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Formal Democracy, Structural Violence, And The Possibility Of "Perpetual Peace.", Andrew Pierce

Andrew J. Pierce

In this paper, I revisit and evaluate Kant’s prerequisites for “perpetual peace,” including the claim, central to contemporary political rhetoric, that formal democracy produces peace. I argue that formal democracy alone is insufficient to address the kinds of deep-rooted structural violence that ultimately manifest in terrorism and other forms of direct violence. I claim that the attempt to eliminate structural violence, and so achieve real “perpetual peace,” requires a more substantive sort of democracy, of which the United States and the West remain poor examples. It requires a political critique that goes deeper than just the critique of state power …