INTRODUCTION

Few of the leading scholars who now proclaim “an emerging right to democratic governance” in international law have asserted that right as a general legal justification for military action against non-democratic regimes. A general license to impose democracy at gunpoint fits poorly, most concede, with the scheme of international peace and security embodied in the United Nations Charter. Redress of a human rights violation – if that is what a denial of democracy is – is seldom propounded per se as an exception to the peremptory obligation of States “to refrain … from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity and political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”

Yet if the edifice of established peace and security norms is impervious to frontal assault, it remains vulnerable to the Trojan Horse. That is because there is a basis in international law for the proposition that “the lawful governmental authorities of a State may invite the assistance in the territory of military forces of other states or collective organizations in dealing with internal disorder as well as external threats.” Given the principle that a State may consent to foreign uses of force in its territory, adherents of the democratic entitlement thesis may seek to open the door to pro-democratic intervention in two ways: (1) by designating a government that enjoys an electoral mandate (or other “democratic” credentials), but not effective control, as bearer of the legal capacity to render contemporaneous consent on behalf of the State; (2) by validating the effort of an elected government to render the State's consent in advance, by treaty, to forcible restoration of the constitutional government upon the occurrence of a revolution or coup d'état.