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Abstract:
This article focuses on the question of whether a state being democratic makes it more or less difficult to justify intervention against it, other things being equal. A key feature of democracies is the fact that policies, in general, tend to have some kind of demonstrable popular support. According to standard objections against external intervention – i.e., the practice where one or more states substitute their will for that of another state to halt or prevent human rights violations – such popular support for policies tells against the permissibility of intervention. Specifically, this is the message of the objection from legitimacy, the objection from tolerance, and the objection from self-determination. In response to these objections, this article develops an argument from liability that shows that it can in fact be easier to justify intervention when rights violating policies enjoy popular support, and that this has implications for the permissibility of intervention against democracies.