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The democratic peace theory or simply democratic peace (often DPT and sometimes democratic pacifism) is a theory in political science and philosophy which holds that democracies—specifically, liberal democracies—never or almost never go to war with one another. A more general version is that all kinds of systematic violence is rare in and by democracies. Despite criticism, it has grown in prominence among political scientists and has become influential in the policy world.

History of the theory

The idea 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 thought that 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.

In 1964, Dean Babst was the first to claim that statistical evidence supported the theory. Thereafter, an increasing amount of research has been done on the theory and related subjects. More than one hundred researchers have contributed to the literature according to an incomplete bibliography . Despite criticism, it has grown in prominence among political scientists and has become influential in the policy world. Scholar Jack Levy famously remarked that the democratic peace is "the closest thing we have to an empirical law in the study of international relations"

Presidents of both American parties have expressed support for the theory. "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." Bill Clinton's 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 .

Statistical studies supporting the DPT

War and liberal democracy can be defined in different ways. The studies supporting the DPT have often defined war as any military action with more than 1000 killed in battle. This is the definition used in the Correlates of War Project which has also supplied the data regarding the wars and the militarized disputes for many of the studies. The early researcher R.J. Rummel required liberal democracies to have voting rights for at least 2/3 of all adult males and that the democracy should be older than 3 years at the start of the war. He also has some implicit criteria; for example, the chief officer of the democracy must have had a contested election. Another example is requiring that at least 50% of the adult population is allowed to vote, and that there has been at least one peaceful, constitutional transfer of executive power from one independent political party to another by means of an election. Many researchers have used the Polity Data Set which score states for democracy on a continuous scale for every year from 1800 to 2003. There are also many other data sets used in conflict research .

Numerous studies using many different kinds of data, definitions, and statistical analyses have found support for the democratic peace theory. They have concluded that no wars have been fought between liberal democracies and that this is statistically significant when compared with the wars fought with and between nondemocracies during the last two centuries. There is also much research showing that all kinds of systematic violence is rare in and by democracies . Most statistical work has focused on the 19th and 20th centuries, but there is also some research on the applicability of the theory outside this period .

Militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) include the disputes that later will become wars but also the disputes causing less than 1000 or even no battle deaths but including for example a military display of force. There have been more than 2000 MIDs since 1816, allowing more detailed statistical analyses than when looking at wars. Research using a continuous measure of democracy shows that the most democratic nations have the least MIDs. There is an ongoing debate regarding whether it is the most authoritarian or the intermediate regimes that have the most MIDs. When examining these MIDs in more detail, the inter-liberal disputes have on the average more hostility, but are less likely to involve third parties, hostility is less likely to be reciprocated, when reciprocated the response is usually proportional to the provocation, and the disputes are less likely to cause any loss of life . Enduring militarized competition between democratic states is rare. 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 .

Democracies do sometimes attack nondemocracies. Several papers show that democracies are overall slightly less involved in war, initiate wars and MIDs less frequently than nondemocracies, and tend more frequently to seek negotiated resolutions . A recent theory is that democracies can be divided into "pacifist" and "militant". While both avoid attacking other democracies, "militant" democracies have a tendency to distrust and use confrontational policies against dictatorships. Most MIDs by democracies since 1950 have involved only four nations: the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, and India .

In international crises that involved the threat or use of military force, if the parties were democracies, then relative military strength had no effect on who won. This is different from when nondemocracies were involved. This pattern was the same for both allied and nonallied parties .

Research also shows that wars involving democracies are less violent and that democracies have much less democide . 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 . The fall of Communism and the increase in the number of democratic states were accompanied by a sudden and dramatic decline in total warfare, interstate wars, ethnic wars, revolutionary wars, and the number of refugees and displaced persons .

Causes

One idea is that democracies have a common culture and that this creates good relations. However, there have been many wars between non-democracies that share a common culture. Democracies are however characterized by rule of law, and therefore the inhabitants may be used to resolve disputes through arbitration rather than by force. This may reduce the use of force between democracies.

Another idea is that democracy gives influence to those most likely to be killed or wounded in wars, and their relatives and friends. However, democracies sometimes attack non-democratic states. One explanation is that these democracies were threatened or otherwise were provoked by the non-democratic states. This idea also suggests that the relationship in the DPT became stronger when graphic movies and television made wars less romantic.

Lake (1992) reports that democratic states are more likely than autocratic states to win the wars. He argues that this is because 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. Bueno de Mesquita & Siverson (1995) find that interstate wars do 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.

See also the "Causation is not correlation" section below for a discussion of the hypothesis that it is not democracy itself but some other factor(s) associated with democratic states that explain the peace.

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. See the section "Specific historic examples" below.
• That the criteria are not appropriate in discussing the record. For example, critics may prefer that "democracy" should exclude or include both of Germany and England during WWI, rather than separate them into democratic and non-democratic.
• That the peace theory does not actually mean very much. For example, that it applies to few states (very few before the twentieth century), and doesn't actually limit their behavior to each other very much. Any reasonable border which excludes WWI Germany may also excludes almost all states before the Cold War.
• That such peace as there has been between democracies is at least in part due to external causes. See the section "Correlation is not causation" below.

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.

Specific historic examples

Note that the following concerns the claim of no wars between liberal democracies and not other claims like fewer MIDs.

Liberal democracy?

For the First World War critics have argued that the German Empire was a democracy, (the Reichstag was elected by universal male suffrage and it did vote overwhelmingly to fund the war), or that Britain was not a democracy (only 2/3 of British males could vote , to say nothing of the Empire beyond the Seas, the majority of which had no say in the decision at all). Supporters respond that the German Kaiser had the executive power and could appoint and dismiss the Chancellor, the Imperial officials, and the officers. He could declare an offensive war together with the not democratically elected Bundesrat, 30% of which was appointed by the Emperor, and most of the rest by the German princes. The Reichstag had little control over the executive power and its legislative power was greatly limited by the Bundesrat which also could veto amendments to the constitution. In effect, therefore, especially in foreign and military affairs, there was little democratic control. The Emperor was also the King of Prussia which had 3/5 of the German population and the Prussian constitution gave him even greater power there. The landed aristocracy of the Junkers formed the officer corps of the army, dominated Prussia, and had strong influence on national politics as well . If Britain was not a liberal democracy, then this is another reason why WWI was not a war between democracies. The last argument may however weaken the statistical support for the DPT, because fewer democracies mean fewer possible wars.

There can be similar responses to other objections. During the War of 1812, only a small minority had the right to vote in the United Kingdom, many new urban areas had no representation, the ballot was not secret, many seats in Parliament were appointed or openly bought from the owners of rotten boroughs, and the House of Lords could veto all laws. The defenders of DPT exclude the American Civil War because, in addition to it being an internal conflict, in the Confederate States of America only 30-40% of male population could vote and there was never a competitive presidential election. Similarly, only a minority had the right to vote in the Boer republics before the Boer Wars. Nawaz Sharif, the president of Pakistan at the time of the Kargil War, used terror tactics to silence critical press and the previously independent judiciary, for example storming the Supreme Court in order to force the Chief Justice out of office. Yassir Arafat, the president of the Palestinian Authority at the start of the latest conflicts with Israel, and Slobodan Milosevic, the president of the Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War, can be criticized on similar grounds. There was never a democratic election in the Philippines before the Philippine-American war. All the Mexican presidents at the time of the conflicts with the U.S., like Mariano Paredes y Arrillaga, took their power in coup d'etats. At the time of the War of the Pacific, Chile and Peru had suffrage requirements like literacy or property that excluded almost all of the population. Spain had the Turno system during the Spanish-American War.

Liberal democracies before the nineteenth century?

Whether the pre-modern states that once identified themselves as democracies fulfill modern criteria remains controversial. In Ancient Greece, such city-states did fight wars between each other (most noted is the Athenian expedition against Syracuse during the Peloponnesian War). Many do not deem Ancient Greek city-states as sufficiently democratic because of the large numbers of slaves and other non-voting inhabitants. It is estimated that only 16% of the population in Athens had the right to vote. There were also three great wars between Roman republic and Carthage; and Rome sacked Athens. Similar questions arise about the persistent wars among Venice, Florence, Genoa, and other Renaissance city-states. These states were also not as democratic as modern democracies, but at least as much as Athens and more so than Syracuse.

An interesting case is the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which had some qualities of today's democracies and in which szlachta (the nobles), using Sejm (a parliament), blocked many monarchs' attempts to declare a war on other countries. Some scholars have put forward the Swiss Confederation (or parts of it) and the Six Iroquois Nations as early examples of communities of democratic states upholding the theory.

Deaths in battle

The rule of at least 1000 killed in battle excludes attacks by one democracy on another in such overwhelming force that there is no effective resistance, and thus few deaths in battle. Some Indian Wars and small scale foreign interventions by the United States may be examples.

Democracies have engaged in covert conflict resulting in a change of regime on the losing side. The British- and American-supported 1953 coup d'etat in Iran against Mohammed Mossadegh and the 1954 U.S.-backed coup in Guatemala, led by Carlos Castillo Armas are examples of such events, also excluded.

The United Kingdom issued a formal declaration of war on Finland in 1941 as a reaction to the Continuation War, when Finland allied with Germany in attacking the Soviet Union. However, the United Kingdom's only significant act of war happened prior to the declaration (a Royal Air Force raid on German-run mining operations in Petsamo), Finland spent the Second World War fighting a totalitarian opponent who had previously attacked the nation, the United Kingdom and Finland for almost the whole of WWII carefully avoided attacking each other, and the casualties were too few to be classified as a war statistically. There have been very few formal declarations of war since WWII and using this as the definiton of war would mean that for example the US has fought no wars since WWII. The lavish material support the United Kingdom and the United States provided to Soviet Union raises the question if democracies can make war against other democracies through proxies.

Rummel's time limit

Rummel's version of the DPT has a requirement that the democratic states must be older than three years. This excludes the war between the French Second Republic and the Roman Republic (19th century). The First Balkan War is excluded if one considers the Ottoman Empire to have become democratic after the first election in November 1908 or when the constitution was amended so that the parliament could control the cabinet in April 1909. The war started in October 1912, which would be before four years had passed. Critics instead argue that democracy occurred in July 1908 when a constitution was introduced. It is also doubtful if the opposing Christian states fulfill the democratic criteria since the Kings continued to have extensive powers in all of them. Studies using the Polity data set have required a score of least 7 out of 10, which excludes both the French Second Republic (6) and the Ottoman Empire (3) at the time of the wars.

The time limit and and other requirements like democratic institutions and elections on both sides, also exclude civil wars within democracies over legitimacy or secession, such as the American Civil War, the Sonderbund war, the Anglo-Irish War and the Irish civil war which followed, and the 20th century civil wars in Colombia, Spain, Uruguay and Sri Lanka.

Colonial and imperialistic wars

One criticism against a general peacefulness for 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. Democracies had 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 .

Correlation is not causation

A statistical association does not establish causality. Critics have thus argued that the absence of wars and the few MIDs may be explained by other factors in democratic states that are not related to democracy. Supporters of the DPT argue that many studies have controlled for such factors and that the DPT is still validated. For example, 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.

The Kantian peace theory

Studies show that more trade causing greater economic interdependence and membership in more intergovernmental organizations reduce the risk of war. Democracy, interdependence, and intergovernmental organizations are positively related to each other but each has an independent pacifying effect. This is often called the Kantian peace theory since it is similar to Kant's earlier theory about a perpetual peace .

Economic development

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. This level is quite low and 91% of all the democratic pairs passed this criteria during 1885–1992 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 .

Geographic isolation

Critics have argued that few democracies mean that they are geographically isolated and thus unable to make war with each other. As described above, several of the studies finding evidence for the DPT have controlled for this. Glieditsch (1995) demonstrated that democratic pairs of nations have not been more geographically separated than non-democratic pairs . Supporters also note that today more than 50% of all nations are democratic .

The bloc peace theory

Joanne Gowa argues in Ballots and Bullets: The Elusive Democratic Peace, 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 institutionalized alliances. (Many states belonged to neither: examples are Communist China after 1961 and democratic Sweden.) 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.

Considering the time before the Cold War, these critics point out that before the Entente Cordiale and the First World War, there was only a limited period during which France, Great Britain, and the United States were non-allied and democratic Great Powers. Several disputes occurred between two of them. They were conducted as fiercely as many diplomatic conflicts involving a non-democratic state and war had some public support 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. On the other hand, the external threat from Communist states did not exist or was weak and thus cannot or have difficulty explaining why democracies allied with each other in this period. There were also democratic nations beside these Great Powers. When there were conflicts between democracies, this did not cause wars.

These critics admit that 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. They argue that 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.

On the other hand, that 12% of all formal treaties failed can be seen as very high. While not statistical evidence, DPT supporters point out that external threat did not prevent several wars between Communist nations: the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Cambodian-Vietnamese War, and the Sino-Vietnamese War. There were also minor conflicts, not meeting the threshold of deaths, particularly the Sino-Soviet border conflict and the Prague spring.

DPT supporters also point out that external threat did not prevent wars in the Western bloc between democracies and dictatorships. One example is the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, at a time when Cyprus had British military bases and close ties to Turkey's NATO partner Greece. Another is the Football War. However, the US put pressure on the combatants to stop the Football War which fits the bloc peace theory. A third is the 1965 US invasion of the Dominican Republic. The 1967 Six Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War may also be wars within the Western bloc, because Iraq belonged to CENTO, the US and the UK were also member, and the UK had nuclear weapons deployed on Cyprus for the defense of CENTO until 1975 . Israel received extensive aid during the Yom Kippur War from the US. Bloc peace theory supporters note that the Soviet-Iraqi Treaty of Friendship was signed in 1972. All of these wars had more than 1000 military casualties . The Falklands War almost qualify (936 causalities).

More importantly, many studies that show support for the DPT have controlled for alliances . Gowa and another study have argued that democracies had more MIDs than nondemocracies before WWI, but more recent studies show the opposite . There is no explanation for the low domestic violence in democracies or why relative military strength does not influence the outcome of crises between democracies .

DPT supporters also argue that there has been continued peace between democracies after the end of the Cold War. Critics disagree and even if true they note that the European Union and NATO still exist and that they contain some of the democracies capable of maintaining a war. However, there are many democracies outside Europe . The threat from the Communist states which Gowa thought explained both the peace and the alliances has largely disappeared. Contrary to what could be expected from Gowa's theory, the fall of Communism and the increase in the number of democratic states were accompanied by a sudden and dramatic decline in interstate warfare .

References

• 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
• 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.
• Russett, Bruce. Grasping the Democratic Peace. Princeton University Press: 1994. ISBN 0691001642.

External links

Supportive

• A scholarly review of published studies
• Democide, Democracy and the Man from Hawaii
• Rummel's website
  • List of relevant literature.

Critical

• The Myth of Democratic Pacifism
• Criticisms of this article

See also

• The End of History
• War
• World peace
• Perpetual peace

• Political theories
• Peace
• Futurology