War and Democracy: Case for Political Violence as a Process of Democratisation

Abstract

The insinuation that political violence is a potent catalyst for democratization may be regarded as an abhorring statement or one of contempt. Yet, the works of renowned philosophers such as John Locke present an interesting case on the role of conflict, particularly in the human being versus the government dynamic. Locke’s Social Contract argument is that violence propagated by citizens towards their non-democratic government is an exemplification of human beings acting in their normal state of nature to take back the self-governance power surrendered to the government. The efficacy of Locke’s Social Contract theory can only be measured when considering theories that advocate for the absence of war or conflict from governance or the State. This study seeks to compare and understand the position of peace theories like Immanuel Kant’s Perpetual Peace and The Democratic Peace Theory associated with Michael Doyle, both of which uphold the abstraction that democratization only occurs through a symbiotic and placid relationship, especially among nations, with a Lockean view of politics. Studies that demonstrated negative and positive relationships to the two concepts were considered to conclusively determine the relationship between war and democracy. The study found that evidence of a parabolic relationship political openness and war, the more competitive and open an undemocratic society becomes the more likely the occurrence of political violence or war.