International Legal Encounters with Democracy

Abstract

The language of democracy has become common in international law, the legal system that regulates relations between nation states. This interest in democracy has however largely ignored democracy at the international level and focused instead on national democratic standards. In this paper, I start by sketching the threadbare debates about democracy beyond political borders in international law and then turn to the way that international institutions have developed this concept, particularly in the peace and state-building boom associated with the end of the Cold War. The two contexts for democracy have taken different directions. In the case of democracy at the international level, the disc..