Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject Politics - General and Theories of International Politics, grade: 1.0, The Australian National University, language: English, abstract: This text concerns itself with answering two central questions of the democratic principle in the current arena of world politics. The questions are: Is international politics ultimately all aboutpower and interest, such that democracyshouldremain of marginal importance to internationalrelations?AndIf democratic states are morally reliable , dowe need democratisation of the internationalsystem itself, or can we just rely on coalitionsof these reliable states? The study of International Relations (IR) has long been concerned with Realpolitik, a form ofpolitical realism, which puts the self-help (military power) and survival (interest) motives ofstates at the centre of its inquiry to explain the structural realities of the anarchic internationalsystem, which is seen to exist under a constant threat of war. (Waltz, 1979) [Market] liberalism,on the other hand, opposes the realist tradition and aims for the emancipation of humanity. In theliberal tradition, the authority of democratic nations and the proliferation of free-markets arebelieved to need to extend to the international system, in order to bring about peace, security(Fukuyama, 1989) and happy consumers. The Neo-conservatives within the US administrationseem to have embraced both realism and market liberalism and combined the two into a meshthat is hard to disentangle. Therefore, an obvious observation of the current era of US hegemonydoes indeed reaffirm that power and the interest of agencies in the international arena areprominent attributes of international politics. Powerful states, such as the US in Iraq, wageunilateral wars to secure their strategic interests and at the same time support market liberalism,while the biggest beneficiaries, multinational corporations (MNCs), smile broadly in thebackground. In this regard, it appears as if notions of democracy, power, and interest are not onlyjuxtaposed, but are in fact feeding on each other, perpetuating but one form of democracy thatof market liberalism.
