A Democratic Peace?
Paul Bacon
SILS, Waseda University
Republican Liberalism
• Liberals believe that there are basically only two
different types of state in the international system.
• These are democracies and non-democracies.
• If this is true, it follows that three types of dyadic
relationship are possible.
• 1. Non-democracy – non-democracy.
• 2. Non-democracy – democracy.
• 3. Democracy – democracy.
• Can you give me examples of wars for each of these
dyadic types of international relations?
Democratic Peace Theory
• According to Democratic peace theory
(DPT), liberal democracies never or
almost never go to war with one another.
• Democratic peace theory has become
influential in the policy world in Western
countries.
• Scholar Jack Levy famously remarked
that democratic peace theory is ‘the
closest thing we have to a law in
international politics.’
So what!?
• War is one of the most serious problems in the
international system.
• If democratic peace theory is true, then it provides us
with a way to break the realist cycle.
• This also suggests that domestic politics DO matter.
– The domestic politics of a state dictate the
international relations which that state is capable of
engaging in.
• Moreover, the number of democracies in the world is
increasing, and, if democratic peace theory is correct,
this suggests that the number of conflicts will reduce.
• Theoretically, if all of the countries in the world
became democratic, then the threat of war would
disappear.
History of the theory
• The idea that democracy is a source of
world peace came relatively late.
• Immanuel Kant first stated the theory of
a peace between liberal democracies in
his essay ‘Perpetual Peace’ written in
1795.
• At that time there were very few
republics in the Western world and none
of them was truly democratic by today's
standards.
History of the theory
• Since World War I, there has been
widespread popular rhetoric that
democratic states are peace-loving, but
the idea was not systematically studied
by social science.
• The gradual spread of liberal
democracy in the world in the second
half of the 20th century drew greater
attention to the relationship between
democracy and peace.
Democide
• According to Rummel, nearly
174,000,000 people have been
murdered by their governments in the
20th Century, 1900-1999.
• This figure is over four times the
number of combat deaths in all
international and domestic wars during
the same period.
• If all these dead were to populate a
nation, out of some 190 nations in the
world it would be the sixth largest.
Causes of the democratic peace?
•
•
•
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Rule of law.
Transparency.
Takes time to make decisions.
Democracies have a culture of peaceful
conflict resolution.
• War between democracies can not be
justified.
• In democracies, governments are responsible
to the people. And the people do not want
war.
• Trade relations/complex interdependence.
Statistical Evidence
• Rummel studied all wars between
1816 and 1991. He found 198 wars
between non-democracies, 155
wars between democracies and
non-democracies, and 0 wars
between democracies.
• He argues that this is strongly
statistically significant. For example,
during the 1946-1986 period there
were 45 states that had a
democratic regime; 109 that did not.
Definition of War
• War is often defined as any military
action which results in more than 1,000
battle deaths .
• This is the definition used in the
authoritative Correlates of War project
at the University of Michigan.
• This project identifies 2000 cases of
armed wars or other conflicts after 1816.
Definitions of democracy
- A democracy is defined as a stabilized
liberal democracy.
- Rummel requires democracies to
possess certain absolute criteria:
- There should be voting rights for at
least two-thirds of all adult males.
- A democratic system should also have
been in place for more than three years.
Definitions
Ray has argued that:
• At least 50% of the adult population
is allowed to vote.
• There has been at least one
peaceful, constitutional transfer of
executive power, from one
independent political party to
another, by means of an election.
Definitions
• The most widely used data set in
democratic peace theory research is the
Polity dataset, put together by a number
of scholars, most prominent among
whom is Ted Gurr.
• The Polity dataset does not codify
states in a binary fashion
(democracy/non-democracy)
• It gives each state a democracy score
and an autocracy score for any given
period.
Criticisms of the theory
• Critics of the theory have claimed
that there are many exceptions to
it:
- Germany during WWI
- The American Civil War
- Finland/UK war during WWII
Criticisms of the theory
• Rummel‘s requirement that
democratic states must be older
than three years excludes some
wars.Rummel’s criteria also
exclude civil wars within
democracies over legitimacy or
secession, such as the American
Civil War.
Criticisms of the theory
• The ‘1000 killed in battle’ definition
excludes attacks by one democracy
on another of such overwhelming
force that there is no effective
resistance, and thus few deaths in
battle.
• Democracies have engaged in
covert conflict resulting in a change
of regime on the losing side. For
example, the British- and
American-supported 1953 coup
d’etat in Iran.
Criticisms of the theory
• Correlation is not causation
• Critics have argued that peace may
be explained by other factors that
are not related to democracy. For
example:
• Geographical isolation.
• ‘Bloc peace theory’.
‘Bloc peace’ theory
• The bloc peace argument is offered by
Joanne Gowa in Ballots and Bullets: The
Elusive Democratic Peace.
• According to this argument, 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 as many of today's
democracies came into existence, the Cold
War divided much of the world into two
systems of permanent institutionalized
alliances.
‘Bloc peace’ theory
• Critics such as Gowa therefore claim that the
inter-democratic peace of the period is
explained by a larger ‘bloc peace theory’.
• Almost all the democracies of the Cold War
period were members of the Western bloc,
and the members of that bloc did not go to
war with each other.
• The ‘First World’ nations were allied with
each other, chiefly in NATO. There was very
little possibility of them attacking one another.
• This was because they were united in a
collective effort to contain the bigger threat
posed by Communism.
‘Bloc peace’ theory
• Gowa observes that the system of alliances between
the democracies was therefore produced by this
common interest.
• Also, once the alliance system had come into
existence, the relations between two members of the
bloc were not permitted to decline into full-scale war.
• The alliance provided common allies with the interest
and the leverage to prevent it.
• Critics of DPT therefore conclude that democratic
peace theory relies on a body of evidence drawn
disproportionately from a period dominated by the
Cold War.
• During the Cold War, the division of the world into
east and west was more important than other
potential conflicts.
Criticisms of the bloc peace theory
• Supporters of the DPT argue that according
to the logic of Gowa’s theory, there should
therefore have been no wars at all in the
Western bloc, including no wars involving
dictatorships, and also no wars in the
opposing Communist bloc.
• 1. However, there WERE several wars
between Communist nations: the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan, and the CambodianVietnamese War.
• There were also minor conflicts, not meeting
Rummel's threshold of deaths, particularly the
Sino-Soviet border conflict, and the Prague
spring. Another possible counter-example is
the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.
Criticisms of the bloc peace theory
• 2. There were ALSO wars within the Western
bloc between democracies and dictatorships,
supporters of DPT argue, thus disproving the
bloc peace theory.
• 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.
Criticisms of the bloc peace theory
• 3. Supporters of DPT argue that there were many
wars between dictatorships in the third World during
the Cold War.
• 4. Supporters of DPT also note that there were no
wars between democracies in the Third World during
the same period.
• 5. Supporters also argue that external causes cannot
explain the continued peace between democracies in
Europe after the end of the Cold War.
• 6. There are also many democracies outside Europe
who have not fought other democracies.