A Girardian Critique o f the Lit eral Democratic Peace Theory
Rene Girard is unfamiliar to most political scientists, but the liberal democratic peace theory (LDPT) is known by almost all in the discipline. Rene Girard has developed a theory of the origin and perpetuation of violence that is well known to scholars in literature, anthropology, and theology. Girard's theory can be adapted to the LDPT in order to provide a causal explanation for the empirical evidence that finds democracies do not go to war with one another. Without understanding why democracies do not fight one another, the LDPT is only an empirical artifact. Uncovering a causal explanation, if one exists, can help lead researchers to unravel the paradox of why democracies do not go to war with one another but are just as war prone as nondemocracies. In addition to unraveling this paradox, understanding the causal link between peace and democracy will help us find out whether more democracies will lead to more peace. Girard poses a challenge to the democratization for peace thesis, a thesis that serves as the basis for much of the foreign policy of the United States.1 For Girard, violence originates in desire. A subject desires what others desire and