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According to most theories of the democratic or liberal peace, established democracies with wide suffrage rarely go to war with one another. This is an incomplete list of wars between democracies, that is, wars between polities that have a constitutionally democratic form of government; most of them are minor wars, between new democracies, or ones without wide suffrage.

Definition dependence

Almost all of these depend on the definition of "democracy" (and of "war") employed. As James Lee Ray points out, with a sufficiently restrictive definition of democracy, there will be no wars between democracies: define democracy as true universal suffrage, the right of all - including children - to vote, and there have been no democracies, and so no wars between them.

On the other hand, Ray lists the following as having been called wars between democracies, with broader definitions of democracy: The American Revolution including the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War, the French Revolutionary Wars, the War of 1812, the Belgian Revolution, the Sonderbund War, the war of 1849 between the Roman Republic and the Second French Republic, the American Civil War, the Spanish American War, the Second Phillippine War, the Second Boer War, World War I, World War II (as a whole, and also the Continuation War by itself), the Israeli War of Independence, the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947-1948, the Six-Day War, the Yugoslav Civil War, and the Armenia-Azerbaijan War.

Early Democracy

Wars involving the Greek democracies

The Peloponnesian war included a great many conflicts among Greek city-states. The principal war was between Athens (and her allies), most of them democracies, on one side, and Sparta, (and her allies), most of them oligarchies - although most of them held elections among a citizen body. But the war lasted for twenty-seven years, with a brief armistice, and a great many side-conflicts occurred; and states changed from democracy to oligarchy and back again. Most notable of the wars between democracies was the Sicilian Expedition, 415 BC-413 BC, in which Athens went to war with Syracuse. Bruce Russett finds 13 conflicts between "clear" democratic pairs (most of these being Athens and allies in the Sicilian Expedition) and 25 involving "other" democratic pairs. Mogens Herman Hansen, the classicist, thinks one of Russett's examples unlikely, but adds several instances of wars between democracies before and after the Peloponnesian War.

Wars involving the Roman Republic

In particular, the Punic Wars, 264 BC-146 BC, with over 1000 deaths in battle. The leaders in both Rome and Carthage were elected; the sources on the functioning of government at Carthage are scattered paragraphs in Livy, Polybius, Plutarch, and Aristotle, not directly concerned with such questions as suffrage. The conduct of the Roman Republic, before its collapse in the late first century BC, is amply documented; its magistrates (including the Roman Senate, which was composed of current and former magistrates) were elected by universal suffrage by adult (male) citizens; all male citizens were eligible. There was a political class of wealthy men; most successful candidates belonged to this class, and all of them were supported by a party drawn from it, but this does not distinguish Rome from other democracies - nor, indeed, from non-democratic states; freedom of speech was, however, a characteristic difference between the Republic and the later Roman Empire.

Eighteenth Century

• The American Revolution, including the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War of 1780-1784.
• Pennamite-Yankee War of 1784: Pennsylvania against Connecticut and Vermont.

Nineteenth Century

• War of 1812
• Belgian Revolution against the Netherlands of 1830-8
• Sonderbund War
• War of 1849 between the Roman Republic and the Second French Republic
• War of 1859 between Peru and Ecuador.
• American Civil War
• Spanish-American War
• First and Second Boer Wars.
• Second Philippine War.

Twentieth Century

• First World War. All of the Central Powers had elected parliaments; the Reichstag had been elected by universal suffrage, and voted on whether a credit essential to the German conduct of the war should be granted. Whether this is democratic control over the foreign policy of the Kaiser is "a difficult case."
• Polish-Lithuanian War: Fought in 1920, with about 1000 estimated battle deaths. In both states, elections had been held with universal suffrage. In the polity scale, Poland received a +8 rating in combined democracy/autocracy in 1920, while Lithuania received a +7 in democracy and a +4 in combined democracy/autocracy. The conflict is by both Polish and Lithuanian historians seen as a part of the wars of independence from the Soviet Union (see the article on the Polish-Lithuanian War).
• Continuation War: A formal state of war between Great Britain, Australia and Canada, on one side, and Finland on the other, resulting from the Finnish invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941; there was actual conflict between Great Britain and Finland, including an air raid against Finnish territory, with associated attacks on Finnish shipping, although that took place some months before the declaration of war.
• Israeli War of Independence: as against Lebanon.
• First Kashmir War
• Six-Day War: The Lebanese air force intervened against Israel, both then being democratic states; the same policy set classifies Lebanon as an anocracy, its neologism for imperfect or disputable democracies. although it was called at the time "the only Arab democracy." On the other hand, R. J. Rummel claims, in discussing the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, that Israel was "only partially free" in 1967 - because of the economic policies of the Israeli Labour Party.
• Paquisha War: War fought in 1981 between Ecuador and Peru. The leaders of both countries had been democratically elected. Ecuador receives a rating of +9 in the polity scale of combined democracy/autocracy, while Peru receives a +7, meaning that both countries are classified as democratic, and Ecuador even as "very democratic". However, the "war" involved only as high as two hundred deaths in battle. Furthermore, the Peruvian democracy was less than one year old and the Ecuadorian less than 3 years. In addition, both nations lacked democratic control over their militaries. p. 70, 316.

References

1. James Lee Ray: "Wars between democracies: Rare, or nonexistent?", International Interactions Volume 18, Issue 3 February 1993 , pages 251 - 276; child suffrage and from Ray, Democracy and International Conflict p.88. Restricted definitions of democracy can also be constructed which define away all wars between democracies, and yet include many regimes often held to be democratic; Ray finds this more rhetorically effective than saying that full-scale international war between established democracies with wide suffrage is less likely than between other pairs of states.
2. Bruce M. Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace, p. 47-71; Russett, one of the few to consider the democratic peace before 1750, thinks it likely that the norm of interdemocratic peace developed gradually through the centuries.
3. Hansen et. al.: An inventory of archaic and classical poleis (2005), p. 85 et seq.
4. see for example, Spencer Weart, Never at War on whether there is enough data on the Carthiginian government to classify it in his terms; the government of Carthage is described by Livy, Polybius, and Aristotle.
5. Ronald Syme, The Roman Revolution (1939, repr. and revised 1962, including the view on the oligarchy behind all constitutions.
6. George Modelski, "Is America's Decline Inevitable?" The Bridge 19:2, pp. 11-18, (1988)
7. for the war, see Clark De Leon: Pennsylvania Curiosities, p. 212; for the democracy of Pennsylvania, including tax-payer suffrage and annual elections, see Randall M. Miller and William Pencak, Pennsylvania, a History of the Commonwealth, p. 121; for the annual elections of Connecticut, even before the Revolution, and the democracy and egalitarianism of the 1780s see Stephen R. Grossbart. "Trumbull, Jonathan"; American National Biography Online Feb. 2000; for the democracy of Vermont, see Charles Miner Thompson, Independent Vermont, Houghton Mifflin, 1942.
8. Bruce Russett, Controlling the Sword: the Democratic Governance of National Security (1990), p.123; George Modelski, "Is America's Decline Inevitable?" The Bridge 19:2, pp. 11-18, (1988)
9. John Mueller, "Is War Still Becoming Obsolete?" paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, August–September 1991, p51
10. John Mueller, "Is War Still Becoming Obsolete?" paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, August–September 1991, p51
11. Small, Melvin; Singer, David J. (1976). "The War Proneness of Democratic Regimes, 1816-1965". Jerusalem Journal of International Relations 1: 50–69; Bruce Russett, Controlling the Sword: the Democratic Governance of National Security (1990), p.123
12. Spiro, David E. (1994). "Give Democratic Peace a Chance? The Insignificance of the Liberal Peace". International Security, Vol. 19, No. 2. (Autumn, 1994): 50–86.
13. David Donald, "Died of Democracy", in Why the North won the Civil War, ed. Donald, 1996, pp. 81-114; see also >James M. McPherson: Battle Cry Of Freedom : The Era Of The Civil War, 1988; pp. 309, 329. Also Dean V. Babst. "Elective Governments — A Force For Peace." The Wisconsin Sociologist 3 (1, 1964): 9-14 (he writes of, and defines, freely elective governments, but his papers have been taken as the founding of democratic peace theory, and cited as being about democracies).
14. Jeanne Gowa, Ballots and Bullets: the Elusive Democratic Peace, p.50
15. Bruce Russett, Controlling the Sword: the Democratic Governance of National Security (1990), p.123; on the Orange Free State as direct democracy, see also The Encyclopedia of Religion in American Politics 2:74; in general, see Dean V. Babst. "Elective Governments — A Force For Peace." The Wisconsin Sociologist' 3 (1, 1964): 9-14 (he writes of, and defines, freely elective governments, but his papers have been taken as the founding of democratic peace theory, and cited as being about democracies); Raymond Cohen, "Pacific unions: a reappraisal of the theory that 'democracies do not go to war with each other'", Review of International Studies 20 (3, 1994) 207-223.
16. Spiro, David E. (1994). "Give Democratic Peace a Chance? The Insignificance of the Liberal Peace". International Security, Vol. 19, No. 2. (Autumn, 1994): 50–86; Walden Bello, Visions of a Warless World, p.46, expressly objecting to Rummel's definition of non-democracy as "very loose". Bello gives this as one example; he does not claim to be complete.
17. Doyle, Michael W. (1983a). "Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs". Philosophy and Public Affairs 12 (Vol. 12, No. 3. (Summer, 1983)): 205–235
18. ^ "Polity IV Project". Retrieved March 4, 2006.
19. Small, Melvin; Singer, David J. (1976). "The War Proneness of Democratic Regimes, 1816-1965". Jerusalem Journal of International Relations 1: 50–69
20. Gleditsch, Nils P. (1992). "Democracy and Peace". Journal of Peace Research. 29(4) (4): 369–376. doi:10.1177/0022343392029004001. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Wayman, Frank (2002). "Incidence of Militarized Disputes Between Liberal States, 1816-1992". Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, New Orleans, La., Mar. 23-27, 2002
21. Bruce Russett, Controlling the Sword: the Democratic Governance of National Security (1990), p.123: "the nearest exception"; Russett notes that Singer and Small (see note on the Continuation war) do not count Israel as yet being a democracy.
22. Brecher, Wilkenfeld, and Moser, Crises in the Twentieth Century, I, 122, 129, 209-10; discussed as an example where the states confronting each other are similar in government type, in economic status, but not in religion; since Brecher et al. lump common democracy in with other variables, and consider the greatest difference between pairs of states, not the least, there may be others.
23. Doyle, Michael W. (1983a). "Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs". Philosophy and Public Affairs 12 (Vol. 12, No. 3. (Summer, 1983)): 205–235
24. http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/leb2.htm
25. Parker T. Hart: "A New American Policy towards the Middle East" Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 390, A New American Posture toward Asia (Jul., 1970), pp. 98-113
26. Spiro, David E. (1994). "Give Democratic Peace a Chance? The Insignificance of the Liberal Peace". International Security, Vol. 19, No. 2. (Autumn, 1994): 50–86.)
27. Weart, Spencer R. (1998). Never at War. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-07017-9.

• Political theories