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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.
Personal political interests and differing interpretations of concepts such as 'war' and 'deomcracy' have lead to many similar but distinct theories. Nevertheless, these are all grouped together as 'Democratic Peace Theory', which is often shortened to 'DPT'.
History of the Theory
Pre-WWII
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.
Modern Development of the Theory
In 1964, Dean Babst was the first to claim that statistical evidence supported the theory. He published a paper asserting explicitly that no two democracies had ever been at war with each other. This was also claimed at greater length in 1979 by R.J. Rummel, professor of Political Science at the University of Hawaii.
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 (or monadic) form of the theory (that democracies tend to be peaceful in general) and the weak or dyadic 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.
Presidents representing both American parties have expressed support for the theory. Bill Clinton: "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." Similar comments have come from George W. Bush.
Political Use of the Theory
Most of that controversy surrounding DPT 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. Democratic peace theories are, in practice, used as an argument for democratisation and (somewhat hypocritically) for military intervention. For example, Margaret Thatcher quoted it to justify the Falklands War.
For these reasons, democratic peace theory was until recently seen as a pro-western and pro-imperalist theory, reflecting historicist ideas about the inevitable global triumph of western values. However, disappointment about the results of some post-Soviet democratisations and increasing scepticism about forced democratisation 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, mentioned later in this article.
Contents of the Theories
Monadic theories claim that democracies tned to conduct their affairs more peaceably, whether with other democracies or not. More general theories developed from the monadic version claim that two democracies are less likely to make war on each other than other pairs of states. This reflects most modern theories.
Dyadic theories claim that democracies are more peaceable with each other; but make various assertions about their relations to other states (The separate peace and militant democracy theories claim that democracies are more likely to go to war with non-democracies). Some dyadic theories, such as those forwarded by Babst, Singer, Rummel and Doyle claim that democracies, properly defined, have never made war on each other. They argue that there are special reasons why wars between democracies do not occur.
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. Many researchers have used the Polity Data Set which scores 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.
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 deaths. This data is particularly convenient for statistical analysis, and the large-scale statistical studies cited below have generally used this definition. This also includes the Falklands War, although it killed only 910 (or 936, or 960) soldiers. It satisfied most other criteria to be a war, and a few dozen deaths should not exclude it.
Statistical Studies Supporting DPT
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. Statistical significance has also been proved for these claims, when compared with the wars fought with and between nondemocracies during the last two centuries. However, democratic peace theories are highly controversial, and the findings of individual studies are often vigorously disputed.
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. 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.
Democracies do sometimes attack nondemocracies. Many earlier papers found that democracies in general are as warlike as nondemocracies, but according to several recent papers 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. Research has examined the effect of different democratic institutions. One finding is that proportional representation is associated with less external and internal systematic violence.
Explanations
Various explanations behind why deomcracies appear to be more peacful have been attempted.
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.
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. Alternatively, it might be suggested that democracies are more likely to target 'easy victories', given the high probability in deomcratic statesthat a political leader will fall from power in the wake of a lost war.
Criticisms
Ward that Some Claim Involved Two or More Democracies
Two classic cases of critcisms concern the Spanish-American War of 1898, in which many see both the United States and Spain as democracies in 1898; and the First World War, in which some scholars have claimed that both Germany and the United Kingdom, on opposing sides, were democracies.
General Critcisms
There are at least four logically distinguishable classes of criticism. Firstly, it is claimed that the criteria has not been applied accurately to the historical record. For example, some critics have argued that Germany was a democracy at the time of WWI, whilst most studies claim it was not.
Secondly, many believe that the criteria for democracies are not historically appropriate. For example, critics may prefer that liberal democracy should exclude or include both of Germany and England at the time of WWI, rather than separate them into democratic and non-democratic.
Thirdly, it is claimed that the theory may not actually mean very much. This is because there very few liberal democracies before the twentieth century, which itself was dominated by the Cold War - an idelogical struggle between democratic and non-democratic states.
Fourthly, it is claimed that it is not democracy itself but some other external factor(s) associated with democratic states that explain the peace. Alternative explanations include:
- The comparitavely high affluence of democratic nations
- The low proportion of democratic nations in the world means their geographic isolation; wars with neighbours have thus been with non-democratic states
- The Cold War peace was maintained not through the shared democratic values of the 'First World', but by the antagonism between two conflciitng ideologies
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 do not deny that other factors affect the risk of war but argue that many studies have controlled for such factors and that the DPT is still validated. Examples of factors controlled for are contiguity, power status, alliance ties, militarization, economic wealth and economic growth, power ratio, and political stability. Studies have also controlled for reverse causality from peace or war to democracy.
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.
External links
Supportive
- Rummel's website
- A survey paper that sums up in favor of DPT
- 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.