Catherine Eschle

Smith, H. (ed.) Democracy and International Relations: Critical Theories/Problematic Practices

Basingstoke: Macmillan 2000, ISBN 0333682130, £47.50 (hbk); ISBN 0333919963, £17.99 (pbk)

The diffusion of liberal democratic ideas and institutions around the world is a defining characteristic of the post-Cold War global order. As yet, it has not been extensively investigated in International Relations. A high-profile but rather limited discussion of the relationship between democratisation and peace has been supplemented in recent years by a trickle of more innovative IR-informed explorations of the links between democratisation and globalisation. Democracy and International Relations is a welcome contribution to both these debates, particularly the latter. The declared purpose of the book is to use IR theory to explain the role of western powers and international organizations in democratization processes. It also aims to bring insights from a range of disciplines to bear on IR theory and to provide empirical accounts of democratisation in diverse regions. The subtitle and the caustic cover cartoon of a triumphal George Bush Snr. indicate that this will be undertaken from a critical perspective that will expose the compromised nature of new democratic institutions and interrogate the transnational power relations underpinning their expansion around the globe.

The opening chapter by the editor, Hazel Smith, puts forward a specifically marxist approach. Paraphrasing Martin Wight, Smith asks 'why is there no international democratic theory?'. Her review of international relations theory and David Held's model of cosmopolitan democracy concludes that the problem lies in a shared state-centrism and an accompanying reification or under-theorisation of the state. Smith's solution lies in the adoption of a marxian concept of the state as a node of class power and conflict within historically variable social relations of production. This concept, Smith argues, enables investigation of the ways in which contemporary democratisation processes reflect the pursuit and contestation of class interests in and through states.

Chapters 2-4 are similarly theoretical in focus. Kimberly Hutchings argues that both liberal and civic republican versions of social contract theory assume two interrelated conditions of democracy: the existence of a universal right and the particular manifestation of that right within the sovereign state. Contemporary reworkings of democratic theory are accused of failing to pay sufficient attention to these underlying conditions or to how they might be transcended. The next two chapters take up the theme of the tension between universality and particularity. Vivienne Jabri claims that Habermasian discourse ethics could constitute the basis of a more inclusive model of democracy if reformulated to overcome the division between ethics and aesthetic judgement and to allow for an array of cultural interventions and communicative styles. Stephanie Lawson counsels against a culturally relativist position on democracy and adopts instead a 'pluralist' insistence on an 'essence' to democracy that may, nonetheless, take a variety of institutional forms.

Chapters 5-10 are more centrally preoccupied with empirical analysis of differing regional experiences of democratisation. Margot Light details the impact on foreign policy-making of the Russian democratic transition, as a way of testing the veracity of the democratic peace proposition. Intriguingly, Light concludes that the proposition may be problematic but Russia is much less likely to go to war than critics of democratic peace theory have suggested. The next two chapters by Jean Grugel and Jenny Pearce focus on the Americas. Pearce offers a particularly nuanced analysis of the efforts by international financial institutions (IFIs) to encourage an active 'civil society' in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala. Donna Pankhurst undertakes a similar analysis with regards to the role of IFIs in Zimbabwe. Phyllis Bennis then focuses on the Palestinian struggle for self-determination, drawing attention to the democratic limitations of formal institutions in the Palestinian territories and to the democratic potential evident in the mobilisations of the intifada. Gillian Youngs closes the book with an exploration of the emergence and manipulation of democratic discourse in Hong Kong, in the context of the transition from British to Chinese rule and the expansion and liberalisation of the Chinese economy.

This book is ambitious in its scope. It succeeds in its aim to bring together literature from a range of disciplines, while the empirical accounts of regional developments are particularly informative. However, as is often the case with edited collections, the chapters do not really form a coherent analytical whole. This is primarily because most do not do what the back cover and Smith's opening chapter says they will do: that is, apply IR theory to explain the interventions of western powers and international organizations in democratization processes. A couple of the more theoretical chapters are not explicit enough about the relevance of their discussions to IR debates. More importantly, only about half of the chapters in all focus centrally on the role of western states and international organizations - these are the contributions by Grugel, Pearce, Pankhurst and Youngs, and there are clear continuities between these that help provide a cohesive core to the book. Nonetheless, the book is set up so that the reader keeps expecting other chapters to do the same thing. Further, none of the chapters subsequent to Smith's opening contribution explicitly adopt the marxian research agenda she puts forward. While the 'core' contributions indicated above are centrally preoccupied with transnational capitalist relations and their impact on the state, they also appear to have a complex, multi-dimensional view of the power relations at play and of the potential for agency and change. For example, Pearce draws attention to important shifts in neoliberal ideology, the contested nature of discourses of civil society, and the potential costs to the Central American region if IFI attempts to support civil society should fail. So my point here is not that the contributors should have stuck more closely to the stated research remit and approach of the book. Rather, the book's complexities could have been presented more accurately. The research remit could have been stated in broader terms and the introductory chapter could have been more open-ended, highlighting differences in approach among contributors and drawing attention to the ambiguities in their findings.

In addition, some of the more intriguing arguments in the book could have been developed further. What does Hutchings see as the way forward for democratic theory, given that the conditions of democracy she outlines may be increasingly under challenge in a globalising world? What is 'real democracy' in the Zimbabwean context, according to Pankhurst? What is the range of different democratic institutional forms encompassed by Lawson's 'pluralist' position? And what does Lawson mean by her closing comments about the possibility of 'democracy beyond state borders'? In sum, democratic alternatives to neoliberal ideology and institutions are glimpsed in several of the chapters but remain under-specified. Further, and rather ironically given Smith's opening critique of state-centrism, the possibility of democratic forms below, above or beyond the state remains largely unexplored. These are surely central issues for any future research agenda on the relationship between democracy and international relations. This book provides us with some useful critiques of the current limitations and complexities of globalised democracy, but it raises as many questions as it answers.

Catherine Eschle is a lecturer in the Department of Government, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. catherine.eschle@strath.ac.uk