Week 12 Designing Social Inquiry
Democratic Peace Scholarship
Proponents vs. Critics
I36005
Soohyung Ahn
Question
• Read Layne, Spiro, and Correspondence.
 What are the major points of
contentions (in terms of methodology)
between these scholars? Who do you
think has won the debate?
Contents
• Democratic peace theory + proponents
• The element of democratic peace
theory
• Critics on this theory
• Who won the debates?
Democratic Peace Theory
•Democratic peace is the
proposition that democracies
do not fight each other.
•Immanuel Kant’ essay
“Perpetual Peace.”
• A republican constitution is
the most desirable
circumstance for perpetual
peace.
Immanuel Kant
•The checks and balances
and international law.
The elements of
democratic peace theory
- Structural element : democratic structures
give citizens leverage over government
decisions. Therefore, a democratic leader is
less likely to initiate a war with another liberal
democracy.
- Normative element : shared democratic and
liberal values explain the peace that exists
between democratic states.
Michael Doyle
• Statistic
-
A computerized database on interstate wars.
In statistical analysis, he found no liberal nations
fought wars with each other since 1816.
(“the complete absence of wars” or “zero wars”)
Bruce Russett
• The causes of peace : the two elements.
- democratic peace theory relies on two causal
explanations.
1) institutional constraints
2) democratic norms and culture
Critics on the theory
David Spiro
1) Definition
A statistical artifact in terms of its definition.
- They selectively choose definitions of
key variables so that data analysis
yields the results they seek.
- Democracy and War
Immanuel Kant
2) The data
• Zero is a insignificant result and is predicted by
random chance.
- Why? Although he used a computerized database, he did not
perform any probability analyses to disclose why zero is
statistically significant.
- Example? Lotteries
- Actually, the absence of war between liberal democracies is
not a significant pattern for the past two centuries.
- The number of wars between democracies is not statistically
different from what random chance would predict.
- Furthermore, both wars and democracies are rare over the
past two centuries.
Critics on the theory
Christopher Layne
• criticizes two elements of
democratic people theory
(institutional constraints /
democratic norms and
culture)
• it is just a matter of degree
• It is difficult to prove the
cases why a non-event did
not happen
- The dog that did not
bark agreement.
The main points of critics
• This theory use only the data which
support their position and exclude
evidence they cannot explain for their
good.
• The theory is based on normative theory,
which cannot be substantiated.
Who won the debates?
• On the surface, Layne and Spiro can be
considered the winner in the argument.
• “the dog that did not bark argument”
• Therefore, Neither position is perfect