The Meaning of the "L-word": Democracy's Ambivalent Politics of International Law Although the scholarly interest has recently been shifted from the Democratic Peace to a Liberal Peace the research program has not explicitly taken into account international legal norms or international law in general. Furthermore, the debate suffers from a popular interpretation of Kant's third definitive article that, first of all, brings international trade in charge while Kant's intrinsic point of a global Rechtsbewusstsein (as a condition of a transnational legal communication) is neglegted. This suggests an integration of interdependence in terms of inter- or transnational law as a pillar of the liberal peace. Such a Kantian argument gives rise to an increased integration of international law into the democratic peace research. The interdisciplinary dissertation project aims to analyse to what extent international legal norms are incorporated into the discourses of the use of military force in democratic state's public spheres and askes how, as a consequence thereof, the meaning of "international law" is constructed. Taking into account the increased attention that has been paid to international law by democratic civil societies since September 11, the project focuses comparatively on the Völkerrechtspolitik (politics of international law) by the United States of America and the Federal Republic of Germany. [back]