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A democratic peace theory or simply democratic peace (often DPT and sometimes democratic pacifism) is a theory in political science which holds that democratic states - specifically, liberal democracies - never or almost never go to war with one another. Monadic theories tend to be more oriented to political philosophy, and to emphasise the internally peaceful nature of democracies. More general theories developed from the monadic version claim that all systematic violence is rare within, and between, democracies. Dyadic theories, usually statistical analyses of historical data sets, also take into consideration wars between democracies and non-democracies, and for comparison, wars between non-democracies.
Democratic peace theories are highly controversial, and the findings of individual studies are often vigorously disputed. Most of that controversy has arisen from the misuse of the theory, especially dyadic versions, to suggest that democracies are objectively better than non-democracies. This is a questionable claim: Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy never went to war with each other, but that is not an argument for a world of fascist dictatorships. Nevertheless, democratic peace theories are, in practice, used as an argument for western cultural superiority, and for democratisation, even by force. Crude versions of democratic peace theory have been quoted by political leaders, as an argument for wars of democratisation. For these reasons, democratic peace theory was until recently seen as a pro-western and pro-democracy theory, reflecting historicist ideas about the inevitable global triumph of western values. However, disappointment about the results of some post-Soviet democratisations, increasing scepticism about forced democratisation, and opposition to the occupation of Iraq have eroded support for the assumption of inherent superiority of democracy. More recent dyadic theories also seek theoretical explanations for wars by democracies against non-democracies, including the 'militant democracy' thesis, which reverses the original expectations that democracies are more peaceful than non-democracies.
Such theories have also been referred to as the "liberal peace" or the "Kantian peace" in honor of Immanuel Kant, who proposed an early version of the theory.
History of the theories
Main article: Perpetual peaceThe idea that democracy is a source of world peace came relatively late in political theory, one contributing factor being that democracies were very rare before the late nineteenth century. No ancient author seems to have thought so. Early authors referred to republics rather than democracies, since the word democracy had acquired a bad name until early modern times. Nicolo 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 held that peace would, in addition to representative government, need a league of nations, and "hospitality": freedom of movement and trade, like the Schengen Treaty.
The peacefulness of responsible governments was the basis for the American policy of George Canning and the foreign policy of Palmerston. It was also represented in the liberal internationalism of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and of H.G. Wells, who argued in August 1914 that popular governments would not go to war with each other, and therefore that the First World War could be the War that will End War.
More recently, Presidents of both American parties have rhetorically based their policies on the democratic peace;
- 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. William Clinton's 1994 State of the Union Address, Jan 25, 1994
- 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. George W. Bush at the White House Press Conference, 12 November 2004.
Development of the modern theory
In 1964, Dean Babst, then a Wisconsin criminologist, published a paper asserting that no two democracies had ever been at war with each other, and substantially republished it in an industrial trade journal in 1972. This was also claimed at greater length in 1979 by R.J. Rummel, professor of Political Science at the University of Hawaii, and much of this research is available on his web-site.
Michael Doyle was the first democratic peace theorist to observe the similarity to Kant, and published a largely accurate summary of Kant's essay. He, working with Bruce Russett, distinguished between the strong form of the theory (that democracies tend to be peaceful in general) and the weak form (that they tend to be peaceful with each other). He also studied the even weaker proposition that liberal regimes have less purely internal conflict.
Democratic peace theories
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
Democratic peace theorists have used different terms for the class of states they consider peaceable; Babst called them elective, Rummell liberal democracies, Doyle liberal regimes. In general, these require not only that the government and legislature be chosen by free and genuinely contested elections, but more besides
There are several lists of democracies. Ted Gurr drew up a list of government types by country and year, the Polity Data Set. This is a ranking on two ten-point scales, one for the degree of democracy, one for the degree of autocracy; but he calls the countries which score above 6 on the first scale simply the democracies; and those which score above 5 on the second, the autocracies. Gurr calls States which do neither anocracies; no state has yet done both. Many theorists simply use the binary version of Gurr's list: democracy/no democracy.
Dean Babst made his own decisions on what was a democracy. He required also a secret ballot, asserting (wrongly) that this existed in the United States back to 1789 and in Britain back to the 1830's. More recent theorists have set a numerical limit on suffrage, say, that half or two-thirds of the male population be able to vote.
War
Many theorists have used the convenient list at the Correlates of War Project at the University of Michigan, which compiled the wars from 1816 to 1991 with at least a thousand battlefield casualties. This data is particularly convenient for statistical analysis, and the large-scale statistical studies cited below have generally used this definition.
Babst excluded wars in which one democracy was not independent at the start of the war, on the grounds that the war was not their decision; it was on this basis, unfortunately, that he attempted to exclude the Boer War. Rummel extended this to exclude wars in which one state had not yet been a democracy for three years, on the ground that democracy and the associated customs had not stabilized.
Claims
Democratic peace theorists make two possible connections between democracy and war:
- Babst, Singer, Rummel and Doyle claimed that democracies, properly defined, have never made war on each other; such DPTs face the difficulty that Ted Gurr classes both Spain and the United States as democracies in 1898, the year of the Spanish-American War.
- Most more recent studies assert that two democracies are less likely to make war on each other than other pairs of states. Some studies make the somewhat stronger claim that the chance of war between two states is correlated with their scores on Gurr's democracy index.
While the following claims are not strictly part of the theory, they have been made by various democratic peace theorists and form an important part of the analysis of causes.
- The more democratic two nations are, the less the violence between them. (This may include violence short of full-scale war, or may be a claim that such wars as do occur between democracies are waged with restraint.)
- Democracies engage in the least amounts of foreign violence.
- Democracies use less violence in their internal affairs. In particular, modern democracies do not murder their citizens.
Democracies have done harm to each other in ways short of full-scale war. Depending on the theory involved, these may not be counterexamples:
- civil wars within a democracy over legitimacy or sucession;
- attacks by one democracy on anotherin such overwhelming force that there is no effective resistance,and thus few deaths in battle;
- covert conflict resulting in a change of regime on the losing side;
- attacks by an established democracy upon a newly declared one;
- proxy wars, in which a democracy helps non-democratic opponents of another democracy.
Causes
"Correlation does not prove causation," is a bedrock standard of statistical analysis. In order to bridge the gap from a statistical curiosity to a meaningful theory, the researcher must first identify a mechanism, and (ideally) make falsifiable predictions based on that mechanism.
There has been much research into possible mechanisms for a democratic peace. These do not, in general, depend on whether an absolute or statistical peace is being asserted. Many such explanations focus on the fact that the consent of the citizenry is necessary for a democracy to initiate and sustain a war. Even where emergency powers allow the executive to act without legislative approval, public acceptance, at the least, is needed to avoid an electoral backlash.
Kant made the straightforward point that, since an absolute prince can order war "without the least sacrifice of the pleasures of his table, the chase, his country houses, his court functions, and the like", he will be likely to do so for light or trivial causes that the citizenry would never find sufficient. This, however, would explain why democracies prefer peace with all states, not just with each other. The wars of democracies with non-democracies must therefore be explained by other motives, such as provocations from reckless non-democratic states, or a belief that the two systems cannot peacefully co-exist.
Other scholars suggest a theory of common culture: the citizens of democratic societies tend not to view the citizens of other democracies as enemies, and wars against other democracies are unlikely to get the necessary support. This resembles Kant's article of "hospitality", as do the economic arguments of Angell and Schumpeter.
A recent paper by Mousseau, Hegre and Oneal presents statistical evidence that the democratic peace is real, but that it only applies when there is substantial economic development (at least $1400 US per capita). Moreover, the paper found that trade is also a significant force for peace, irrespective of the level of democracy. The paper goes on to note that the three factors of trade, development and democracy, are interrelated. This triad recalls the original Kantian theory, and Oneal has specifically acknowledged this in other works.
Rummel dismisses all of these as superficial. Kurt Lewin and Andrew Ushenko propose that democracy involves a pervasive social mechanism (called a "social field") in which, "The primary mode of power is exchange, political system is democratic, and democratic government is but one of many groups and pyramids of power." In contrast, authoritarian systems involve a "social anti-field", " divides its members into those who command and those who must obey, thus creating a schism separating all members and dividing all issues, a latent conflict front along which violence can break out." Thus, the citizens of a democracy are habituated to compromise, conflict resolution, and to viewing unfavorable outcomes as temporary and/or tolerable.
Statistical studies of DPTs
Many different kinds of statistical analyses have been used on democratic peace theories. A neural net was employed to evolve its own peace theory: it found the three Kantian variables of democracy, economic interdependence and international organizations the most important, but that distance, common alliance, and power ratio were also significant.
Democracies do sometimes initiate wars against authoritarian states. Some argue that democracies usually enter these wars because they are provoked by authoritarian states. Several papers show that democracies are slightly, but significantly less involved in wars in general than others states, and that they also initiate wars less frequently than non-democratic states .
A recent theory is that democracies can be divided into "pacifist" and "militant". While both avoid attacking democracies, "militant" democracies have tendency to deep distrust and confrontational policies against dictatorships and may initiate wars against them. Most wars by democracies since 1950 have involved only four nations: the U.S., the U.K., Israel, and India .
Criticisms
There are four logically distinguishable classes of criticism of any DPT:
- That its creator was not accurate in applying his criteria to the historical record.
- That the criteria are not appropriate in discussing the record.
- That the peace theory does not actually mean very much. For example, that it applies to few states (very few before the twentieth century), or doesn't actually limit their behavior to each other very much.
- That such peace as there has been between democracies is at least in part due to external causes.
For example, almost all DPTs handle the First World War by asserting that Central Powers were not democracies because: the Kaiser had the power to appoint his ministers, he and the General Staff made the decision for war, as did Franz Josef in Austria-Hungary, and that many structural features of the Reich made democratic institutions ineffective. Ottoman Turkey raises very complex questions of how much power the Sultan had by 1914, and how much the Young Turks were answerable to the parliament they had called.
The first class of criticism argues either that Germany was a democracy (the Reichstag was elected by universal suffrage, its votes of no confidence did cause governments to fall, and it did vote on whether to fund the war - which passed overwhelmingly), or at least that it was no less democratic than Britain (the 1911 elections enfranchised only 60% of the British male population, and most of the British Empire had no say in the decision at all). The second class prefers a border of 'democracy' that lies in the interval between both Germany and England, on the one end, and perfect democracy on the other; or between both of them and totalitarianism. (The DPT theorist Rummel has said that the word 'democracy' was not important to his argument; but his use of it has made his claim far more interesting.) The third class observes that any reasonable border which excludes Wilhelmine Germany also excludes almost all states before the Cold War. The fourth class explains the Cold War democratic peace as a special case.
These tend to overlap, being in fact complementary criticisms, and many critics make more than one of them. It is particularly hard to tell the first two classes apart on 1914 Germany, since DPTs must reject it on qualitative, not numerical, grounds.
The Cold War peace
The chief external cause, cited (with many other criticisms) in Joanne Gowa's Ballots and Bullets: The Elusive Democratic Peace, is that the structure of the international political system during the Cold War was responsible for creating the illusion of a democratic peace. At about the same time many of today's democracies came into existence, the Cold War divided much of the world into two systems of permanent institutionalized alliances. (Many states belonged to neither; chief among these was the People's Republic of China after 1961.)
These critics ascribe the inter-democratic peace of the period to this structure of blocs: almost all the democracies of the Cold War were members of the Western bloc, and the members of that bloc abstained from attacking one another in a collective effort to contain Communism: which was perceived to be a far bigger threat than any intra-alliance conflict.
Not only was the system of alliances produced by this common interest; also, once it had come into existence, the relations between two members of the bloc were not permitted to decline into full-scale war; the alliance provided their common allies with the interest and the leverage to prevent it.
There have been wars between members of other alliances, although one study finds that 88% of the treaties made in the last two centuries have been kept. This line of criticism need not claim that alliances prevent all wars; just that the NATO alliance, and the common interest it represented, caused enough peace that the rest may be the result of other causes or of chance.
External causes
In addition to the external cause of the Cold War, the democratic peace has been attributed to wealth, as above, and to geographic isolation. Some democratic peace theorists have controlled for these variables. Bremer (1992, 1993) controlled for contiguity, power status, alliance ties, militarization, economic development, and power ratios. Maoz & Russett (1992, 1993) and Russett (1993) controlled for contiguity, alliance ties, economic wealth and growth, political stability, and power ratios. They also studied the period from 1945 and 1986 and discounted all pairs that did not involve a major power or nations that were not geographically continuous. .
Before the Cold War
Before the Entente Cordiale and the First World War, there was a limited period during which France, Great Britain, and the United States were non-allied and democratic Great Powers. During this time, several disputes occurred between two of them. None led to war; but they were conducted as fiercely as many diplomatic conflicts involving a non-democratic state; and war was popular on both sides. Between the two World Wars, France and Britain were allies. The United States either acted as their ally, or did not act in international affairs at all.
References
Most of the following are from Rummel's extensive bibliography:
- Beck, Nathaniel, and Richard Tucker. Democracy and Peace: General Law or Limited Phenomenon? Midwest Political Science Association: April 1998.
- Correlates of War Project
- Brown, Michael E., Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller. Debating the Democratic Peace. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996.
- Doyle, Michael W. Ways of War and Peace. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997.
- Gowa, Joanne. Ballots and Bullets: The Elusive Democratic Peace. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.
- Huth, Paul K., et al. The Democratic Peace and Territorial Conflict in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge University Press: 2003. ISBN 0521805082.
- Levy, Jack S. “Domestic Politics and War.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 18, No. 4, (Spring, 1988), pp. 653-673.
- Lipson, Charles. Reliable Partners: How Democracies Have Made a Separate Peace. Princeton University Press: 2003. ISBN 0691113904.
- Polity IV Project: Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800-2002
- Plourde, Shawn Democide, Democracy and the Man from Hawaii May, 2004
- 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. Does Democracy Cause Peace? Annual Review of Political Science 1998:1, 27-46
- Rummel, R.J. Power Kills: Democracy As a Method of Nonviolence. Transaction Publishers: 2003. ISBN 0765805235.
- Rummel, R.J. The Democratic Peace
- Russett, Bruce. Grasping the Democratic Peace. Princeton University Press: 1994. ISBN 0691001642.
- Russett, Bruce and John R. O'Neal: Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations . New York: W. W. Norton, 2001.
- Schwartz, Thomas, and Kiron Skinner. The Myth of Democratic Pacifism. The Wall Street Journal. January 7, 1999.