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

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MARIA JOÃO CABRITA
a legal ethic that, based on a metaphysical framework, “defi es the empirical
approach of political science (Höff e, 2001: 177); and recognizes representative
democracy as “a necessary but not a suffi cient condition for a perpetual
peace” (Archibugi, 1995: 452).
Nowadays, the liberal foundation of the democratic peace thesis is
widely disputed by the adherents of the realistic theory - Christopher Layne
(1994), David Spiro (1994), Henry Farber and Joanne Gowa (1995), among
others. Denying the possibility of a normative international political theory,
given its skepticism about international morality [2] , realism points out three
main failures of liberal justifi cation: 1) it starts off by forgetting the existence
of some wars within and between democracies; 2) it devalues factors
as important as geographical distance, the alliances against common enemies
and the prudent desire to avoid unnecessary wars; and 3) it presupposes
the guarantee of the democratization of states and their subsequent
maintenance (Lynn-Jones, 1996).
Liberals insists on the relevance of democratic peace by putting forward
statistical studies; by a careful and reasonable defense of their defi nitions of
democracy - although they admit there are exceptions to democratic peace;
by explaining the causal logic underlying democratic peace; and by allegations
of continued growth of the spread of democracy and of the rarity of
conversion of democracies into autocracies (Ibidem). But, aside from its
theoretical meaning - visible in the debate between realism and liberalism
- the issue of democratic peace has a practical signifi cance: if democracies
do not go to war with each other, they encourage the spread of democracy
which is the best formula for world peace.
Rawls follows the trail of the Kantian foedus pacifi cum and of those
contemporary theorists who defend it - such as Michael Doyle and Bruce
Russett - without going from the right of peoples to cosmopolitan right.
However, he understands liberal democratic peace, alongside the facts of
reasonable pluralism, of democratic unity in diversity and of public reason,
as a foundation of hope in a society of peoples that respect and enforce
human rights and honor the law of peoples. In other words, like Kant
(1795), Doyle (1983; 1997) and Russett (1993), he considers that the stability
of domestic societies leads to the stability of the international society;
and departs from the vision that envisages international relations as a con-
2 “Skepticism about international morality derives from a variety of sources, such as cultural relativism,
apprehension about the eff ects of “moralism” on foreign policy, the view that rulers have
an overriding obligation to follow the national interest, and the idea that there can be no moral
principles of universal application in a world order of sovereign states”, in Beitz, 1979: 13.
Diacritica 25-2_Filosofia.indb 98 05-01-2012 09:38:23