The discipline of the democratic peace: Kant, liberalism and the social construction of security communities

The theory that democratic states do not go to war with one another depends upon the claim that such states can recognize each other as democracies and act pacifically in accordance with this recognition. This article argues that analyses of the democratic peace and security communities can benefit from a fuller and more critical engagement with the thinking of Immanuel Kant. Kantian liberalism involves subtle yet powerful processes of identity construction, and the processes of mutual recognition with which these identities are intertwined play essential constitutive and disciplining roles in the development of political relations. These processes of recognition are not merely sociological puzzles, but rather overtly political practices that both entail and enable the exercise of considerable power. The social construction of democratic security communities builds upon these liberal structures of identity and discipline, a situation demonstrated in the case of NATO.