| Chapter 1: | The Domestic Analogy |
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Chapter 1
The Domestic Analogy
It took two hundred years to implement democracy within the nation-state, from the emergence of democratic theories during the Enlightenment to the introduction of popular government after World War I. If the same process were to follow at the international level with the Treaty of Versailles as the baseline for the calculation, one would expect a democratic world order to emerge by the year 2119—hence the title of the present book.
My purpose with this thought experiment is to highlight the need for a long-term perspective when discussing democracy. Social processes are sluggish, and their consequences are hard to foresee. A long time may pass before their true impact is evident.
When the United States declared war on Germany in 1917 to make the world “safe for democracy,” President Wilson had two main objectives in mind. The first was the realization of the right of peoples to self-determination; every nation (including every colony) had the right to govern itself. The second was the creation of an international body, a League of Nations, which would guarantee the right of self-determination and facilitate the peaceful resolution of disputes.1 In the years since, quite