Democratic peace theory
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A democratic peace theory or simply democratic peace (often DPT and sometimes democratic pacifism) is a theory in international relations, political science, and philosophy which holds that democracies—specifically, liberal democracies—never or almost never go to war with one another. It can trace its philosophical roots to Immanuel Kant.
Some theories of democratic peace also hold that lesser conflicts are rare between democracies, or that violence is in general less common within democracies, or that there is also peace between oligarchies.
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History
Democratic peace theory is a relatively new development. No ancient author seems to have considered it true. Democratic governments, as well as sociologists to study them, were scarce before the 19th century.
Until the late Enlightenment, the word democracy usually meant direct (or pure) democracy, which was treated with suspicion. Even the idea that republics tend to be peaceful is recent; Niccolò Machiavelli believed that republics were by nature excellent war-makers and empire-builders, citing Rome as the prime example.
Image:Kant.jpg It was Immanuel Kant who first foreshadowed the theory in his essay Perpetual Peace written in 1795, although he thought that liberal democracy was only one of several necessary conditions for a perpetual peace. US President Woodrow Wilson advocated the idea in politics during and after WWI.
The hope of a democratic peace shows in Woodrow Wilson's message<ref>Wilson, T. Woodrow: Message to Congress April 2, 1917</ref> asking Congress to declare war and is reflected in his two slogans: "a war to end war"<ref>Nixon, Richard M.: Televised speech, November 3, 1969</ref> and "a world safe for democracy". His plans for the Peace after that war, which can be traced back to 1894, were strongly similar to Kant's proposal, including both Kant’s cosmopolitan law and pacific union. The third of the Fourteen Points specified the removal of economic barriers between peaceful nations; the fourteenth provided for the League of Nations. <ref> Russett, Bruce M. Grasping the Democratic Peace : Principles for a Post-Cold War World. . p 4.</ref>
Dean Babst, a Wisconsin criminologist, wrote the first academic paper supporting the theory, in 1964, in Wisconsin Sociologist; he published a slightly more popularized version, eight years later, in the trade journal Industrial Research.
The peace theorists J. David Singer and Melvin Small in 1976 denied that democracies were in general less war-like than other nations; but they found only two marginal cases of democracies fighting each other. This paper was published in the Jerusalem Journal of International Relations, in 1976, and eventually brought the attention of several political scientists to the underlying contention — partly through Michael Doyle's lengthy discussion of the topic.
Rudolph J. Rummel of the University of Hawaii cited Babst's work in the fourth book of his five-volume work, Understanding Conflict and War (1975-1981). He has since written extensively on the democratic peace, and has also drawn considerable lay attention to the subject.
There have been numerous studies in the field since.<ref>See the bibliography of Rummel's website. Rummel is partisan, and the bibliography lacks some recent papers; but still one of the better introductions to the subject.</ref> Most studies have found some form of democratic peace exists; although neither methodological disputes nor doubtful cases are entirely resolved. <ref>See Kinsella 2005</ref>. Many of these papers are discussed elsewhere in this article.
Influence
Democratic peace theory has been extremely divisive among the students of international relations. It is rooted in the idealist and liberal traditions; and is strongly opposed to the realist idea of the balance of power. However, democratic peace theory has come to be more widely accepted and have in some democracies affected policy.
Presidents of both the major American parties have expressed support for the theory. Former President Bill Clinton of the Democratic Party: "Ultimately, the best strategy to ensure our security and to build a durable peace is to support the advance of democracy elsewhere. Democracies don't attack each other." <ref> Template:Cite web</ref> Current President George W. Bush of the Republican Party: "And the reason why I'm so strong on democracy is democracies don't go to war with each other. And the reason why is the people of most societies don't like war, and they understand what war means.... I've got great faith in democracies to promote peace. And that's why I'm such a strong believer that the way forward in the Middle East, the broader Middle East, is to promote democracy." <ref> Template:Cite web</ref>
Some fear that the democratic peace theory may be used to justify wars againt nondemocracies in order to bring lasting peace, in a democratic crusade. <ref>See papers cited on p. 59 of Chan 1997.</ref> This was part of the rhetoric for the United States' intervention in World War I, and similar arguments have been part of American political rhetoric since the fall of the Soviet Union. <ref>Nixon, Richard. (1992). Seize The Moment: America's Challenge In A One-Superpower World. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0671743430.</ref> Some point out that the democratic peace theory has been used to justify the 2003 Iraq War, others argue that this justification was used only after the War had already started. <ref> Owen 2005 Russet 2004 </ref> However, research shows that attempts to create democracies by using external force has often failed eventually. Supporting internal democratic movements and using diplomacy may be far more succesful and less costly. Thus, the theory and related research, if they were correctly understood, may actually be an argument against a democratic crusade. <ref> Template:Cite journal (Weart, 1998)</ref>
Definitions
A democratic peace theory has to define what it means by "democracy" and what it means by "peace" (or, more often, "war"), and what it claims as the link between the two.
Democracy
Image:Freedom House world map 2005.png
Democracies have been defined differently by different researchers; this accounts for some of the variations in their findings. In general, they require a relatively wide franchise, at least in historical terms; competitive elections; civil rights; and a constitutional government.
There is general agreement that the democratic peace applies to liberal democracies, with "freedom of speech, religion, and organization; and a constitutional framework of law to which the government is subordinate and that guarantees equal rights." <ref>Quote from Rummel 1997</ref> Russett (1993), in an effort to prove a stronger theorem, does not require civil rights.<ref>Russett, 1993, p.15</ref>
Wide franchise can be, in different authors, from half the adult population down to 10%, or even lower. Explicitly requiring women's suffrage would mean there could have been no interdemocratic wars before New Zealand enacted it in 1894. <ref>Ray 1998, Doyle 1997, Small and Singer 1976. Doyle also includes states where any man is in principle capable of attaining enough property and therefore vote; thus nineteenth-century Belgium, which enfranchised 2% of the whole population. </ref> Rummel (1997) and Weart (1998) require 2/3 of the adult males, which is in practice towards the high end of this range. The effect of this variation on the list of democracies is not great, although Great Britain can be argued to have achieved wide franchise at various dates between 1832 and 1918.
Theorists differ on the extent to which the executive must be chosen by election. Many would accept Babst's definition that he either be elected directly or freely chosen by an elected body. Singer required that the parliament be at least equal to the executive. Babst and Rummel also require secret ballot, which was first practised in 1856<ref>Rummel 1997, Appendix 1.1, Babst 1964, 1972</ref>
Doyle, who writes (1983) of "liberal régimes" rather than "democracies", allows greater power to hereditary monarchs than other theories; for example, he counts the rule of Louis-Philippe of France - and that of Robespierre - as a liberal regíme. He describes Wilhelmine Germany as "a difficult case....In practice, a liberal state under republican law for domestic affairs...divorced from the control of its citizenry in foreign affairs."<ref>Doyle 1983, 1997. Quote from Doyle 1983 footnote 8, pp.216-7. </ref>
Kant opposed (direct) "democracy" since it is "necessarily despotism, as it establishes an executive power contrary to the general will; all being able to decide against one whose opinion may differ, the will of all is therefore not that of all: which is contradictory and opposite to liberty." Instead, Kant favors a constitutional republic where individual liberty is protected from the will of the majority. Russett (1993) and Weart (1998) include the Athenian democracy, which practiced a form of direct democracy, in their list of democracies. <ref>Russett 1993, p.45ff. Weart (1998)</ref>
Continuous classification
Researchers often use Ted Gurr's Polity Data Set which scores each state on two scales, one of democracy and one for autocracy, for each year since 1800; as well as others. <ref> Such additional data sources include the Template:Cite web and Template:Cite web</ref> The use of this has varied. Some researchers have done correlations between the democracy scale and belligerence; others have treated it as a binary classification by (as its maker does) calling all states with a high democracy score and a low autocracy score democracies; yet others have used the difference of the two scores, sometimes again making this into a binary classification. <ref>Gleditsch 1992</ref> Other such rankings have made by Steve Chan and by Ze'ev Maoz.<ref>Maoz 1997</ref>
Nascent democracies
Doyle (1983) treats one exceptional case by observing that both sides were under liberal goverments less than three years old, and so democracy had not stabilized; Rummel (1997) and Weart (1998) have treated this as a general rule, excluding from consideration any war in which either side has been a democracy for less than three years; the former argues that this is enough time for "democratic proceedures to be accepted, and democratic culture to settle in." <ref>Doyle 1983a, on the Pequena War; cf. Russett 1993. For the other two: Rummel 1997 Appendix 1.1. </ref> Additionally, this allows for other states to actually come to the recognition of the state as a democracy.
Wars and lesser conflicts
Quantitative research on international wars usually define war as a military conflict with more than 1000 killed in battle. This is the definition used in the Correlates of War Project which has also supplied the data for many studies on war.(disputed — see [[: talk:Democratic peace theory#{{{1|Disputed}}}|talk page]]) Some researchers have used different definitions. For example, Weart (1998) defines war as more than 200 battle deaths. <ref>Weart 1998 </ref>. Some have defined wars are a clash or series of clashes, allowing for only one victor, characterized by a highly ritualized beginning and end <ref>Russett, Bruce. 1993. "Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World". Princeton: Princeton University Press; 50-51.</ref><ref>Manicas, Peter. 1989. "War and Democracy". London: Basil Blackwell; 27.</ref>
Militarized Interstate Disputes (MIDs) are lesser conflicts than wars. Such a conflict may be no more than military display of force with no battle deaths. MIDs and wars together are "militarized interstate conflicts" or MICs. MIDs include the conflicts that precede a war; so the difference between MIDs and MICs nay be less than it appears.
Wars
The straightforward argument for the democratic peace is: given the number of wars over the past two centuries, if democracies fought each other as often as any other pair of states, there should have been dozens of wars between democracies. Instead, depending on the study, we find zero, or one, or two, and the exceptions generally involve marginal democracies.<ref>See for example Maoz 1997, p.164-5, which finds that there should have been 57 pair-years of democracies at war on expectation if there were no democratic peace; and in fact there was one</ref>. A review Template:Harvard citation lists many studies finding that this peacefulness is statistically significant.
The monadic and the dyadic peace
Babst (1964) asserted that democracies are more peaceful in general, which is now called the monadic peace; his evidence was for the special case: that democracies do not fight with each other, now called the dyadic peace. Most research is regarding the dyadic peace.
Singer and Small (1976) discussed both propositions; they found no support for the general, monadic, proposition, and very few peace theorists hold it.<ref>Singer and Small 1976;</ref> Rummel was previously "virtually alone" in doing so; Rummel's evidence is drawn only from 1976-1980; and the post-Vietnam years may be exceptional.<ref> See Russett 2003, p. 139 n. 3, and Gelditsch 1992.</ref>
There are also some more recent monadic papers, which find a slight monadic effect;<ref> cited in Müller and Wolff 2004,</ref> Müller and Wolff (2004), in listing them, find monadic theories as "neither necessary nor convincing"; Müller finds, that, instead, democracies have varied greatly in their belligerence against non-democracies. The militant democracies since 1950 have been India, Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States.<ref>Müller 2004</ref> Two of the militant democracies listed above were dominant naval powers, and therefore had greater choice whether and where to fight.<ref> Compare Alfred Thayer Mahan: The Influence of Sea Power on History, ad init..</ref>
Possible exceptions to no wars
See the article about the book Never at War (1998) for a discussion of specific cases. For a discussion which claims to presents argument on both sides, see the librarian Matthew White's personal website.<ref>Matthew White's website on the democratic peace</ref>
Several researchers find no wars between well-established liberal democracies (disputed — see [[: talk:Democratic peace theory#{{{1|Disputed}}}|talk page]]). <ref>[1][2][3][4][5]. Rummel 2005. Ray 1998b. Weart 2000. </ref> Jack Levy (1989) made an oft-quoted assertion that the theory is "as close as anything we have to an empirical law in international relations" <ref>Levy, Jack S. 1989. "The Causes of War: A Review of Theories and Evidence" in Behavior, Society, and Nuclear War, Volume 1, edited by P. E. Tetlock, J. L. Husbands, R. Jervis, P. C. Stern and C. Tilly. New York: Oxford University Press. [6] </ref>
Others see one or two exceptions. The wars most commonly suggested as exceptions are the Spanish-American War and the Continuation War. <ref>Gowa 1999, Naoz 1997, p.165</ref>. Bruce Russett (1993) finds several wars between Greek democracies. World War I has also been mentioned, chiefly in popular writing. Even some of those who regard them as exceptions regard them as marginal cases. <ref> Doyle (1983); but his only exceptions are the Paquisha War and the Lebanese air force's intervention in the Six Day War, both of which he dismisses as technical. Cross reference to this note:Template:Note </ref> <ref> Nils Petter Gleditsch (1995) and Stuart Bremer (1993) each discuss one or two marginal exceptions; but neither of them find this an obstacle to supporting the existence and force of the democratic peace. The data set Bremer happened to be using showed one exception, the French-Thai War of 1940, which is spurious; it happened after the setting up of the Vichy régime. But he notes that other data sets show other isolated exceptions; and objects to changing just "deviant" false positives, rather than a systematic re-examination of all cases, which might find false negatives. Gleditsch sees the (somewhat technical) state of war between Finland and the Western Allies during World War II, as a special case, which should probably be treated separately: an incidental state of war between democracies during large multi-polar wars, which are fortunately rare. The importance of this exception depends on what forms of hostility you regard as serious; Correlation studies do not have exceptions, only outliers. </ref>
Other authors simply describe war between democracies as "rare"<ref>Gleditsch 1995 and others</ref>, "very rare"<ref>Chan 1997</ref>, "rare or non-existent".
The question of no or few wars may be unimportant. Bremer, in his 1993 paper, which strongly supports the democratic peace as a potent and independent force, finds that it is a "stochastic regularity", and holds that "uncertainty reduction (which is not the same thing as explanation)" is the best possible result in analyzing the ultimately indeterminate onset of war, which includes an irreducibly random factor; we should avoid determinism, "'iron laws'", and "'necessary and sufficient conditions'". He also deplores the "religious fervor" which "trumpet[s] to the world that if all states were democratic, war would cease to plague mankind"<ref>Bremer 1993, Pp.231-2, 246</ref> Since a probability of exactly zero is unprovable, it is "fruitless to debate the question of whether democracies never or only very rarely fight one another".<ref>Bremer 1992, p.330</ref>
However, one(disputed — see [[: talk:Democratic peace theory#{{{1|Disputed}}}|talk page]]) researcher argued (1983) that the interdemocratic peace is a necessary and mechanical connection; an "absolute (or point) assertion". One exception will disprove the theory. However, most researchers disagree. <ref>Rummel, Ray, and Weart; quotation from Rummel 1983. For this paper being exceptional, see Gleditsch 1992</ref>
Lesser conflicts
One problem with the research on wars is that, as the Realist Mearsheimer (1990) put it, "democracies have been few in number over the past two centuries, and thus there have few opportunities where democracies were in a position to fight one another";<ref>Q Mearshimer 1990, p.50; the argument is supported at length by Spiro 1994, Layne 1994. </ref> so there isn't enough data to be as sure of the democratic peace as of Boyle's Law, as Wayman, a supporter of the democratic peace, admits. "If we rely solely on whether there has been an inter-democratic war, it is going to take many more decades of peace to build our confidence in the stability of the democratic peace", especially with the present small rate of warfare. This is worse if we try to divide our data to look for other factors which might cause peace, or try to control for those factors when found.<ref> Wayman 1998</ref>
This is particularly cogent against a more stringent definitions of democracy, which tend to be made by those finding no wars; and also with respect to the nineteenth century data. Even the looser definitions of democracy admit only a dozen states before the late nineteenth century, and many of them are young or have limited franchise.<ref>See lists in Doyle 1997, p.261 ff.; and Russett 1993</ref> Freedom House finds no independent state with universal suffrage in 1900.<ref>Freedom House. 1999. "Democracy’s Century: A Survey of Global Political Change in the 20th Century."</ref>
Many researchers reacted to this by studying lesser conflicts instead, since they have been far more common. There have been many more MIDs than wars; the Correlates of War Project counts several thousands during the last two centuries. A review Template:Harvard citation lists many studies that have reported that democratic pairs of states are less likely to be involved in MIDs than other pairs of states.
Stuart Bremer (1993) and many others have also studied multiple correlations involving peace or war. Bremer did a study of seven variables traditionally expected to produce peace or war. He found that six of them had a genuine effect, independent of all the others, in predicting whether a given pair of states were likely to go to war or not. Mutual democracy was fourth of these, behind the existence of a common boundary (which predicts war), an alliance between the two states, and higher than average wealth per head (both of which predict peace).<ref>Bremer 1993</ref> There has been many similar studies after this, often giving very different results depending on methodology and included variables, which has caused criticism. However, a common thread in virtually all results is an emphasis on the relationship between democracy and peace Template:Harvard citation, Template:Harvard citation.
Another study Template:Harvard citation finds that after both states have become democratic, there is a decreasing probability for MIDs within a year and this decreases almost to zero within five years.
When examining the inter-liberal MIDs in more detail, one study Template:Harvard citation finds that they are less likely to involve third parties, the target of the hostility is less likely reciprocate, if the target reciprocates the response is usually proportional to the provocation, and the disputes are less likely to cause any loss of life. The most common action was "Seizure of Material or Personnel".
Studies find that the probability that disputes between states will be resolved peacefully is positively affected by the degree of democracy exhibited by the least democratic state involved in that dispute. Disputes between democratic states are significantly shorter than disputes involving at least one undemocratic state. Democratic states are more likely to be amenable to third party mediation when they are involved in disputes with each other Template:Harvard citation.
In international crises that include the threat or use of military force, one study finds that if the parties are democracies, then relative military strength has no effect on who wins. This is different from when nondemocracies are involved. These results are the same also if the conflicting parties are formal allies Template:Harvard citation. Similarly, a study of the behavior of states that joined ongoing militarized disputes reports that power is important only to autocracies: democracies do not seem to base their alignment on the power of the sides in the dispute Template:Harvard citation.
One study indicates that independently of trade, democracy is not a significant factor unless both of the democracies have a GDP/capita of at least 1400 USD. The chance of MIDs even increase if the economic development is below this level. This level is quite low, Zimbabwe had that level at the time of the study. 91% of all the democratic pairs passed this criteria during the 1885–1992 period and all in 1992. Still, higher economic development than this makes the effect of democracy stronger. Low economic development may hinder development of liberal institutions and values.<ref> Mousseau et al. 2003, other papers by Mousseau, and Hegre 2003</ref>
Less internal violence
Most of this article discusses research on relations between states. However, there is also evidence that democracies have less internal systematic violence. For instance, one study finds that the most democratic and the most authoritarian states have few civil wars, and intermediate regimes the most. The probability for a civil war is also increased by political change, regardless whether toward greater democracy or greater autocracy. Intermediate regimes continue to be the most prone to civil war, regardless of the time since the political change. In the long run, since intermediate regimes are less stable than autocracies, which in turn are less stable than democracies, durable democracy is the most probable end-point of the process of democratization Template:Harvard citation. One study finds that the most democratic nations have the least terrorism Template:Harvard citation. One study finds that genocide and politicide are rare in democracies Template:Harvard citation. Another that democide is rare Template:Harvard citation.
One study Template:Harvard citation lists several other studies and states: "Repeatedly, democratic political systems have been found to decrease political bans, censorship, torture, disappearances and mass killing, doing so in a linear fashion across diverse measurements, methodologies, time periods, countries, and contexts." It concludes: "Across measures and methodological techniques, it is found that below a certain level, democracy has no impact on human rights violations, but above this level democracy infuences repression in a negative and roughly linear manner." One study Template:Harvard citation states that thirty years worth of statistical research has revealed that only two variables decrease human rights violations: political democracy and economic development. Of this democracy is more important and more easily created.
Causes
These theories have traditionally been categorized into two groups: explanations that focus on democratic norms and explanations that focus on democratic political structures Template:Harvard citation.
Several of these mechanisms may also apply to oligarchies. The book Never at War find evidence for an oligarchic peace. One example is the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, in which the Sejm resisted and vetoed most royal proposals for war<ref>For a description, see Template:Cite book 2000. Especially Pp. 9-11, 114, 181, 323. </ref>, like those of Władysław IV Vasa.
Democratic norms
One example from the first group is that the democratic culture may make the leaders accustomed to negotiation and compromise. Template:Harvard citation<ref>Müller and Wolff 1004</ref> A belief in human rights may make people in democracies reluctant to go to war, especially against other democracies. The decline in colonialism, also by democracies, may be related to a change in perception of non-European peoples and their rights Template:Harvard citation.
Bruce Russett (1993) also argues that the democratic culture affect the way leaders resolve conflicts. In addition, he holds that a social norm emerged in the later nineteenth century, that democracies should not fight each other, which has since been fostered by the horrible warnings of the two World Wars and the Cold War. He sees less effective traces of this norm in Greek antiquity. <ref> Russett 1993, p. 5-8, 35, 59-62, 73-4</ref> He thus explains the several crises between democracies that came close to war towards the end of the nineteenth century, between the then comparatively few democracies; whereas the more numerous recent democracies have had no such crises between them. (it is true that none of these ended in war, but actual wars between the Powers were usually avoided. <ref> For the greater tendency of the Powers to be involved in war, see Bremer 1992; the converse of this is that small-poweer status is an external cause of peace. Which side of the borderline Spain falls on depends on which edition of Ted Gurr's list you read..</ref>
Democratic political structures
The case for institutional constrainsts goes back to Kant (1795), who wrote :
- "[I]f the consent of the citizens is required in order to decide that war should be declared (and in this constitution it cannot but be the case), nothing is more natural than that they would be very cautious in commencing such a poor game, decreeing for themselves all the calamities of war. Among the latter would be: having to fight, having to pay the costs of war from their own resources, having painfully to repair the devastation war leaves behind, and, to fill up the measure of evils, load themselves with a heavy national debt that would embitter peace itself and that can never be liquidated on account of constant wars in the future" <ref>Kant, 1795, Cf. Reiss 1970:100</ref>
Kant also held that some wars are to be expected; the resulting suffering is what will convince the nations to actually do the reasonable thing, and establish a lasting peace; and some other theorists agree. <ref> Cederman 2001, p. 18-19, quoting Kant's Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose (1784) </ref>
Democracy thus gives influence to those most likely to be killed or wounded in wars, and their relatives and friends (and to those who pay the bulk of the war taxes) Russet (1993, p. 30). This monadic theory must, however, explain why democracies do attack non-democratic states. One explanation is that these democracies were threatened or otherwise were provoked by the non-democratic states. Doyle (1997) argued that the absence of a monadic peace is only to be expected: the same ideologies that cause liberal states to be at peace with each other inspire idealistic wars with the illiberal, whether to defend oppressed foreign minorities or avenge countrymen settled abroad. <ref> Doyle 1997, p. 272 </ref>
It has also been suggested that democracies rarely fight wars because war, or impending war, tends to destroy democracy; This argument depends only on the internal conditions of one state; it shouldn't matter whether the war is with a democracy or not. It is therefore a mechanism for the general, or monadic, peacefulness of democracies. Mousseau and Shi (1999) studied all states, inquiring whether the onset of war decreased democracy, either temporarily or permanently, and found most wars had no significant effect, but some did. <ref>Mousseau and Shi 1999</ref>
Studies show that democratic states are more likely than autocratic states to win the wars. One explanation is that democracies, for internal political and economic reasons, have greater resources. This might mean that democratic leaders are unlikely to select other democratic states as targets because they perceive them to be particularly formidable opponents. One study finds that interstate wars have important impacts on the fate of political regimes, and that the probability that a political leader will fall from power in the wake of a lost war is particularly high in democratic states Template:Harvard citation.
As decribed in Template:Harvard citation, several studies have argued that liberal leaders face institutionalized constraints that impede their capacity to mobilize the state’s resources for war without the consent of a broad spectrum of interests. Moreover, these constraints are readily apparent to other states and cannot be manipulated by leaders. Thus, democracies send credible signals to other states of an aversion to using force. These signals allow democratic states to avoid conflicts with one another, but they may attract aggression from nondemocratic states. Democracies may be pressured to respond to such aggression—perhaps even preemptively—through the use of force. Also as described in Template:Harvard citation, studies have argued that when democratic leaders do choose to escalate international crises, their threats are taken as highly credible, since there must be a relatively large public opinion for these actions. In disputes between liberal states, the credibility of their bargaining signals allows them to negotiate a peaceful settlement before mobilization.
A game-theoretic explanation similar to the last two above is that the participation of the public and the open debate send clear and reliable information regarding the intentions of democracies to other states. In contrast, it is difficult to know the intentions of nondemocratic leaders, what effect concessions will have, and if promises will be kept. Thus there will be mistrust and unwillingness to make concessions if at least one of the parties in a dispute is a nondemocracy Template:Harvard citation.
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Kantian peace theory
Several studies find that democracy, more trade causing greater economic interdependence, and membership in more intergovernmental organizations reduce the risk of war. This is often called the Kantian peace theory since it is similar to Kant's earlier theory about a perpetual peace. These variables positively affect each other but each has an independent pacifying effect. For example, democracy may empower economic interest groups that may be opposed to disruptive wars Template:Harvard citation, Template:Harvard citation.<ref> See, among others, Russett & Oneal Triangulating Peace and the preliminary papers Russett et al. (1998); Oneal and Russett (1999)</ref> This idea is in keeping with the theory of Institutionalism or Neoliberalism.<ref>Alexander Wendt,Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge, 1999), 68 and chapter 5 passim.</ref> However, some recent studies find no effect from trade but only from democracy Template:Harvard citation, Template:Harvard citation.
It was Michael Doyle (1983) who reintroduced Kant's three articles into democratic peace theory. He argued that a pacific union of liberal states has been growing for the past two centuries. He denies that a pair of states will be peaceful simply because they are both liberal democracies; if that were enough, liberal states would not be aggressive towards weak non-liberal states (as the history of American relations with Mexico shows they are). Rather, liberal democracy is a necessary condition for international organization and hospitality (which are Kant's other two articles) — and all three are sufficient to produce peace. <ref>Doyle 1983, which was substantially republished in 1986, and again into Chapter 8 of Doyle 1997.</ref> Other Kantians disagree.Template:Fact For example, Doyle argument that all three in the triad must be present has not been repeated by other researchers.
Realist explanations
Supporters of realism in international relations argue that it is not democracy that causes the peace.
David E. Spiro (1994) points out at some length that much of the democratic peace is in fact peace between allied democratic states, which have (unlike other alliances), not broken down into war between the allies. He regards this effect as the reality of the demcratic peace; ascribing the rest of it to chance. However, this does not explain why democratic alliances are different.
Christopher Layne (1994) analysed the crises and brinkmanship that took place between non-allied democratic great powers, during the relatively brief period when such existed. He found no evidence either of institutional or cultural constraints against war; indeed, there was popular sentiment in favor of war on both sides. Instead, in all cases, one side concluded that it could not afford to risk that war at that time, and made the necessary concessions. However, other researches have examined some of these crises and reached different conclusions, arguing that perceptions of democracy prevented escalation. Also, there are new explanations different from those that Layne criticzed, like the game-theoretic one discussed below. <ref> Spiro 1994; Layne 1994. Democratic Peace – Warlike Democracies? A Social Constructivist Interpretation of the Liberal Argument </ref> In addition, if the realist explanation were true of all democracies, the results of crises between them would largely depend on their relative strength. A more recent study (2001) denies this. <ref>Gelpi and Griesdorf 2001</ref>
Jeanne Gowa (1999) has criticzed the theory. She finds that there were so few democracies before 1939 that the claims of the theory are not significant. The democratic peace since 1945 she finds significant, but largely explained by the external cause of the Cold War. One may claim that any apparent association between democracy and peace is an illusion, due in part to chance, and in part to peace being induced by other and transient causes. In particular, the presence of a common foe may has frequently induced states, which happen to be democracies, to ally. Joanne Gowa observes that much of the history of peace between democracies consists of Western democracies not going to war with each other while allied against the Soviet Union, and argues that this offers limited hope that non-allied democracies will remain at peace. This again overlaps with the third category above, since there is also an argument that the relative peace of the twenty-first century (so far), is due to the completion of decolonization. (John Mearsheimer offers a similar analysis of the Anglo-American peace before 1945, caused by the German threat.) David Spiro would reply that these stable alliances are the democratic peace; although Gowa denies that the Western powers are in any sense "natural" allies. <ref> Gowa: Bullets and Ballots chapter VI; "A democratic peace does not exist in the pre-1914 world, and it cannot be extrapolated to the post-Cold War era", p.113. Mearsheimer 1990. For the other side, Spiro 1990 .</ref> Gowa explains the Cold War peace between the Western powers as arising from their natural interests, in the traditional realist mode; this does not explain, nor is it intended to, the low domestic violence in democracies.
Gowa's use of statistics has been criticized, with several other studies finding opposing results. Ray objects that the same arguments should show that the Communist bloc would be at peace within itself; and it was not. Again, there were several wars and conflicts within the Western Alliance, but in each case involving a non-democratic member of the Free World Template:Harvard citation, Template:Harvard citation. <ref>Ray 1998 Several of the conflicts Ray cites are nowhere near a thousand battlefield deaths. </ref> One study Template:Harvard citation notes that the explanation "goes increasingly stale as the post-Cold War world accumulates an increasing number of peaceful dyad-years between democracies."
Supporters of the democratic peace do not deny that realist factors are also important. Research supporting the theory has also shown that factors such as geographic contiguity, alliance ties, and major power status impact interstate conflict behavior Template:Harvard citation.
Criticisms
There are at least six logically distinguishable classes of criticism. Note that they usually apply to no wars or few MIDs between democracies, not to little systematic violence in democracies.
- That the researcher has not applied his criteria, for democracy or war or both, accurately to the historical record.
- That the criteria are not reasonable. For example, critics may prefer that liberal democracy should exclude or include both Germany and the United Kingdom at the time of World War I, rather than count one as democratic and the other non-democratic, when they were quite similar societies. One should also recall that, before World War II, Adolf Hitler was democratically elected (a view rejected by William Allen), and so we cannot rely on democracy in itself to result in peace with other democracies. Democracy has meant different things at different times.
- That the theory may not actually mean very much, because it has limited its data below the level of significance, or because it promises only a limited peace, involving only a small class of states; for example, democracies have fought many offensive colonial and imperialistic wars (c.f., above, that the idea of democracy has also changed over time). Setting aside the question of whether the democratic peace applies to these cases at all, the predictions of democratic peace theory may still be limited. No researcher denies that democracies have acted against one another by covert or non-military means. Even small military confrontations between democracies have happened.
- That it is not democracy itself but some other external factor(s) which happened to be associated with democratic states that explain the peace.
- DPTs tend to stick to the negative Kantian definition of peace — namely, absence of war — implying that the Cold War could in theory be considered 'peaceful'. The lack of explication makes a central element of the theory considerably unsound.
- Lastly, it has been argued that democratic peace theory is not really a theory but more of an observation that, historically speaking, democracies have been less likely to wage war amongst themselves. As such, this 'observation' does little to establish democratic peace as a stable referent within international relations.
Often, the same theory will be seen as vulnerable to several of these criticisms at the same time.
Claimed errors
Spiro (1994) have criticized the democratic peace theorists for errors of fact and method. His most serious crticism applies to the statistical methods which calculate an expected number of wars between pairs of democracies by calculating the whole number of pairs of states at war and then multiplying by the proportion of pairs of states which are both democracies. He argues that the whole number of belligerent pairs is inflated by counting relatively formal states of war: In the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, several lesser German principalities took part on both sides. The number of pairs here is vastly increased by counting all of these as at war with each other, even when their forces never met. Again, Belgium was formally at war with North Korea and China during the Korean War, although fewer Belgians were killed than by falling off ladders. Spiro also shows that both wars and democracies are so rare that a war between democracies is unlikely in most years, even before making these corrections. One complication is that few states have been democracies continuously for two centuries; which can be handled by weighting each pair of democracies by the number of years they have both been democratic. Another is how do you count wars? If years matter, do you weight a war that lasts ten years ten times as much as a war that lasts one; or do you count onsets of war, and count each of these as one war? If countries A, B, and C, go to war against the alliance of D and E, is that one war or six? Is it still six if C never meets E on the battlefield? Russet (1995) and Maoz (1997) responded to this, for example with different methodology. <ref>Russett 2005</ref> <ref>Spiro 1994, Maoz 1997, Template:Cite journal </ref>
Some democratic peace theorists have been criticzed for reclassifiying some conflitcs without pruning the whole list of formal wars similarly. Supporters and opponents of the democratic peace <ref>Bremer 1992, Gleditsch 1995; Gowa Ballots and Bullets.</ref> agree that this is bad statistics.
There are also some difficulties in the application of statistical methods to the problem, especially to question of causation.<ref> The difficulties and disputes involved are discussed at some length in Case studies and theory development in the social sciences by Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett. </ref>
The military affairs columnist of the Asia Times criticizes the theory as subject to the no true Scotsman problem. Exceptions are explained away as not being being between real democracies or being real wars. <ref> No true Scotsman fights a war Asia Times 31 January 2006, by their military affairs columnist</ref>.
New democracies
Mansfield and Snyder, who support that well-established liberal democracies have not made war, state that emerging democracies with weak political institutions are especially likely to go to war, whether or not they win, as a means of handling internal tension. They find that all wars between democracies involve one less than five years old.<ref> Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War. Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder. : MIT Press, 2005, as reviewed in Owen 2005</ref> A review Template:Harvard citation cites several other studies finding that this increase in the risk of war happens only if many or most of the surrounding nations are undemocratic. Ray also argues that since one of articles by Mansfield and Snyder were published in Foreign Affairs, they "obviously intended to discourage policies inspired by the democratic peace proposition that were designed to bring about such transitions."<ref> ftnote. 48.</ref>
Limited claims
Liberal states do conduct covert operations against each other; the covert nature of the operation, however, prevents the publicity otherwise characteristic of a free state from applying to the question.<ref> Doyle 1997, p. 292</ref>.
Some democratic peace theorists require that the executive result from a substantively contested election. This may be a cautious definition: For example, the National Archives of the United States notes that "For all intents and purposes, George Washington was unopposed for election as President, both in 1789 and 1792". (Under the original provisions for the Electoral College, there was no distinction between votes for President and Vice-President: each elector was required to vote for two distinct candidates, with the runner-up to be Vice-President. Every elector cast one of his votes for Washington<ref> http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/votes/1789_1821.html#1788 [7]</ref>, John Adams received a majority of the other votes; there were several other candidates: so the election for Vice President was contested.) Theories that require an actual transfer of power between parties<ref>Rummel attributing this view to Ray</ref> would exclude the administration of John Adams. While later view would appear to exclude much of the early United States from the list of democracies, this has not been a subject of controversy in the academic literature.
Many democratic peace theories do not count conflicts as wars which do not kill a thousand on the battlefield; thus not the bloodless Cod Wars. Theories with a time lmit do not forbid, and are not violated by, aggression by an established democracy against a new, nascent or incipient democracy.
Colonial wars and imperialism
One criticism against a general peacefulness for liberal democracies is that they were involved in more colonial and imperialistic wars than other states during the 1816-1945 period. On the other hand, this relation disappears if controlling for factors like power and number of colonies. Liberal democracies have less of these wars than other states after 1945. This might be related to changes in the perception of non-European peoples, as embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. <ref> Ravlo and Glieditsch 2000 </ref>
Related to this is the human rights violations committed against native people, sometimes by liberal democracies. One response is that many of the worst crimes were committed by nondemocracies, like in the European colonies before the nineteenth century, in King Leopold II of Belgium's privately owned Congo Free State, and in Stalin's Soviet Union. England abolished slavery in British territory in 1833, immediately after the First Reform Bill had significantly increased democracy. (Of course, the abolition of the slave trade had been enacted under the Tories; and many DPTs would disclaim so undemocratic a state as Melbourne's England in other contexts.)
External causes
There has been a confluence of the old theory (dating back to Richard Cobden and Benjamin Constant) that Free Trade will produce and ensure peace,<ref> See John Morley:Life of Richard Cobden and Francois Furet: Passing of an Illusion. </ref> with the modern theory that trade will produce democracy, or at least spread it to the non-democratic trading partner, as argued by Houshang Amiramahdi and others. According to this, democracy and peace are indeed correlated, because they arise from a common cause.Template:Citation needed
Countercriticisms
Image:DP CHART V19.JPG Image:DP BACKSIDE V 16.JPG
The theory is well-studied with more than a hundred researchers having published many more articles. <ref> Template:Cite web </ref> Several peer-reviewed studies mention in their introduction that most people who undertake research into the theory accept it as an empirical fact, including several of those mentioned below.<ref> For example: [8][9][10][11], [12]. </ref>
Correlation is not causation. However, many studies, as those discussed in Template:Harvard citation, Template:Harvard citation, Template:Harvard citation, supporting the theory have controlled for many possible alternative causes of the peace. Examples of factors controlled for are geographic distance, geographic contiguity, power status, alliance ties, militarization, economic wealth and economic growth, power ratio, and political stability. Several studies have also controlled for the possibility of reverse causality from peace to democracy Template:Harvard citation,Template:Harvard citation, Template:Harvard citation.
Several studies and reviews argue that the Realist criticisms are flawed. This include the critical studies made by Layne, Spiro, Gowa, and Rosato mentioned above. The critical realist studies are argued to have methodological problems and be contradicted by others which are better made. Template:Harvard citation, Template:Harvard citation, Template:Harvard citation, Template:Harvard citation.
One study Template:Harvard citation finds and mentions several other studies finding that democracies conduct diplomacy differently and more conciliatory compared do nondemocracies.
The same study argues that the peacefulness appears and disappears rapidly when democracy appears and disappears. This makes it unlikely that variables that change more slowly are the explanation.
Wars tend very strongly to be between neighboring states. Gleditsch (1995) showed that the average distance between democracies is about 8000 miles, the same as the average distance between all states. He believes that the effect of distance in preventing war, modified by the democratic peace, explains the incidence of war as fully as it can be explained. <ref>Gleditsch 1995; </ref>
Imre Lakatos suggested that what he called a "progressive research program" is better than a "degenerative" when it is can explain the same phenomena as the "degenerative" one, but is also marked by growth and the discovery of important novel facts. In contrast, the supporters of the "degenerative" program do not make important new empirical discoveries, but instead mostly adjustments to their theory in order to defend it from competitors. On study argues that the democratic peace theory is now the "progressive" program in international relations. The theory can explain the empirical phenomena previously explained by the earlier dominant research program, realism in international relations. In addition, the initial discovery, that democracies do not make war on one another, has created a rapidly growing literature and a constantly growing list of novel empirical regularities. Template:Harvard citation, Template:Harvard citation, Template:Harvard citation. Many of these findings are mentioned above. Another example is that a review Template:Harvard citation lists several studies finding that democracies are more likely to ally with one another than with other states. Such alliances are likely to last longer than alliances involving nondemocracies.
Regarding how significant the theory is, Rummel argues that the continuing increase in democracy worldwide will soon lead to an end to wars and democide, possibly around or even before the middle of this century.<ref>Rummel's Power Kills website, viewed February 10, 2006</ref> The Human Security Report, released in October 2005 by the Human Security Centre, documents the dramatic decline in warfare and civil wars since the end of the Cold War. However, it claims that the two main causes of this decline are the end of the Cold War itself and decolonization; but also claims that the three Kantian factors have contributed materially. <ref> Human Security Report 2005 p.148-150. </ref> The improvement in the peace of the world since the end of the Cold War has been tabulated here.<ref> See the Global Confilict Trends page of the Center for Systematic Peace.</ref>
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Notes
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References
- Babst, Dean V. "Elective Governments--A Force For Peace." The Wisconsin Sociologist 3 (1, 1964): 9-14.
- Babst, Dean V.. "A Force For Peace." Industrial Research (April 1972): 55-58.
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- Brown, Michael E., Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller. Debating the Democratic Peace. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996. ISBN 0262522136.
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- Doyle, Michael W. Ways of War and Peace. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997. ISBN 0393969479.
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- Gleditsch, Nils P. (1995). "Geography, democracy and peace". International Interactions 20:297–314
- Gowa, Joanne. Ballots and Bullets: The Elusive Democratic Peace. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. ISBN 0691070229.
- Hegre, Håvard (2003) "Disentangling Democracy and Development as Determinants of Armed Conflict." Presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association. Abstract.
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- Huth, Paul K., et al. The Democratic Peace and Territorial Conflict in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge University Press: 2003. ISBN 0521805082.
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- Lipson, Charles. Reliable Partners: How Democracies Have Made a Separate Peace. Princeton University Press: 2003. ISBN 0691113904.
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- Ray, James Lee. Democracy and International Conflict: An Evaluation of the Democratic Peace Proposition. University of South Carolina Press: 1998. ISBN 1570032416.
- Ray, James Lee "A Lakatosian View of the Democratic Peace Research Program"; chapter 6 of Template:Cite book 2003.
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- Rummel, R.J. Power Kills: Democracy As a Method of Nonviolence. Transaction Publishers: 2003. ISBN 0765805235.
- Russett, Bruce & Oneal, John R. Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations. W. W. Norton & Company: 2001. ISBN 039397684X.
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- Weart, Spencer R. Never at War: Why Democracies Will Not Fight One Another. Yale University Press: 2000. ISBN 0300082983.
External links
Supportive
- Rummell's website
- Spread of Democracy Will Make World Safer, Historian Says a moderated webchat with Victor Davis Hanson hosted by the Department of State, International Information Program.