From Democratic Peace to Democratic War

The question whether democracy causes peace has been the focus of much investigation in recent years. It has been observed that no democratic state has ever gone to war with another, and the expectation naturally arises that as more states become democratic, the occasions for armed conflict will be reduced, leading to a more peaceful international system. The hope that a structural or institutional means of eliminating war might be found is not new. Adherents of the democratic peace theory point to Kant's essay of 1795 on "Perpetual Peace" as the origin of the idea. Democratic peace proponents today seek to explain the observed statistical correlation between democracy and peace by reference to inherent features of democratic governance such as the constraints placed on decision-makers by the separation of powers and their need to respect the will of the people, or-more vaguely-by reference to the cultural characteristics of democracies. But the recurrence of war has been a perpetual feature of human history, and the standard of proof must be high on those who would claim that the spread of democracy will result in a significant and sustained reduction of wars in the future. It is my contention in this essay that the empirical support for the democratic peace theory is based on too narrow a group, and that the analytical explanations for the theory are weak, and hence that there is insufficient warrant at this time for excessive confidence in the proposition that the spread of democracy will lead to a more peaceful world.

Review of International Studies, 1996

The contention that ‘democracies don't fight against each other’ has received considerable attention in recent years from academics, policy analysts and world leaders. While the accuracy, significance and implications of the claim are still debated, supporters and critics alike have, virtually without exception, agreed that they are addressing the significant topic: the absence of war between democracies. Both accept the terms of the debate which is to focus upon the existence of a ‘separate peace’ between democracies or liberal states. Supporters of the contention are engaged in devising an explanation of the relationship between democracies/liberal states and peace which ‘needs to explain, simultaneously, both (a) the fact that democratic states have rarely clashed with one another—the democratic peace phenomenon, and (b) the fact that democracies are about as war prone as non–democracies’ in their relations with non–democracies. Critics (mostly Realists) are engaged in refuti...

International Studies Quarterly, 2015

Do democracies become less peaceful with one another as the overall number of democratic states in the international system increases? Gartzke and Weisiger (2013, 2014) claim that they do. However, I argue that their evidence stems from a mathematical error in their statistical model. Once I correct that error, their findings no longer hold. In other words, when Gartzke and Weisiger's model receives proper specification, no dyadic and systemic difference persists, while democracy emerges as a pacifying factor that reduces the likelihood of interstate dispute.

Politics, 2004

The 'democratic peace theory' argues that democratic states do not initiate war against one another and that democratic institutions discourage that initiation of international conflict. In general, this theory has mostly been applied to existing liberal democracies. However, the peaceful nature of the process of democratisation is far less evident. Some scholars argue that the instability of democratic transitions increases the likelihood that democratising states will initiate international conflict, making the democratic peace theory less valuable in its explanatory power. This article, however, argues that democratising states, as opposed to authoritarian states exhibiting a brief period of liberalisation, are inherently less prone to periods of international conflict.

2016

commentaries on the earlier versions of this study. 1 Do democracies become less peaceful with one another as the overall number of democratic states in the international system increases? Gartzke and Weisiger (2013, 2014) claim that they do. This study argues that their evidence stems from a mathematical error in their statistical model. Once this study corrects that error, their findings no longer hold. In other words, when Gartzke and Weisiger’s model is properly specified, no dyadic and systemic difference persists, while democracy emerges as a pacifying factor that reduces the likelihood of interstate dispute. Simply put, the democratic peace prevails over other possible explanations.

Journal of Conflict Resolution, 1993

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1998

A study was conducted to examine the effects of nation-states' political institutions on state relations. War-fighting and selection-effects explanation were compared to explain why democracies were more likely to win wars. An analysis of all interstate wars between 1816 and 1982 revealed that democracies that initiate wars often win them. Results also suggest that domestic political structure is one factor that should not be omitted from the study of international relations.

The Review of Economic Studies, 2011

We build a game-theoretic model where aggression can be triggered by domestic political concerns as well as the fear of being attacked. In the model, leaders of full and limited democracies risk losing power if they do not stand up to threats from abroad. In addition, the leader of a fully democratic country loses the support of the median voter if he attacks a non-hostile country. The result is a non-monotonic relationship between democracy and peace. Using Polity data, we classify countries as full democracies, limited democracies, and dictatorships. For the period 1816-2000, Correlates of War data suggest that limited democracies are more aggressive than other regime types, including dictatorships, and not only during periods when the political regime is changing. In particular, a dyad of limited democracies is more likely to be involved in a militarized dispute than any other dyad (including "mixed" dyads, where the two countries have di¤erent regime types). Thus, while full democratization might advance the cause of peace, limited democratization might advance the cause of war. We also …nd that as the environment becomes more hostile, fully democratic countries become more aggressive faster than other regime types.

2000

The article examines democratic peace theory. Considerable research has examined how the regime type and the level of democracy relate with the probability of war. In addressing this issue, the article rests on the premise that democratization can be seen in two forms: a) as an internal process towards democracy b) as an external effort to promote or establish democratic regimes. Contributing to the debate regarding democratic peace theory, it is argued that democratization fails to deter states from pursuing their interests through war. However, and with regard to new forms of 'wars' like "terrorism", democratization can provide both the much needed space for cooperation and the creation of pluralistic societies that will accordingly help to confront some of the sources of rage.

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics

Is democratization good for peace? The question of whether democratization results in violence has led to a spirited and productive debate in empirical conflict studies over the past two decades. The debate, sparked by Mansfield and Snyder's foundational work, raised a challenge to the notion of a universal democratic peace and elicited numerous critical responses within the literature. One set of such responses has emphasized issues of replicability, mismatches between the research design and directionality of the proposed causal mechanism, the role of outliers, and model specification. In addition, two issues have not been discussed sufficiently in the existing literature. First, conceptually, is the issue of concept stretching, specifically the form Sartori labeled the "cat-dog" problem. While past criticisms were mainly about model specification, we debate whether Mansfield and Snyder's findings can be seen as a product of concept misformation. Second, quantitatively, are conceptual and empirical issues that Mansfield and Snyder use to capture state strength in their most recent attempts to provide ongoing evidence for their theory. The most optimistic estimates show that even when democratization has a statistically significant association with war onset at lower levels of institutional strength, the effect is substantively insignificant.

Explanations for the democratic peace that credit democratic regimes with war aversion fail to explain why the democratic peace is dyadic, for the evidence suggests that democracies are averse only to fighting other democracies. This paper adopts a Machiavellian explanation for the peace among democracies, which we call "democratic deterrence," based on the reluctance of democracies to take on the superior mobilizational capacity of democracies like themselves. From Kant, we resuscitate the distinction between direct democracies and republics and his insight that the caution induced from institutional checks may sometimes countervail the greater fighting capacity of politically inclusive regimes. Acknowledgements * We wish to thank Bruce Russett for his generosity in sharing data from his research on Weinstein for helpful comments 6 Russett (1995) has also urged the studying of conflict over the life time of each dyad. See also Diehl and Goertz (2000: 108). 7 Bueno de Mesquita, Smith, Siverson, and Morrow (2003: 247) also make this point but we think it is a fundamental methodological point that deserves more attention. 8 This is a standard game theoretic point about conflict in complete information settings. James summarizes this nicely and explains why, nonetheless, rational actors might choose to fight. 9 We are indebted to Keith Darden for this example.

Oxford University Press eBooks, 2012

This chapter analyzes the influence of democratic institutions-specifically, the effects of (i) electoral uncertainty when individuals within a nation have different preferences over public peaceful investment and (ii) greater checks and balances that lead to a more effective mobilization of resources for both public peaceful investment and arming-on a nation's incentive to arm and willingness to initiate war. The analysis is based on a model where nations contest some given resource and where they cannot commit to their future allocations to arming; yet, the victor in a conflict today gains an advantage in future conflict and thus realizes a savings in future arming. These assumptions imply that, despite the short-term incentives to settle peacefully, one or both nations might choose to initiate war. In such a setting, electoral uncertainty tends to make a democracy more peaceful relative to an autocracy, whereas greater checks and balances tend to make a democracy less peaceful. Thus, while two democracies might be more peaceful than two autocracies when paired against each other in a contest over a given resource, this is not necessarily the case. Even under conditions where democracies are most likely to be peaceful with one another, democracies are at least as likely to be in war with autocracies as autocracies are likely to be in war each other.

In 1795 philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote that if all nations were republics, the citizenry would not vote to go to war except in self-defense... The topic addressed in this paper is whether or not the democratic peace theory holds water. The idea that the study is seeking to confirm or disprove is that democracies are less likely to go to war than nondemocracies, and that democracies provide a place for a more vibrant economy.

Democracies at War, 2002