Term of Award

2009

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Social Sciences (M.A.)

Document Type and Release Option

Thesis (open access)

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Department

Department of Sociology and Anthropology

Committee Chair

Emilia Powell

Committee Member 1

Krista Wiegand

Committee Member 2

Richard Pacelle

Abstract

The argument that democratic states do not go to war with one another, better known by political scientists and international relations theorists as the democratic peace proposition, remains one of the most difficult to dispute phenomena in state's relations with one another. Immanuel Kant argued over two hundred years ago that three components were necessary in order for dyads to behave peacefully toward one another: institutionalized democracy, closely intertwined economies, and international organizations. In this thesis, I analyze a specific dyad, Armenia and Azerbaijan, which in the early 1990s, had a war over the territory of Nagorno Karabakh. A cease-fire was brokered in 1994; however, still in 2009 a political solution is far from being rendered. The thesis will begin with a brief introduction to the Nagorno Karabakh territorial dispute as well as a section on democratic peace literature and theory. In the main chapters, I will discuss each leg of the Kantian tripod for peace and the problems and possibilities in achieving each of these individual requirements in the Karabakh case. The paper will conclude by examining whether Armenia and Azerbaijan have a chance at realizing democracy.

Research Data and Supplementary Material

No

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