This book demonstrates the importance of democracy for understanding modern international relations and recovers the pluralist tradition of L.T. Hobhouse, G.D.H. Cole, and David Mitrany. It shows that pluralism's typical interest in civil society, trade unionism, and transnationalism evolved as part of a wide-ranging democratic critique that representative democracies are hardly self-sustaining and are ill-equipped to represent all entitled social and political interests in international relations. Pluralist democratic peace theory advocates transnational loyalties to check nationalist sentiments and demands the functional representation of social and economic interests in international organizations. On the basis of the pluralist tradition, the book shows that theories about domestic democracy and international organizations co-evolved before scientific liberal democratic peace theory introduced new inside/outside distinctions.

Autorentext
Leonie Holthaus is Senior Research Fellow at TU Darmstadt, Germany, and the Cluster of Excellence The Formation of Normative Orders at Frankfurt University, Germany. Her articles have appeared in the European Journal of International Relations, the Review of International Studies, and the International History Review. 

Inhalt

1. Introduction2. The Nineteenth Century and the Origins of Modern Democracy3. L.T. Hobhouse's Qualification of the Democratic Peace Thesis4. Nationalism, Liberal Democracy, and the Prospects for International Cooperation5. G.D.H. Cole's Wars: At the Homefront6. Narratives of Democratic Decline and Reconstruction7. David Mitrany and the Purposes of Functional Pluralism8. Twentieth-Century Representative Democracy and the Democratic Legitimacy of the United Nations9. Conclusion