The Cosmist Insurrection, Inc. ™ @yungneocon
Democracies don’t fight wars with other democracies, but they initiate and cause more war in the world system. They also target civilians in war more, and all use torture as much as authoritarian regimes.
Democracy formation has inevitably been associated with state formation & nationalism, which ultimately means two main things:
- Enforcing social homogeneity through expulsion & assimilation
- A rise in the rate of war and constant conflict
For the state system claim, see the OUP people volume ‘Network of Nations’, and the review in the Oxford Handbook of Phil of Social Science of ‘laws’ in political science. For the civilians claim, see:
For structural accounts of the state in general see:
- The Origins of Major War 2000 Dale C. Copeland pdf
For nationalism and the single overriding cause of war in modern era see:
- Waves of War : Nationalism, State Formation, and Ethnic Exclusion in the Modern World 2013 Andreas Wimmer pdf
For the role of ethnic exclusion & expulsion in democracy & nation states, see:
- Home Rule: National Sovereignty and the Separation of Natives and Migrants 2020 Nandita Sharma pdf
- The Myth of Nations : The Medieval Origins of Europe 2002 Patrick J. Geary pdf
- The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing 2004 Michael Mann pdf
- Terrible Fate: Ethnic Cleansing in the Making of Modern Europe Benjamin Lieberman
- Against Their Will: The History and Geography of Forced Migrations in the USSR 2001 Pavel M. Polian pdf
& basically the entire corpuses of Mark Levene
- War, Jews and the New Europe: Diplomacy of Lucien Wolf, 1914-19 (1992) pdf
- Genocide in the Age of the Nation State: Volume 1: The Meaning of Genocide 2005 pdf
- Genocide in the Age of the Nation State: Volume 2: The Rise of the West and the Coming of Genocide 2005 pdf
- Annihilation: The European Rimlands 1939-1953 (The Crisis of Genocide, Volume II) 2013 pdf
& of Joel Migdal
- Boundaries and Belonging: States and Societies in the Struggle to Shape Identities and L Practices 2004 pdf
- State in Society: Studying How States and Societies Transform and Constitute One Another pdf
- State Power and Social Forces : Domination and Transformation in the Third World pdf
- Strong Societies and Weak States: State-Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World pdf
- Peasants, Politics and Revolution: Pressures Toward Political and Social Change in the Third World pdf
For theories of mass killing across state forms, see
- Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century 2004 Benjamin A. Valentino pdf
- Vessels of Evil Mordechai Thomas
- Evil Men 1969 James Dawes pdf
- Why?: Explaining the Holocaust Peter Hayes pdf
- the unmasterable past Charles S. Maier
and also his works on state formation:
- Once Within Borders: Territories of Power, Wealth, and Belonging Since 1500 (2016) Maier pdf
- leviathan 2.0 Maier
Other classics on state formation include Tilly’s state making as war making. The thematic alternative ‘Robust action & rise of medici’ or ‘emergence of markets’ both by Padgett and Powell.
- War Making and State Making as Organized Crime 2017 Charles Tilly doc
- Robust Action and the Rise of the Medici, 1400-1434 (1996) Padgett & Ansell pdf
- The Emergence of Organizations and Markets 2012 Padgett & Powell pdf
Of course this topic would be incomplete if i didn’t mention Scott’s ‘seeing like a state’, ‘the art of not being governed’, and ‘against the grain’. For specific anarchist takes there’s Oppenheimers classic on the state & Gelderloos’ recent book ‘Worshipping Power’
- Seeing Like a State 1998 James Scott pdf
- The Art of Not Being Governed James Scott text
- Against the Grain James Scott pdf
- The State Its History and Development Viewed Sociologically 1997 Franz Oppenheimer pdf
- Worshiping Power: An Anarchist View of Early State Formation
Peter Gelderloos pdf
IR realism, & the political sociology of state formation are, as disciplines, more anarchist than anarchism—they prove conclusively that violence, expulsion, war, conquest, genocide & oppression are inherent structural features of state formation & the state system
black books 