratic" Peace | 173

turely to adopt institutions which developed slowly and organically in the

English-speaking world would be a greater sin than to remain less democratic

yet in national habit. France was the impetuous sinner, whereas Germany's

institutions were in harmony with her organic development.97

Second, Wilson greatly downplayed the role of elections as the proper touch-

stone of democracy A democracy is properly ruled by "the men of the schools,

the trained, instructed, fitted men." As long as these men get a fair opportunity

to govern-through ballot or through civil service examinations-the require-

ments of democracy are met. The civil service method of selection is "eminently

democratic" since "it draws all the governing material . . . from such part of

the people as will fit themselves for the function." Selection by merit "is but

another form of representation."98 In Wilson's eyes, then, democracy was not

an electoral process as much as a meritocracy. Indeed, one is struck by how

little Wilson expressed concern about electoral equality: "Not universal suf-

frage constitutes democracy Universal suffrage may confirm a coup d'etat which

destroys liberty"99 He had little moral problem with the fact that the U.S. Senate was not popularly elected or with the disfranchisement of blacks in the

South. In The State he reviewed the details of the unequal three-class voting

system of Prussia in a purely factual manner without moral condemnation. At

the municipal level he unambiguously endorsed this very voting scheme for

the United States.100 Moreover, a democracy qua meritocracy-the rule of the educated and trained-was for Wilson a bulwark against the ignorance of the

masses. As much as he championed the forces of public opinion, his view of

the mass public was very unflattering. The average citizen's mind is fickle:

"you cannot expect him to have a 'sound conviction' on the silver question,

97. "The Modern Democratic State," PWW 5, p. 63. Elsewhere Wilson wrote that England -was fortunate to be geographically separated from "the fell sweep of European wars and revolutions." But it was not Germany's fate that England was spared from, as much as the "international compulsion which forced France to become a centralized military despotism." Protected by their natural boundaries, the English "were in every way much more German [read: better] than the Franks." See "The English Constitution," 1890-91, PWW 7, pp. 12-14. 98. "A Lecture on Democracy," PWW 7, p. 356. For the argument that meritocracy is a form of democracy, see also "Notes on Administration," 1892-95, PWW 7, pp. 392-393. In later years Wilson used the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages as an example of an "absolutely democratic organi- zation," since its ranks were open to any qualified man, regardless of his class. See "Address at the Inauguration of the President of Franklin and Marshall College," January 7, 1910, PWW 19, p. 743, and class notes taken by Homer Zink, a student in Wilson's course in 1904, at the manuscript library of Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson collection, Box 6. 99. "The Modern Democratic State," PWW 5, p. 85. 100. The three-class system is described in The State, p. 285. For an approval of that system in city government see The State, p. 296; see also "Notes for Public Lecture at the Johns Hopkins," March 16, 1888, PWW 5, pp. 713-714.

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International Security 20:2 | 174

substantial views on the Behring Sea controversy, or original ideas on the

situation in Brazil."101 Thus it is not surprising that Wilson approved of insulating foreign affairs

from the scrutiny of popular assemblies. Noting that the House of Commons

exercised but minimal control over the conduct of British foreign policy, Wilson

opined that some matters are "of too delicate a nature to be publicly discussed

in Parliament; some plans, particularly of foreign policy, would be simply

frustrated by being prematurely disclosed.... A certain wide discretion must

be allowed the Ministers as to the matters they will make public."102 In short, Wilson is better interpreted as a Burkean conservative than as a

champion of mass electoral democracy. His aim was to purify the concept of

democracy from its association with (French) revolution, Jacksonian populism,

and the rule of the unenlightened demos. Electoral equality was good "only up

to the point where all are equal in capacity to judge," but since that point can

at best be only "roughly approximated," government must be entrusted to an

educated, not necessarily elected, administrative elite.103 Enter Prussia, a model of rational administration.

WILSON ON ADMINISTRATION

At the turn of the century, "public administration"-local and federal-was at

the center of the agenda of American political science. Woodrow Wilson was

among the pioneers of the academic study of administration. In his first essay on the subject, published in 1887, Wilson lamented "the poisonous atmosphere

of city government, the crooked secrets of state administration," and federal

"corruption," which "forbid us to believe that any clear conceptions of what

constitutes good administration are as yet widely current in the United

States." 104 The solution was to study the science of administration "developed by French and German professors." In France, administrative machinery was

perfected by Napoleon. In Prussia, an "admirable system" of administration

was "most studied and most nearly perfected"'05 by great kings and reformers

who "transformed arrogant and perfunctory bureaux into public spirited in-

101. "A Lecture on Democracy," PWW 7, p. 354. 102. "The English Constitution," 1890-91, PWW 7, pp. 36-37. On the lack of popular control of the Foreign Office, see Zara Steiner, The Foreign Office and Foreign Policy, 1898-1914 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1969). 103. Zink notes. 104. "The Study of Administration," PWW 5, p. 363. 105. Ibid., pp. 365-366.

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The Subjectivity of the "Democratic" Peace | 175

struments of just government."'106 The English race, on the other hand, "has exercised itself much more in controlling than in energizing government."107 Americans must learn from continental administrative wisdom, and "distill

away its foreign gases" to suit the American system.108

In the following years, as Wilson's knowledge of the German language and

of the continental literature improved, he mitigated his view that the continent

was "foreign gas." Especially in the area of city government, Wilson was to

determine that the Prussian system was not foreign as much as "Pan-Teutonic"

in nature, and that it was the highest form of self-government.109 He was to discover, furthermore, that to the extent that continental ideas contained for-

eign gases, the French ideas were more lethal than the Prussian.

The administrative state envisioned by Wilson was not the "night watch-

man" of the English liberal model but was rather patterned after the statist

German model. It was a state that fulfilled many tasks that as far as Washington

was concerned still lay in the far future: "poor relief, insurance (pensions and

other); savings banks; forestry, game and fishing laws"; promoting the "eco-

nomic and other activities of society by means of . .. posts, telegraphs, tele-

phones, etc.; Maintenance and supervision of railways; . . . Establishing of

institutions of credit" and so on.110 Furthermore, Wilson admired the model of the University of Berlin-a university harnessed in the service of the nation.111 In sum, Wilson was an admirer of German statism, and in regard to the

functions of the state he unambiguously wished that the United States would

become more like Germany than England.112 He was by no means a maverick within the ranks of American political science at the time.

Turning now from the functions of administrative states to their governmen-

tal structure, Wilson customarily classified states into three classes based on

their "type of headship." In "autocratic" polities such as Russia and Turkey,

"there is an entire absence of any constitutional means of controlling the acts

of the head of the state." In "republican" polities such as the United States,

106. Ibid., p. 376. 107. Ibid., p. 367. 108. Ibid., p. 378. 109. In the 1887 essay it was described as "not fully" self-government; see ibid., p. 380. 110. "Notes for Lectures on Public Law," 1894-95, PWW 9, p. 24. 111. See "Random Notes for 'The Philosophy of Politics'," January 25, 1895; PWW 9, p. 130. 112. See for example "A Newspaper Report of a Lecture at Brown University," November 12, 1889, PWW 6, pp. 417-423. See also "Marginal Note to 'The Labor Movement in America' by Richard Ely" and "Socialism and Democracy," August 22, 1887, both in PWW 5, pp. 560 and 560-563 respectively.

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International Security 20:2 | 176

France, and Switzerland, "the Head of the State is made subject to complete

subordination to the laws, and is besides held to a personal responsibility for

his observance of them." In the third category-"constitutional" systems-the

head of state is subjected to "constitutional control" while "there is no personal

liability on his part to arrest or other punishment." Interestingly, both England

and Prussia exemplify the latter category (as do Bavaria, Spain, and Italy). In

constitutional states, royal sovereignty "is nowadays mediate; and mediate

sovereignty is no sovereignty at all. The modern monarch is, consequently

sovereign only representatively and by reason of his participation in the deter-

minations of the highest body of the State."113 To learn about the status of the head of the "Federal State," Wilson compared

the United States to Germany The U.S. head of state is "the executive agent of

the central government," whereas in Germany he is "member of the sovereign

body [Bundesrat] as head of a presiding member state [Prussia]." Yet, "in all

these cases the head of the State is strictly subject to the laws, to constitutional

rule and procedure, though in some cases the responsibility is direct and per-

sonal, while in others it is only through ministerial proxy."114 What the latter phrase shows is that in 1894 Wilson perceived the German emperor as an

indirectly responsible executive. Overall, from Wilson's lectures and from The

State, the picture arises of the kaiser as a hereditary chief executive who

"possesses no slight claim to be regarded as the most powerful ruler of our

time" yet who is nonetheless bound by a fine constitutional machinery. "There

are distinct limits to his power as Emperor, limits which mark and emphasize

the federal character of the Empire and of it a state governed by law, not by

prerogative."115

Nowhere in Wilson's writings from that period was I able to find references to the emperor-whether in his capacity as federal president or king of Prus-

sia-as an autocrat. The adjective "autocrat" was reserved for absolutist tsars

and caliphs, and it was not counterposed to democratic rule but rather to

republican and constitutional forms of government.

Wilson was as interested in local as in national government, for the "local

organs of self-government are . . . after all, the most important to the life and

113. All quotations are from "Notes For Lectures on Public Law," September 1894, PWW 9, pp. 26-27. One must remember that at the time the English crown, held by Victoria, did not appear as lame as it does today, and that the negative image of King/Kaiser Wilhelm was yet to fully crystalize in the future. 114. Ibid., p. 27. Emphasis original. 115. The State, p. 254.

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The Subjectivity of the "Democratic" Peace | 177

vigor of political liberty."116 American city government lacks vitality and "is

conspicuous chiefly because of its lack of system." 117 In France, centralized "interference in local affairs . .. more and more minute and inquisitive, results

in the strangulation of local government."118 Prussia offers by far the best

model of local self-government. Whereas the highly centralized French system

"misses the principle of life, which is not uniformity but variety," the Prussian

model of "concentration" (centralized oversight, but not control of local gov-

ernment) secures "local variety and vitality without loss of vital integration." 119 In a framework such as Wilson's which emphasizes organic national life, the

term "vitality" is the ultimate compliment.

Self-government is not about mass voting, but rather "consists in taking part

in the government: If we could give, say, to the better middle class the whole

power of government then we should have discovered self government....

What we should seek is a way to harness the people to the great wagon of

state and make them pull it.",120 Wilson regarded Berlin-"the most perfect flower of the Prussian municipal system" 121-as the best example of this ideal

system, where the "better" citizens (but not the demos) actively participate in

administration, and where rights are tied to service. In Berlin "over 10,000

people [are] associated in the Government, besides the paid officers of the civil

service." They must serve without pay "or else lose [their] franchise and have

[their] taxes raised." Berlin's electoral system is "characteristic of the Prussian

system. The voters are divided into three classes, according to their contribu-

tion to the taxes." Although unequal in size, "each of these classes elects an

equal number to the Board of Alderman."122 These facts are recounted with Wilson's highest stamp of approval, namely with a certification of English

origins. Berlin was not a foreign example but "just as truly an English example.

It is a Pan-Teutonic example of processes that seemed to inhere in the ancient

policy of the people to which we belong ... so we shall not find ourselves on

unfamiliar ground by going back to Berlin."123 Berlin, in sum, embodied the

116. "The English Constitution," October 1890, PWW 7, p. 41. 117. "A Newspaper Report of a Lecture on 'Systems of City Government'," April 8, 1890, PWW 6, pp. 612-613. 118. "Notes for a Classroom Lecture," February 14, 1889, PWW 6, p. 91. 119. "Notes for Lectures at the Johns Hopkins," February 1892, PWW 7, pp. 388-391. 120. "A Newspaper Report of a Lecture on Municipal Government," January 19, 1889, PWW 6, p. 53. 121. "Note for a Public Lecture at the Johns Hopkins," March 16, 1888, PWW 5, p. 712. 122. "A Newspaper Report of a Lecture on Municipal Government," January 19, 1889, PWW 6,

p. 54. 123. Ibid., pp. 53-54.

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International Security 20:2 | 178

highest form of "self-government": a most successful blend of popular partici-

pation with great administrative efficiency, a shining model to be emulated by

American reformers.

Conclusion: Implications for Theory and Policy

The claim that democracies do not fight one another is not about democracies

per se; it is better understood as a claim about peace among countries conform-

ing to a subjective ideal that is cast, not surprisingly, in America's self-image.

Democracy is "our kind," and the coding rules by which it is defined are but

the unconscious representations of current American political values. These

values are elastic over time, and their historical change is influenced by Amer-

ica's changing international circumstances. The normative standards embodied

in the present definition of democracy were selected by a subtle historical

process whereby standards by which America resembled its adversaries have

been excluded, while those that maximized the distance between America and

its rivals have become privileged. In the process, not only has the perception

of friends and adversaries changed, but so has America's own self-perception.

Democracy, therefore, is not a determinant as much as a product of America's

foreign relations. The reason we appear not to fight "our kind" is not that

objective likeness substantially affects war propensity, but rather that we subtly

redefine "our kind."

American political scientists do not stand apart from this historical process.

The political values espoused by scholars a century ago were rather different

than present values. John Burgess's ideal political system was a Teutonic,

national, "democratic [read: constitutional] state with an aristocratic govern-

ment."124 Woodrow Wilson was as fearful as Burgess of the untamed rule of the demos, and by purifying the concept of democracy of its radical French

content he sought to make it safe for the world long before vowing to do the

converse. Wilson's ideal polity was a constitutional (Aryan) state administered

efficiently by a selected, not necessarily elected, educated elite, insulated from

the ignorant masses. Relative to contemporary ideals, Imperial Germany ap-

peared more "normal" than relative to present norms, which prize fair electoral

process and executive responsibility For both Burgess and Wilson, Germany

was a member of a select group of the most politically advanced countries, far

124. Foundations, p. 76.

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The Subjectivity of the "Democratic" Peace | 179

more advanced than some of the nations that are currently coded as having

been "liberal" during that period.125 And within this group Germany was

ranked either as second only to the United States itself (Burgess), or as posi-

tioned below England yet above France (Wilson). What has changed since the

1890s was not the objective nature of the (Imperial) German polity as much

the nature of its political relations with America and, subsequently, the subjec-

tive norms by which it came to be measured. American social scientists are

deluding themselves if they believe that their scientific definitions are value-

free, or that their values are fixed in time and place. It is only from the

perspective of a secure and overwhelmingly victorious country that a time-

bound illusion can so easily be taken for a universal truth.

THE THEORETICAL CONTEXT

In the late 1930s, E.H. Carr was inspired by Mannheim's sociology of knowl-

edge to expose the idealist foundations of the young English science of inter-

national relations. Building upon "the outstanding achievement of modern

realism"-revealing "the relative and pragmatic character of thought"-he

criticized the Wilsonian-liberal paradigm of the harmony of interests as the

unconscious product of the peculiar historical and geographic circumstances

of the English-speaking countries. Beneath the veneer of the objective concept

of international harmony, Carr argued, lay a post-hoc ideological justification of

Anglo-American mastery 126 By the dawn of the Cold War era, international relations has become a

predominantly American science.127 To Hans Morgenthau and fellow realists, whose agenda was shaped by the lesson of Munich, Carr's thought held only

a partial appeal, for as much as they admired his analysis of the bankruptcy

of liberal thought, they were justly reluctant to accept the policy conclusion the

analysis led him to: support of appeasement.128 Later, while the Cold War was evolving into a "long peace," the attraction of Carr's historical realism eroded

further as a generation of "neo-realists" understandably found the analytical

125. E.g., Greece, Chile, Argentina, Italy; see Doyle, "Liberalism and World Politics," p. 1164. 126. Edward H. Carr, The Twenty Years Crisis, 1919-1939, 2nd ed. (New York: Harper and Row, 1964 [1946]), esp. chap. 5. Quotations are from pp. 67-68. The influence of Karl Mannheim's Ideology and Utopia is acknowledged in Carr's preface, p. ix. 127. Hoffmann, "An American Social Science," pp. 44-45. 128. See Hans Morgenthau, "The Political Science of E.H. Carr," World Politics, Vol. 1, No. 1 (October 1948), pp. 127-134. I thank Charles Lipson for bringing Carr's pro-appeasement attitude to my attention.

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International Security 20:2 | 180

tools of microeconomics more suitable for making sense of "the stability of a

bipolar world,"129 and for designing "deterrence" of a conveniently fixed ad- versary. Indeed, in recent decades Carr's legacy has not been upheld by realists

(or neo-realists) as much as by critical theorists, who were attracted to Carr's

historicist-sociological approach.130

Now that the stability of the Cold War has given way to greater fluidity, and

so long as the new multipolarity does not yet seem to coincide with major war,

neo-realist theory appears out of alignment with the times. Its appeal is dimin-

ishing precisely when Wilsonian internationalism is re-issuing a formidable

challenge to realist pessimism in the form of the democratic peace claim. The

scientific, ahistorical tool kit of neo-realism is ill equipped to deal effectively

with the equally ahistorical and ostensibly more scientific neo-Wilsonian chal-

lenge. Engaging democratic peace theory on its own scientific ground-quib-

bling over particular coding decisions, the significance of statistical coefficients,

or the details of diplomatic cases-may usefully bruise it but does not critically

damage it.131 Instead, it may be time for realists to offer a more fundamental critical exposition of the limits of the very ground. It is time for pessimists to

re-acquaint themselves with Carr's historical sociology of knowledge.132 This is the path I attempted to follow here.

129. Kenneth Waltz, "The Stability of a Bipolar World," Daedalus, Vol. 93, No. 3 (Summer 1964), pp. 881-909; and Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: Random House, 1979). 130. Perhaps the most lucid statement of the nature of critical international relations theory, and one which acknowledges Carr's influence, is Robert Cox, "Social Forces, States, and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory," in Robert Keohane, Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), pp. 204-254. 131. E.g., David Spiro, "The Insignificance of the Liberal Peace," International Security, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Fall 1994), pp. 50-86; Christopher Layne, "Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace," ibid., pp. 5-49. 132. To the extent that realists re-adopt Carr's historicist thought, they may find themselves sharing some common ground with critical theorists. Of the variety of critical approaches currently applied to international relations, this essay, in focusing on how an international interaction led to "identity-change," has an affinity with the social construction approach articulated by Alexander Wendt; see Wendt, "Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics," International Organization, Vol. 46, No. 2 (Spring 1992), pp. 391-425. My analysis differs from Wendt's approach in two ways, though. First, inasmuch as it centers on the construction of knowledge by a community of scholars, my approach is more faithful to the label "social" (whereas Wendt maintains the assumption that states are unitary actors; ibid., p. 21, note 2). Second, whereas "constructivists" such as Wendt tend to discount the role of material capabilities (relative to social interaction) in the construction of identities, my argument suggests that material power may be very important. At minimum, it is a necessary condition for the interaction process. Had Germany, for example, not possessed the material capability to challenge the U.S. Navy in Manila Bay, and had the United States not possessed the capability to send a massive army to fight Germany across the Atlantic, America's identity would not have been affected by Germany more radically than it has been shaped by, say, Luxembourg. More importantly, it is the very material fact of America's

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The Subjectivity of the "Democratic" Peace | 181

OTHER CASES AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS

Germany may not be the only nation that underwent a substantial transforma-

tion in the American mind, for in the twentieth century America faced two

other bitter enemies: Russia and Japan.

Several times in the past century Americans have come to believe that Russia

was closer to their ideals than they previously thought. In 1917-18 the United

States and Russia's new Menshevik government were allied against Germany

Woodrow Wilson then declared that "Russia was known by those who knew

it best to have been always in fact democratic at heart, in all the vital habits of

her thought." Wilson himself apparently was not among those who knew

Russia best, since in his past writings he had never described it as anything

but a backward autocracy In 1917, though, he discovered that autocracy,

"terrible as was the reality of its power, was not in fact Russian in origin,

character, or purpose." 133 A writer in the American Political Science Review struck similar themes when he sought to refute the myth that the Russians were

"Asiatic" (read: inferior), to establish that "Russian Slavs in the early periods

of their national existence were democratic," and to attribute the excesses of

Russian despotism to pervasive German influence.134 Russia's image in America, tarnished following Wilson's anti-Bolshevik mili-

tary intervention, improved again in the early 1930s. Against the backdrop of

deep capitalist crisis many liberal intellectuals (and not just "fellow travelers")

looked to Russia for inspiration. Not only were they awed by Russia's rapid

economic growth (contrasting sharply with America's stagnation), they were

especially enamored of Soviet centralized planning.135 With the rise of the Fascist threat and the formation of the popular front in 1935, Russia's attraction

had grown so much that many liberal intellectuals were all too willing to

apologize for Stalin's atrocities. Perhaps the most cogent philosophical justifica-

tion of "progressive" unity against Fascism was provided by political scientist

and popular commentator Frederick Schuman. Liberalism and communism, he

battlefield victory that accounts for the universal appeal of the identity known as "democracy." As noted earlier, had Germany won World War I, American scholars might have been busy searching for peace among countries ruled by selfless professional bureaucracies and autonomous chief executives, rather than among "democracies." 133. Quotations from N. Gordon Levin, Jr., Woodrow Wilson and World Politics (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 42-43. Emphasis added to first quotation. 134. Simon Litman, "Revolutionary Russia," Vol. 12, No. 2 (May 1918), pp. 181-191. Quotations are from p. 187 and 182 respectively. 135. Stalin's first five-year plan was praised even by the conservative New York Times. See Frank A. Warren, Liberals and Communism: The "Red Decade" Revisited, 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), chap. 4.

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International Security 20:2 | 182

argued in 1936, shared common philosophical roots, and were both on the

"democratic" side; Russia and America were both democracies, and they might

become even more alike as the Russians moved toward greater political liberty

while America progressed toward greater economic equality.136 The positive image of Russia receded in 1939 as a result of the Nazi-Soviet

pact, only to be revived in 1941. The uncritical depiction of Russia and "Uncle

Joe" Stalin during the wartime alliance was not limited to the mass media.

Harvard sociologist Pitirim Sorokin attributed the friendship between Russia

and America to the compatibility of their fundamental values and their socio-

cultural similarity 137 Harvard philosopher Ralph Barton Perry found that the Soviets were moving away from Marxism "in the direction of ideas that we

can call, in very broad terms, democratic." And theologian Reinhold Niebuhr

echoed Schuman's view when he wrote that "we have, on the whole, more

liberty and less equality than Russia has. Russia has less liberty and more

equality Whether democracy should be defined primarily in terms of liberty

or equality is a source of unending debate."138 The "unending debate" ended

abruptly with the outbreak of the Cold War. Not surprisingly, it was resolved

in favor of American liberty, against socialist equality, thus opening the door

to a historic reconciliation between the formerly contentious ideas of democ-

racy and free market capitalism.139 After the end of the Cold War, Americans again rushed to embrace Russia's

"transition" toward American democratic ideals (now wedded to free market

ideals). American economists hurried to advise the Russians how to dismantle

their previously admired planned economy, while lawyers and political scien-

tists were eager to help remake Russian legal and political institutions. In those

euphoric days Americans widely agreed that if Russia were not a mature

democracy yet, it surely was a nascent one. At the present moment, however,

many Americans are far less certain of Russia's democratic credentials. Why?

Has the Russian Parliament been shut down or the constitution suspended?

Has the president been violently overthrown? No, what has changed is not the

objective nature of the Russian political system as much as Russia's external

behavior. The recent change in the American perception of the Russian polity

has been driven by an erosion of trust in Russia's commitment to political

136. Ibid., pp. 109-110. 137. Pitirim Sorokin, Russia and the United States (New York: E. Dutton, 1944). 138. Quotations are from pp. 39 and 37 respectively in John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-47 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972). 139. Maier, "Democracy Since the French Revolution," pp. 146-147.

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The Subjectivity of the "Democratic" Peace | 183

cooperation more than by a genuine erosion of Russian "democracy" Another

Chechnya, another demonstration of Russian foreign policy assertiveness, and

those voices that currently invoke the "nascent democracy" image of Russia

might also turn silent.140

The practical moral of the story is straightforward. If history is any guide,

the American view of the democratic or non-democratic identity of Russia (or

the other formerly communist countries of Europe) will continue to depend on

the peacefulness of their foreign policies more than their foreign policies will

depend on their democratic identity The current American policy of "democ-

ratization" may be good for other reasons, but as a pillar of international peace

and security it is extremely shaky, for it lacks solid historical foundations.

As for Japan, given that in the late nineteenth century its leaders emulated

the Prussian model, and that it later fought alongside Germany against Amer-

ica, it is not surprising that Japan's image in America underwent a transforma-

tion similar to Germany's. As noted above, Japan's adoption of Prussian

constitutionalism was hailed by Woodrow Wilson in 1889 as proof of her

"singular sagacity." As Japan turned to external aggression, the notion of her

distinctiveness lingered but the moral sign attached to it shifted from positive

"singularity" to negative peculiarity This view is echoed, for example, by

Barrington Moore, a prominent social scientist who assigned Imperial Japan

(with Germany) to the "capitalist and reactionary" category of political devel-

opment.141 As Japan was remade by the American victors after 1945, a distinc- tion was drawn between its deviant past and its more normal present.142 Indeed, by the coding rules used by students of the democratic peace, Japan is

presently a democracy, which is reflective of the mainstream view of Japan in

America today But there is also a dissenting account of Japan, depicting it as

democratic in form only (like France in Wilson's eyes). Proponents of this

minority view stress the enormous power wielded by unelected Japanese

bureaucrats and argue that in Japan "the idea of 'citizen' as distinct from

'subject' is hardly understood. Pluralist representation exists on paper, of course, but to believe that this informs Japanese practice is taking very much

140. Russian diplomats appear to understand this logic better than their Western counterparts. Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev stated recently that "if Russia agrees with the West it is assumed to be a new democracy. If not, it is assumed to be going back to the old days." Quoted in "Foreign Minister Defends Russia's Policies," St. Paul Pioneer Press, April 29, 1995, p. B7. 141. Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, p. 433. 142. On the postwar transformation of Japan's image in America, see Akira Iriye, "War, Peace and U.S.-Japanese Relations," in Akira Iriye and Warren Cohen, The United States and Japan in the Postwar World (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1989), pp. 191-208.

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International Security 20:2 | 184

on faith."'143 Which of the competing views is more accurate, I do not know. But what I do know is that if America ever fights Japan again, the current

mainstream and the minority views will trade places. This is what happened

to Imperial Germany (and probably to Japan itself). If, however, America and

Japan ever find themselves fighting a common enemy, Japan will be happily

vindicated from the charge that it is democratic in form only. This is exactly

what happened to France. Either way, the theory that "our kind do not fight

each other" will be safely salvaged.

143. Karel van Wolferen, The Enigma of Japanese Power: People and Politics in a Stateless Nation (New York: Knopf, 1989), p. 22. See also Chalmers Johnson and E.B. Keehn, "A Disaster in the Making: Rational Choice and Asian Studies," The National Interest, No. 36 (Summer 1994), pp. 14-22.

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