A Concert of Democracies or League of Democracies is an alternative international organization proposed by Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay in a May 2004 Washington Post op-ed. The concept is broader than a military organization, hence “concert” instead of “alliance.” In a subsequent article in The American Interest, they affirm that roughly 60 countries would qualify for membership under these criteria. They conceive such a "Concert" as a "D-60" group within the UN.
Around the same time, following a 2004 exchange with Jean Elshtain on just war theory, John Davenport of Fordham University proposed a "federation of democracies" in a 2005 article. He developed this further by analogy with arguments for the American federation, and contended that only a federation of democracies could reliably undertake humanitarian interventions to stop mass atrocity crimes. He also defended this proposal against criticisms by Stephen Schlesinger in an online exchange.
G. John Ikenberry and Anne-Marie Slaughter have also called for the creation of a “Concert of Democracies” in the final report of the Princeton Project on National Security, Forging a World Under Liberty and Law: U.S. National Security in the 21st Century (September 2006). Most recently the concept has been supported by former United States Presidential candidate John McCain.
According to the Princeton Project's final report released on September 27, 2006, this alternative body's purpose would be to strengthen security cooperation among the world’s liberal democracies and to provide a framework in which they can work together to effectively tackle common challenges - ideally within existing regional and global institutions, but if those institutions fail, then independently, functioning as a focal point for efforts to strengthen liberty under law around the world. It would serve as the institutional embodiment and ratification of the "democratic peace".
On September 16, 2006, Anne Bayefsky at the Hudson Institute, published a nearly identical proposal to establish an organization called the United Democratic Nations in The Jerusalem Post. Unlike the Princeton Project scholars, Bayefsky and other conservative scholars view the institution as a replacement for the United Nations, which they view as illegitimate and ineffective.
Possible membership
Political scientists have argued that the criteria for inclusion in a Concert of Democracies are by no means clear-cut. The main factors for membership most agreed upon are regular, competitive, free and fair elections, and protection of individual rights and the rule of law. Other progressive thinkers, such as Daniele Archibugi have argued that the same purposes will be better served by a democratic reform of the United Nations.