Layers upon layers. Much like the concept I have been studying, this work is marked by different periods, experiences and places. It represents my first substantive attempt to come to grips with democracy: a beguiling, ambiguous and slippery idea and reality that I expect to be grappling with for a long time to come. While commencing from international relations (IR), this book is not much concerned with disciplinary questions, except in so far as the artificial line we have drawn between the domestic and international realms has limited our ability to fully understand democracy. Most IR scholars have either ignored democracy or employed a shallow conception of it, devoid of most that marks it as worthy of study. Meanwhile, political theory has– until recently– largely failed to deal with the wider international context, a crucial condition of possibility for state-based democracy. This book seeks to chart a course between these problematic tendencies and in doing so, tends to blur between international relations, political theory and history. In this regard, perhaps I have accidentally been overly influenced by the approach of early English school thinkers, especially Hedley Bull and Martin Wight. Yet the book departs from these scholars in ultimately having a more critical intent. In this regard, the purpose of this study is not to explain or theorise, but to contrast, disrupt and denaturalise. For instance, how can we so easily talk of the Arab Spring– referencing the earlier European experience– but still be dismayed that the outcome of these political transitions remains unclear only a few years later? It took Europe more than a century to arrive at something approaching stable democratic government; why should it be expected that other countries can reach a similar destination in a fraction of the time? This reflects an overwhelming tendency to view democracy as something freestanding, almost devoid of a past.

Strangely enough, in such a situation simply providing a historical contrast becomes a valuable and necessary corrective. This is what the book's cover is meant to convey. The image is hardly how we might depict democracy today; even contemporary critics would portray their scepticism in different terms. Yet we tend to forget that it is the current situation which is the historical anomaly, and not the other way around.