The book project critiques the conflictive approach of Western universalism. It demonstrates how exclusionary processes in liberal theory justify exclusionary practices in liberal politics, with the double effect of encouraging militant action against non-democratic opponents and instigating security fears on their side. The consequence is enhanced interventionism and a sharpened security dilemma, and, therefore, the heightened risk for violent conflict. The critique leads to the proposition that - despite renouncing the liberal a priori claim to universalization - a normative frame for global governance can still be created which has the prospect of universal validity.

The book critically reviews Western ideas for international governance such as democratic peace, a “league of democracies”, cosmopolitan democracy and neo-conservatism and applies topical analysis to key texts of these four versions of liberal political thinking. Topical analysis looks for equivalent argumentative complexes in these texts. A preliminary analysis identified a common set of topoi, which appear to represent the core of exclusionary thinking in liberal thought. The topical comparison aims at testing the hypothesis that there are similarities with earlier missionaristic complexes of ideas, but also with non-Western missionarism.