Post

The Problem with Realism:

Differentiating Between Democracies
and Dictatorships
By Clay R. Fuller
AEIdeas

September 19, 2018

Many Americans do not appreciate the difference between

authoritarianism and democracy. Until recently, Venezuela was

hailed by some on the left as a model for combating inequality.

Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin has been praised by some on the right for

his decisive leadership and promotion of conservative social

policies. To be fair, there has never been a clear line separating

democracies from autocracies. However, assuming there is a

difference, one might ask if there is a difference between

authoritarian and democratic states in the formation of foreign

policy.
US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin shake hands as they hold a joint
John J. Mearsheimer emphatically says no. In a fascinating discussion

on foreign policy at the 2018 American Political Science Association

(APSA) meeting, Mearsheimer claimed that American elites use a

permanent “state of emergency” to manipulate public opinion for

the grand, bipartisan cause of maintaining “liberal hegemony.” It is

defending the international (im)balance of power that determines

American foreign policy more than any domestic considerations. In

this view, democratic foreign policy functions no differently than

that of authoritarians.

It is reasonable to sometimes invoke the tenets of realism. All

theories are wrong, but many are useful. However, it struck a nerve

when Mearsheimer extrapolated his claim of elite manipulation to

assert that the marketplace of ideas is illusory. The irony was thick: a

tenured professor at one of the United States’ most elite universities

was complaining that elites manipulate public opinion.

Apparently, it is DC-based foreign policy professionals (like me) that

control public opinion in an orchestrated effort to socially engineer

democracy around the world. Why, you might ask? According to

Mearsheimer, it is so foreign policy elites can keep their jobs. Well, I

do love my job at AEI, but not more than I love the ideals of liberty,

markets, and vigilant self-defense.

Mearsheimer’s assertion that the marketplace of ideas is “fake” is

unfortunate because his works contain some competitive ideas

about the internal contradictions of liberalism. The particularist and

universalist strands of liberalism are squarely at odds with each

other. Particularist liberalism celebrates diversity and defends the

rights of people and sovereign states to operate as they see fit. The

universalist strands contradict this by emphasizing a “harmony of

interests” in which human rights and democracy are principles that

all humans not only deserve but should have imposed upon them.

The marketplace of ideas could improve explanations of how both

forms of liberalism can be used to empower autocratic, socialist

states like Venezuela, China, and Cuba. These regimes defend

themselves internationally with particularist claims of democracy

while legitimizing the coercion of their own “utopian” universalism

at home. The marketplace of ideas can also help explain how

paranoia, particularly among elites concerning other elites,

damages political trust in democracies and autocracies, leading to

coups, civil unrest, and forms of personalist or nationalist

dictatorship.

Ultimately, very clear differences do exist between the foreign

policies of democracies and dictatorships. The core difference is

that democratic publics can and occasionally do influence foreign

policy decisions. In autocracies, publics have fewer, if any,

opportunities to exert influence. International relations scholars

would do well to abandon the tired tropes of classic, theoretical

paradigms that ignore the importance of domestic politics and

recognize that they are often members of the very elite classes to

which they attribute the manipulation of US foreign policy.

Learn more: The Mafia-like Nature of Authoritarian States, and Why

It Matters | Intensifying Partisanship Is Aiding the Authoritarian

Threat | The Problems with That Study Saying Centrists Are Most

Hostile to Democracy | Elections Have Spread Throughout the

World. But Has Democracy? That's a Different Question.

Clay R. Fuller
Latest Work

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Tags:

Authoritarianism | Democracy | liberalism | realism

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