Why does global democracy not inspire explanatory research? Removing conceptual obstacles toward a new research agenda
| Date | 01 February 2020 |
| Published date | 01 February 2020 |
| Author | Hans Agné |
| DOI | 10.1177/1755088218801659 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1755088218801659
Journal of International Political Theory
2020, Vol. 16(1) 68 –88
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1755088218801659
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Why does global democracy
not inspire explanatory
research? Removing
conceptual obstacles toward
a new research agenda
Hans Agné
Stockholm University, Sweden
Abstract
Democratic practices exist in politics within and beyond individual states. To date,
however, it is only the democratic practices within states that have been analyzed in
search for causal explanations of political outcomes, for example, peace and human
rights protection. Having established the problematic nature of this situation, the
purpose of this article is to explain why the situation emerges in political science and
then to suggest a strategy to overcome it. The lack of attention to global democracy,
or democracy beyond the state more generally, in explanatory theory is suggested to
depend on prevalent but unnecessary conceptual delimitations of democracy which
contradict standard assumptions about international politics. Those contradictions
can be avoided, however, by defining democracy as rule by the largest group. It is
argued that the concept of rule by the largest group, while protecting traditional virtues
of democracy such as freedom and equality of individual persons in politics, allows
scholars to describe a wider range of international practices than have been available
for empirical research based on the dominating conceptions of democracy in normative
and empirical literatures. Most fundamentally, it frees future research on the effects of
democracy beyond the state from a key risk of self-contradiction.
Keywords
Constituent power, democracy across borders, democratic theory, empirical
research, global democracy, IR theory
Corresponding author:
Hans Agné, Department of Political Science, Stockholm University, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden.
Email: hans.agne@statsvet.su.se
801659IPT0010.1177/1755088218801659Journal of International Political TheoryAgné
research-article2018
Article
Agné 69
Democracy is a robust predictor of political outcomes. It is widely believed to have posi-
tive effects on peace (Russett, 1993), trade (Mansfield et al., 2002), human rights
(Davenport and Armstrong, 2004), food security (Sen, 1999), and a range of other mat-
ters. While these arguments originate in the study of domestic democracy, their applica-
tions are not limited beforehand to that field of research. It should be expected, therefore,
that democracy in politics beyond the state, for example, in global or transnational poli-
tics, has similar effects. However, the opportunities to explore the effects of democracy
in those contexts have not inspired any actual research. Discussions of democracy in
global and transnational politics has led to important insights on the meaning and norma-
tive value of democracy (e.g. Archibugi et al., 2011; Bohman, 2007; Gould, 2004; Held,
1995; Macdonald, 2008; Marks, 2000; Young, 2000), but not to any research aimed at
explaining international politics as is. Why?
The lack of systematic research on the effects of democracy in global and transna-
tional politics is puzzling for several reasons. For one thing, empirical observations of
democratic practices are commonplace within as well as beyond individual states. To
illustrate the latter, the decision-making procedures of the European Union (EU) have
been found to score higher than those of the Association for East Asian Nations (ASEAN)
on democratic measures of transparency and majoritarian decision-making (Zweifel,
2006: 177). The international negotiations on intellectual property rights met standards
of deliberative democracy when The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) col-
lapsed in 2012 (Kuyper, 2016: 316), whereas the same standards of deliberative democ-
racy were egregiously violated in the diplomatic procedures that preceded the attack on
Iraq in 2003 (Habermas, 2006: 180–185). In light of these and many other examples of
how democracy beyond the state (DBS) varies across time and space, one would expect
empirical scholars to have addressed already the question of how DBS influences politi-
cal outcomes. The received wisdom on democracy’s effects noted initially would seem
to guarantee that such research will unveil either new causal explanations of interna-
tional politics or—if no causal processes can be revealed—new scope conditions under
which the received wisdom on democracy’s effect is valid. With such low hanging fruits
clearly in sight of many scholars, it is indeed worth asking why the consequences of real
DBS, or its absence, are still neglected in empirical research.
Surface-level explanations may provide part of the answer, such that the neglect in
research is a coincidence that will be overcome with time or that some empirical scholars
with an interest to explain outcomes want to avoid contested concepts like DBS.
However, as I will argue, there are deeper and more consequential reasons for the absence
of DBS in explanatory theory that must be addressed if the situation in research is ever
going to change. My purpose in this article then is to identify the theoretical basis for the
absence of DBS in explanatory theory, and to suggest a conceptual strategy to change the
situation. Doing so is important not only to facilitate the development of new causal
explanations in political science but also to improve normative thinking. Knowing
democracy’s value presupposes knowledge of how it works in politics beyond individual
states, and the desirability of democracy depends at least in part on its consequences
(Stevenson, 2016). Moreover, it appears that all normative theories which assume a
world of separate states are non-ideal theories (Nili, 2016), that is, they seek realistic
assumptions about how far political actors may be expected to agree and comply with the
normative principles suggested. International political theorists thus have their own
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