ABSTRACT
Democratic government rests on the consent of the governed, but justice demands that consent not be abused. Democratic States, with their wide variety of active interest groups in shifting coalition patterns, also present the opportunity for transnational coalition formation in alliance with groups in other democracies. The condition of peace between democratic States does not mean that democratic States are ipso facto peaceful with all countries. In their relations with non-democratic States—whether great powers, weak States, or non-western peoples essentially outside the State system and hence “available” as targets for imperial expansion—they have often fought, more or less as frequently as non-democratic States have fought or prepared to fight. Politics within a democracy is seen as largely a non-zero sum enterprise: by cooperating, all can gain something even if all do not gain equally, and the winners today are restrained from crushing the losers; indeed, the winners may, with shifting coalitions, wish tomorrow to ally with losers.
