De Tocqueville states, “For a democratic republic to survive without trouble in a European nation, it would be necessary for republics to be established in all the others at the same time.” I found it interesting how this quote ties into what my World Politics class is currently talking about. In John Mearsheimer’s The Tragedy of Great Power Politics it talks about how states are unable to trust one another because it is impossible to know what the intentions of the other states are. This lack of trust then leads to the inability to cooperate because trusting other states is potentially dangerous to the state’s survival. This relates to how a sole democracy would not survive in Europe when surrounded by aristocracies, oligarchies, and monarchies. The main point that caught my attention when relating these two texts was when Mearsheimer talked about the democratic peace theory, where democracies do not go to war against other democracies. Although there would not be complete trust or cooperation between states if this were the situation, there would be a significant increase in trust and cooperation if all the states in Europe were democracies.
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