Diacritica 25-2_Filosofia.indb - cehum - Universidade do Minho

THE RAWLSIAN IDEA OF DEMOCRATIC PEACE AS PEACE BY SATISFACTION
tinuous struggle for wealth and power. But, unlike those theorists, he puts
forward the possibility that peace will extend beyond liberal societies, to
decent societies, contributing to the understanding of a correct “spread of
democracy” by free adherence and not by imposition. In this sense, democracy
thrives as a social ideal and not as an imposition of the international
community.
In Th e Law of Peoples (1999) Rawls provides one of the more persuasive
versions of the democratic peace thesis, by removing it from its usual
horizons - the context of the relations between liberal states - into the realm
of ideal theory (Brown, 2002). In the essay that opens and gives this book
its title - a revised and expanded version of the philosopher’s lecture in On
Human Rights. Th e Oxford Amnesty Lectures 1993 - he analyzes the issue of
peace as a political theme and at three distinct levels: fi rst in the relationships
between democratic peoples; then, in the agreement between democratic
peoples and decent peoples (ideal theory); and lastly, in the way in
which the well-ordered society of peoples deal with outlaw states and burdened
societies (nonideal theory).
In this work, Rawls elucidates the meaning of democratic peace from
the following hypothesis: the fact that constitutional democratic societies
satisfy the characteristics of a reasonably fair system makes peace between
them more secure; and this makes it unlikely that they would become
involved in wars against outlaw states, except in self-defense, in defense of
their allies, or for the protection of human rights (see Rawls, 1999: 48s). A
reasonably fair constitutional democracy is distinguished by the following
characteristics: a certain degree of fair equality of opportunity, especially
in education and training; a decent distribution of income and wealth, to
ensure that all citizens can enjoy an intelligent and eff ective implementation
of their basic freedoms; society as employer as a last resort, avoiding
the ruin of the self-esteem of the citizens; basic healthcare assured for all
citizens; and public fi nancing of elections as well as a means to assure the
availability of public information on matters of policy (see Idem, 50). A
society that prescribes these requirements is, in Rawlsian terminology, a
society stable for the right reasons and whose behavior supports the idea of
democratic peace.
Th e proliferation of such societies opens the way for the hypothesis of
the Kantian foedus pacifi cum to became a reality and recent history proves it.
But though the absence of war among liberal societies provides an empirical
rule for the relations between societies, it does not express the infallibility
of the democratic peace idea (see Doyle, 1997 and Russett, 1993)
Diacritica 25-2_Filosofia.indb 99 05-01-2012 09:38:23
99