Schultz, Kenneth A. 1999. Do Domestic Institutions Constrain or Inform?
Contrasting Two Institutional Perspectives on Democracy and War. International
Organization 52, no. 2 (Spring), pp. 233-66.
Schultz devises an empirical test to shed light on the democratic peace – specifically,
why democratic states do not fight wars with each other. He outlines two competing
theories to test:
1) Institutional constraints model: institutions promoting accountability and
competition tend to increase the political risks associated with waging war.
Drawn from Kant’s observation that representative political institutions give voice
to the people who suffer personally from war and thus make war more costly to
wage, ceterus paribus. BMD and Lalman argue that democratic institutions make
it easier for challengers to unseat a government that undertaking costly or failed
policy, and that war is therefore more risky for democratic leaders. Others argue
that democratic institutions diffuse decision-making authority, making it easier
for doves to veto war.
2) Informational model: democratic institutions help reveal information about the
government’s political incentives in a crisis by increasing the transparency of the
political process and/or by improving the government’s ability to send credible
signals. Drawn from the bargaining literature – states go to war instead of striking
a bargain because of informational asymmetries and the incentives to bluff.
Democracies are able to send more credible signals of their resolve because
audience costs make it more difficult to back down once a signal is sent (see
Fearon, 1994). Also, open political competition in democracies makes bluffing
more difficult (opposition parties have an incentive to reveal their opposition,
which constrains the government’s ability to threaten, but also makes threats for
credible. Finally, media freedoms lead to transparency, which makes it easier for
foreign governments to obtain information about the government’s preferences
and constraints.
Since both theories are constructed from and predict democratic peace, the lack of war
between democracies cannot be used to distinguish between them. Instead, Schultz
constructs a formal model of the threat/escalation process and determines that the theories
have opposite predictions about how states respond when threatened militarily by
democracies.
1) Institutional constraints model: The target state should be more likely to resist,
since democratic leaders face a higher political cost for waging war and are thus
less likely to carry out their threats.
2) Informational model: The target state should be more likely to resist, because
democracies engage in less bluffing behavior, and threats are thus more likely to
be genuine.
Empirics: Schultz uses COW data on militarized international disputes from 1816 to 1980
to model the probability that a target state will reciprocate militarily when confronted by
a challenge. He finds:
1) The likelihood of reciprocation is lower when the initiating states is a democracy
than when it is not.
2) A regime shift in the initiating state from a non-democracy to a democracy leads to
an almost 25% reduction in the likelihood of a military response from the target
state. This is equivalent to the effect of a shift in power status from a minor to a
major power.
Schultz argues that these results lend support to the informational model, although they
do not discredit the institutional constraints model. This is because (1) the results could
be tainted by selection bias, where democracies – due to the high cost of failed war policy
– systematically target those states that are least likely to reciprocate; (2) the models may
not be competing – both may be correct simultaneously.
Critique:
1) Schultz claims to be testing the democratic peace theory – why democracies do not
fight each other. The models he pits against each other, however, should hold
whether or not the target state is democratic. If both states are democratic, it is
true that they should be least likely to fight. However, there should be differences
between democratic-authoritarian and authoritarian-authoritarian dyads.
2) It is possible that authoritarian states do have (or can create) high audience costs
for themselves, especially in high cost conflicts. This analysis may, therefore,
pertain better to low- and medium-cost conflicts.