ABSTRACT
Empire and imperialism have increasingly returned to the lexicon of mainstream theorisation of the international. This chapter argues that colonialism, being just one form of imperialism, metamorphosed in such a way as to retain the fundamental powers of imperialism while shedding the outward forms of colonialism. It reviews differing models of liberal democracy, recognising that whilst the analytical unit (the nation-state) has remained consistent, different forms or variants of liberal democracy have emerged across time and geographical space. Mainstream Western accounts of democratic thought and practice habitually invoke the ancient concept of Athenian democracy as their starting point. However, the modern liberal notion of democracy arose from a different historical trajectory that originates not in Athenian democracy but in European feudalism and culminates in (neo)liberal capitalism. Liberalism has been organically connected, therefore, with the birth and evolution of the modern capitalist world, and it is capitalism that made possible the redefinition of democracy and its reduction to liberalism.
