In this paper, we evaluate the liberal claim that democratic states devote fewer resources to their militaries. Low military spending is thought to avert conflict spirals and release more resources to fund domestic programs. While prominent in many liberal international relations theories, most notably in Immanuel Kant’s, this proposition has received little empirical scrutiny. Using several in...

The phenomenon of expertise produces two problems for liberal democratic theory: the first is whether it creates inequalities that undermine citizen rule or make it a sham; the second is whether the state can preserve its neutrality in liberal “government by discussion” while subsidizing, depending on, and giving special status to the opinions of experts and scientists. A standard Foucauldian c...

Democratic theory and practice underwent something of a renaissance in the late twentieth century. The spread of liberal democratic political systems was accompanied by two other trends that have the potential to transform the shape of politics: the rise of environmental movements and increased public use of the Internet. These changes have generated two theoretical variations on the theme: eco...

Twenty years after the fall of the Soviet Union, the USSR’s successor states have not made the smooth transition to liberal democracy that many in Europe and the United States had once expected. The Baltic states and most eastern European countries have transitioned to the status of “sustainable democracies,” but the rest of the Soviet Union’s successor states sit more along a continuum of auto...

The objective of this article is to find middle ground between the supporters and opponents of biotechnology by perpetuating the existing legal compromise pertaining to the complete range of health and welfare doctrines relevant to the biotechnological industry. The author aspires neither to add to nor detract from this liberal democratic consensus, but to preserve its constitutive balance betw...

This article draws on philosophical pragmatism to examine the growing “new materialist” and “socio-natural” sensitivities in international peacebuilding processes. There has been a shift from idea of liberal peace, which organizations tried impose democratic transitions societies affected by conflict, towards interventions that promote inclusive peace processes put premium material elements eve...

The ideology of the liberal peace has propelled the political economies of war-torn societies into a scheme of global convergence towards “market liberalisation”. This orthodoxy was an uncontestable assumption underlying external economic assistance. However, the project faltered under its inherent contradictions and because it ignored the socio-economic problems confronting war-torn societies,...

How do political systems shape immigration policy-making? Explicitly or implicitly, comparative politics and migration policy theories suggest a 'regime effect' that links specific dynamics of immigration policy to liberal democracy. The literature's dominant focus on so-called 'Western liberal democracies', however, has left the 'regime effect' largely untested and research on variations and s...