Democratic Peace and Electoral Accountability ∗

European Journal of Political Economy, 2017

One of the few stylized facts in international relations is that democracies, unlike autocracies, almost never fight each other. We develop a theoretical model to examine the sustainability of international peace between democracies and autocracies, where the crucial difference between these two political regimes is whether or not policymakers are subject to periodic elections. We show that the fear of losing office can make it less tempting for democratic leaders to wage war against other countries. Crucially, this discipline effect can only be at work if incumbent leaders can be re-elected, suggesting that democracies with term limits should be more conflict prone, particularly when the executive is serving the last possible term. These results rationalize recent empirical findings on how term limits affect the propensity of democracies to engage in conflicts.

International Security, 2009

In previous articles and in our 2002 book Democracies at War, we argued that democracies are particularly likely to win their wars. Democratic political institutions provide incentives for elected leaders to launch only short, winnable, low-cost wars, so they may avoid domestic political threats to their hold on power. Democracies tend to win the wars they initiate because democratic leaders generally "select" themselves into winnable wars, and they are more likely to win when they are targeted because their armies ªght with better initiative and leadership. Analyzing all interstate wars from 1816 to 1987, we found strong empirical support for our theory. 1 Other scholarship has produced ªndings supportive of our theory. Elsewhere, two different formal game-theoretic models produced the hypothesis that democracies are especially likely to win the wars they initiate. 2 The empirical results generated to test these and related hypotheses have withstood challenges to data selection and research design. 3 Using data sets and research designs different from ours, other scholars have uncovered empirical patterns consistent with our theory that democracies are especially likely to win the crises they initiate, 4 that wars and crises are shorter when democracies and democratic initiators are involved, and that democracies become increasingly likely to initiate wars as their likelihood of victory increases. 5 H.E. Goemans's recent

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.

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.

2005

Defence and Peace Economics, 2013

Does democracy cause peace, or is democracy a consequence of peace? The burgeoning democratic peace literature has provided strong empirical evidence for the claim that democracies are a cause of peace. However, several skeptics of the democratic peace have suggested that the statistical findings are spurious. We test these competing claims using a simultaneous equation model. Using a unique data-set

International Studies Quarterly

Despite decades of research, there is no consensus on the relationship between democratic institutions and risk of civil war. We alleviate measurement issues and theoretical ambiguity in much existing work by theoretically and empirically unpacking core features of democracy and their relationship to civil war. We distinguish between institutions that impose vertical constraints on leaders from the population at large, and institutions that allow various groups, including non-incumbent elites, to place horizontal constraints on leader behavior. Both types of democratic institutions, we argue, help leaders overcome commitment problems related to potential agents of rebellion, thus reducing civil war risk. This is particularly so when these institutional mechanisms reinforce each other. Using precise institutional indicators from Varieties of Democracy, we disentangle and separately measure the dimensions of interest. Both vertical and (especially) horizontal constraints mitigate civi...

A widely held assumption in the international community is that in postconflict situations peace-building and democratization are virtually synonymous; creating the conditions for the one does so for both, the two processes will be reciprocal and mutually supportive. This suggests the policy issues will be simple. But the reality could be very different. Choices have to be addressed between requisites for peace and conditions for democracy; and over the kind of 'democracy' and its relation to other essential developments like state-building. 1 While considerable progress has been made since the end of the Cold War in ending internal wars, and it is clear that pro-democracy forces worldwide are growing, these dual processes do not always reinforce each other, as might be expected. Two distinct schools of thought exist on the best route to democratic peacebuilding in societies undergoing profound political transformation. "Conflict resolution managers" emphasize the necessity for promoting peace; they seek to end or avoid bloodshed as soon as possible, even if that means including parties with unsavory histories, overlooking human rights abuses, and compromising on democratic principles. "Democratizers," by contrast, while urging an end to violence, stress the critical importance of ensuring that democratic and human rights principles are upheld to have a durable peace, even if that means a longer and bloodier road to stability. 2 The debate over which of these approaches should be applied to societies in transition is sharpest when international policy-makers and local parties face key questions on how and when to convene elections. All countries, including authoritarian regimes, pay lip service to the need to hold elections, irrespective of whether they are free, fair or frequent. Elections are the linchpin of legitimate authority. And, with some exceptions, such as China, Russia and smaller authoritarian states, most governments, regional organizations and international institutions endorse the use of elections as the principal vehicle for promoting genuine democratic change. While there is a consensus that holding elections is essential to reaching democratic governance, how to accomplish that goal is more problematic. Conflict

Conflict Management and Peace Science, 2004

Drawing upon two alternative versions of the institutional explanation for the democratic peace, we suggest competing hypotheses about the relationship between democratic political institutions and the length of dispute participation. One set of hypotheses originates in the argument that because of the bargaining arrangements internal to democratic states, disputes between democratic states will necessarily be drawn out, so that in the time that it takes to secure the domestic political base for war, diplomats have time to find nonwar solutions. A second set of hypotheses, derived from the selectorate argument about how institutions shape the behavior of leaders who want to remain in power, leads to the expectation that selection effects over which disputes to participate in make disputes between democracies shorter than disputes between pairs of other types of states. Using a Weibull survival model we analyze data on the length of Militarized Interstate Disputes during the period 1816 to 1992; we find clear support for the selectorate explanation. Two ancillary hypotheses from the selectorate argument are also tested and supported by the data.

International Studies Quarterly , 2020

How does regime type affect the likelihood of negotiated settlements that end civil conflicts? A limited number of previous studies have offered divergent theories and mixed findings about whether democracy is an asset or a liability. I draw these disparate findings together and present a novel theory on why leaders under fully democratic and autocratic regimes may have a particularly difficult time in peacemaking, and how leaders in anocratic (hybrid) regimes are more likely to be successful in reaching negotiated settlements. Thus, I hypothesize that the relationship between regime type and the likelihood of conflict-resolution is inverted U-shaped. I test this hypothesis using data on all internal conflicts between 1946 and 2014, and find empirical support. The findings suggest that even if anocracies are more prone to the outbreak of civil wars as has been proposed by previous studies, they are also better at settling these conflicts.