Democratic peace theory

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.

History

Main article: Perpetual peace

Immanuel Kant

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.

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 asking Congress to declare war and is reflected in his two slogans: "a war to end war" 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.

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. Most studies have found some form of democratic peace exists; although neither methodological disputes nor doubtful cases are entirely resolved. . 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." 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."

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. 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. 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. 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 may actually be an argument against a democratic crusade.

Types of theory

What follows is not a division into schools; two theorists may agree on one question and disagree on another.

The separate peace

Are democracies more peaceful everywhere, or only with each other? The first idea is called the monadic theory, the later the dyadic.

Many earlier papers found that democracies in general are as warlike as nondemocracies and only peaceful against other democracies. However, one paper (Müller & Wolff 2004) notes that several recent papers have found democracies are slightly less involved in wars in general, initiate wars and MIDs less frequently than nondemocracies, and tend more frequently to seek negotiated resolutions. The tendency for this varies greatly between different democracies. Thus there may not be a general monadic tendency.

No wars or few?

Is the inter-democratic peace an absolute proposition, or a very strong tendency?

Many researchers have found no wars between democracies (Ray 1998).

The other theorists regard the democratic peace as an empirical or statistical regularity: wars between democracies are rare, or very rare, but not impossible. Some agree that there have not actually been any yet; others see one or two (usually marginal) exceptions. This is discussed further below.

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" 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"..

The Kantian peace

Is liberal democracy sufficient by itself, or do trade and intergovernmental orgranizations also produce peace?

Michael Doyle (1983) 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. Later researchers have not argued that all three are necessary.

Several theorists, led by Bruce Russett and John R. Oneal have since found multiple causes for such general peace as we have seen; usually about three, which resemble Kant's. Several of these theorists call their result the Kantian peace. The modern Kantian theory argues that democracy, more trade causing greater economic interdependence, and membership in more intergovernmental organizations are positively related to each other; but that each has an independent pacifying effect. This idea is in keeping with the theory of Institutionalism or Neoliberalism.

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

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..

The three theorists of an absolute peace have the most restrictive standards of suffrage: Ray requires that 50% of the adult population be able to vote. Weart requires that 2/3 of the adult male population be enfranchised; Rummel uses the same standard "loosely understood". Doyle has a much looser standard for suffrage: either 30% of the adult males were able to vote or it was possible for every man to acquire voting rights, as by buying a freehold. Singer's original 1976 study uses 10% adult suffrage.<rer>Small and Singer 1976, p.55.</ref>

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. Doyle 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."

Rummel and Babst also require secret ballot, which was first practised in 1856; Ray requires an actual peaceful and constitutional transfer of power from one party to another.

The summary of liberal rights: "freedom of speech, religion, and organization; and a constitutional framework of law to which the government is subordinate and that guarantees equal rights" is generally accepted as part of the definition of those states included in the peace.

For much the same reason as the modern theorists insist on liberal democracy , 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.

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. 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.

Nascent democracies

Doyle 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 and Weart 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." Additionally, this allows for other states to actually come to the recognition of the state as a democracy.

Russett also uses somewhat similar definitions for modern wars but has different definitions for Ancient Greece.

War

Wars are a clash or series of clashes, allowing for only one victor, characterized by a highly ritualized beginning and end

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. Some researchers have used different definitions; Weart defines war as more than 200 battle deaths.

Methods

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..

There are some complications here, and one major problem. 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?

There are also some difficulties in the application of statistical methods to the problem, especially to question of causation.

The problem is there really have been few wars, and few democracies, so there isn't enough data to be as sure of the democratic peace as of Boyle's Law "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,.

Lesser conflicts

Stuart Bremer reacted to this by studying lesser conflicts (Militarized Interstate Disputes in the jargon; MID's and wars together are "militarized interstate conflicts") instead, since they have been far more common; and this solution has become popular. Lesser conflics between democracies have been more violent; but rarer, less bloody, and less likely to spread. Democracies are less belligerent, negotiate more, and military conflicts between any two democracies are rarely repeated. There have been many more MIDs than wars; the Correlates of War Project counts several thousands during the last two centuries .

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.

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 (Gelpi & Griesdorf 2001). 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 (Werner & Lemke 1997).

Multivariable studies

Many papers have studied the multiple correlations involving peace or war. For example, Stuart Bremer did a sutdy 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).

Ray collected a dozen such studies showing that democracy has some statistically significant correlation with peace, "even after controlling for a large number of factors" (not, of course, all controlled simultaneously); including economic interdependence, membership in international organizations, contiguity, power status, alliance ties, militarization, economic wealth and economic growth, power ratio, and political stability.

Progressive research program

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, as noted above (Ray 2003), (Chernoff 2004), (Harrison 2005).

Arguments and evidence

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Charts arguing in favour of DPT by R. J. Rummel and others
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The theory is well-studied with more than a hundred researchers having published many more articles. 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.

Less internal violence

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 (Hegre et al. 2001). One study finds that the most democratic nations have the least terrorism (Abadie 2004). One study finds that genocide and politicide are rare in democracies (Harff 2003). Another that democide is rare (Rummel 1997).

One study (Davenport & Armstrong II 2004) 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 (Davenport & Armstrong II 2003) 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.

The post-Cold War peace

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. 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. The improvement in the peace of the world since the end of the Cold War has been tabulated here. Rummel argues that democracy is the main explanation and 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.

Possible exceptions

The three researchers mentioned above have written books arguing that democracies have never ever gone to war. They accomplish this by arguing, that, for every apparent war between "primâ facie democracies", there is some reason why these aren't real democracies or a real war. This rhetorical approach has led to the democratic peace being dismissed as subject to the no true Scotsman problem..

Frank Wayman joins them on the "one narrow point", the fact of no wars between democracies, but deplores the rush to a general conclusion.. Zeev Maoz used to agree on the matter of fact, but has refined his criteria, and now counts the Spanish-American War as a war between democracies. Other authors simply describe war between democracies as "rare", "very rare", "rare or non-existent". Nils Petter Gleditsch and Stuart Bremer 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; 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; Wayman regards the formal declaration of war by Great Britain and Australia as the "most severe" hostility between democracies, but the actual consequences amounted to a single bombing raid and some destruction of commerce. Jeanne Gowa also considers the Spanish-American War and the Continuation War the only outright exceptions to the democratic peace. Correlation studies do not have exceptions, only outliers.

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; Hensel found the same of almost all lesser conflicts. Ray disowns them. Since some of the component articles 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."

Along the same line, Jack Levy wrote, back in 1989, "as close to anything we have to empirical law in international relations."

Kantians have less trouble with exceptions. Bruce Russett sees the Kantian peace as developing in history; therefore he finds the thirteen certain, and thirty-five possible, wars between Greek democracies as part of the history of this development. A democracy which is not part of international organizations and is not part of the international web of hospitality and commerce is not part of the separate peace. Kant himself 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 Kantian theorists agree. Other Kantians do not expect the democratic peace to include undeveloped states; they find that mutual democracy does not have any pacific effect if either of the democracies is poor - in fact the chance of war increases. Naturally, the pacific effect still exists, but is lessened, for countries with less severe poverty. It may well be that the culture of democracy is distorted by the stresses of poverty; the degree required to cancel or reverse the effects of the democratic peace is that of Zimbabwe - a misery unknown among democracies during the period studied.

Causes

The democratic peace has been derived both from institutional and cultural constraints on the behavior of democratic societies. The case for institutional constrainsts goes back to Kant, 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"

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). This mechanism is supported by the example of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, in which the Sejm resisted and vetoed most royal proposals for war, like those of Władysław IV Vasa. 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 argues that democracies are more likely to be provoked than other powers, since they conduct a more idealistic foreign policy.

The other mechanism is that democratic states are culturally inclined to settle their foreign disputes by discussion and conciliation, as they do domestically.,

Bruce Russett 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 ineffective traces of this norm in Greek antiquity. 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. The only such war in the period was the Spanish-American War, between a democracy and a state on the borderline of democracy.)

• Studies also find 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.

Two of the militant democracies listed above were dominant naval powers, and therefore had greater choice whether and where to fight.

A game-theoretic explanation is that the participation of the public and 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.

Possible mechanisms

The democratic culture may make the leaders accustomed to negotiation and compromise (Weart 1998) 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 (Ravlo & Gleditsch 2000).

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 (Ray 1998).

As decribed in (Gelpi & Griesdorf 2001), 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 (Gelpi & Griesdorf 2001), 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 (Levy & Razin 2004).

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 (Oneal & Russett 2001), (Lagazio & Russett 2004). However, some recent studies find no effect from trade but only from democracy (Goenner 2004), (Kim & Rousseau 2005).

Realist explanations

David E. Spiro 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. 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.

Jeanne Gowa 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. 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.

Criticisms

There are at least five logically distinguishable classes of criticism of any theory of democratic peace.

• That the theorist has not applied his criteria, for democracy or war or both, accurately to the historical record. Democracy has meant different things at different times, to establishing a unilinear or ahistorical understanding of democracy as the basis of any such theory will always be ontologically flawed.
• 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.
• 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 are still limited. No theorist 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. One of the more obvious instances of such relationships includes mutual material interests; that is, liberal democracies tend to be situated in the so-termed Global North, and so inter-democratic war would hamper both sides' economic interests, as well as causing worldwide financial insecurity. As such, democratic peace theory reflects dated ontological premises that take no account of the effects of globalisation or (to cite another example) the arguments of dependency theorists such as Immanuel Wallerstein. Moreover, if we stick to Clausewitzian terms (that war is simply "the continuation of policy by other means" (see On War)), liberal democracies have less to fight over as most of their interests are secured by the economic system that favours them. Other postmodern theorists observe that the 'special relationship' between the US and the UK may also reflect a shared language as well as interests. This last argument is, however, very new and has thus far not been fully exposited.
• 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. This criticism's more stark exponents take Doyle's theory to be little more than an apologia for a self-serving interventionist American foreign policy.

Often, the same theory will be seen as vulnerable to several of these criticisms at the same time.

Errors

Spiro (and others) 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. Bruce Russett has responded to this criticism in some detail

Some democratic peace theorists make this situation worse by removing weak instances of democracies at war without pruning the whole list of formal wars – which pruning has never been tried. Supporters and opponents of the democratic peace agree that this is bad statistics.

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. However, just as a pair of dice should roll seven every so often, this unlikehood should have come up over the last two centuries much more frequently than it has, other things being equal.

Some democratic peace theorists make this situation worse by removing weak instances of democracies at war without pruning the whole list of formal wars – which pruning has never been tried. Supporters and opponents of the democratic peace agree that this is bad statistics.

Limited claims

A persistent class of criticism by realist critics has been that "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." This is particularly cogent against the theories which claim that no two democracies have ever gone to war and also with respect to the nineteenth century data. Only half a dozen republics or crowned republics achieved 2/3 male suffrage before the late nineteenth century, and several of those only for a few years.

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..

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, 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 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.

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, 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.

Jeanne Gowa 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. 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.

Countercriticisms

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 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.

Wars tend very strongly to be between neighboring states. Gleditsch 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.

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External links

Supportive

• Rummell's website
  • Rummell's extensive bibliography
• 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.

Critical

• Criticisms of this article
• The Myth of Democratic Pacifism

Neutral

• Summary of common examples and arguments from Matthew White's personal website

See also

• International relations theory
• Peace
• Perpetual peace
• The End of History
• War
• World peace
• Never at War