-country, government, or political system is governed by

representatives who are elected by the people.

- is based on the idea that everyone should have equal rights
and should be involved in making important decisions.

-the interference of a country in the affairs of another country for

the purpose of compelling it to do or forbear doing certain acts
 is a military intervention by external forces with the aim of
assisting democratization of the country where the intervention
takes place.
• Example the intervention in Afghanistan
and Iraq

Experiences from the

interventions in
Afghanistan in 2001,
Iraq in 2003 and Libya
in 2011 have not
been positive. What
went wrong? Photo:
US Marines – Iraq
2003
The logic behind democratic intervention
is clear enough:
Democracies rarely if ever go to war with
each other. Stable democracies also
experience few civil wars. If a civil war occurs
nonetheless in a stable democracy, as a
general rule the conflict will be less bloody
than in an authoritarian country. Genocide
and politicized are also rare in democracies.
An increase in the number of stable
democracies, the argument runs, will
contribute to lower levels of violence in both
domestic and external conflicts.
 Democratic countries generally emerge
victorious from wars. The losing party
often experiences regime change, which
is more often than not in a democratic
direction. Accordingly it may be
tempting to use military force to
stimulate the growth of democracy in
formerly authoritarian states. If one
follows this line of thinking, war can lead
to democracy – and thus to peace.
 World War II can be interpreted as a triumph
for such a strategy. The Axis powers were
defeated and democratic governments were
established in Italy, Japan, and Germany. A
more modest, but more recent, example was
the Falklands War of 1982 between Argentina
and the United Kingdom. Argentina’s conquest
of the disputed group of islands, orchestrated
by the country’s ruling military junta, was
highly popular domestically. When the United
Kingdom took the islands back by force, the
Argentineans turned against their military
rulers. The junta was forced to resign and
 At the end of the Cold War,
democracy appeared to be the only
game in town, and thus it is not
surprising that Bill Clinton, George
W Bush, and others embraced the At the end of
idea of a democratic peace. Nor is
it surprising that Western the Cold War,
politicians thought that the further democracy
spread of democracy could be appeared to be
assisted by military means, for the only game in
example in the Balkans or in the
Middle East. The increased
town
emphasis on global human rights in
international politics also made it
easier for many skeptics to tolerate
military intervention.
 But Experiences from the
interventions in Afghanistan in
2001, Iraq in 2003 and Libya in
2011 have not been positive.
What went wrong?
 Even though these interventions
put these countries on a course
towards democratic government,
they did not create stable
democracies. Instead, the result was
unstable semi-democracies.
Countries in a grey area between
stable dictatorship and stable
democracy experience more, not
fewer, armed conflicts. At least
three factors contributed to these
failures.
 FIRST
In general, the government apparatus of the
previous regime was simply scrapped.
Establishing new systems, however, was not as
easily accomplished. Wealth in Iraq and Libya
stemmed largely from oil revenues that were
monopolized by the countries’ elites. When
these elites disappeared, ethnic groups and
warlords competed to secure as much as
possible of this wealth for themselves. A
national community that can build a strong
state is not created in an instant.
 SECOND
Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya are all entirely
surrounded by authoritarian states. All other
things being equal, war is more likely to break out
between a democracy and an authoritarian state
than between two authoritarian states.
Accordingly, if one manages to establish a new
democracy in a region of authoritarian states, the
risk of war will generally not go down, but up.
There is also a risk of contagion from unrest in
neighboring countries, for example if rebel
groups establish safe zones on the other side of
 THIRD
In the failure of these interventions is that military
interventions, especially interventions that are not
sanctioned by the United Nations, undermine
international law no matter how good the
motives. They comprise an open invitation to
authoritarian states to follow the same strategy.
We see the result of Western countries having
gone to such great lengths in Libya in Syria,
where Russia has intervened to defend an old
authoritarian ally under the banner of combating
terrorism.