A Democratic Peace

1
A Democratic Peace?

• Paul Bacon
• SILS, Waseda University
• PH201

2
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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Rummels Theory

• Kants theory was expanded in the 1970s by
  Rummel.
• The following five propositions formed the basis
  of Rummels original theory
• 1. Democracies do not make war on each other.
• 2. The more democratic two nations are, the less
  the violence between them.

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Rummels Theory

• 3. Democracies engage in the least amounts of
  foreign violence.
• 4. Democracies display, by far, the least amounts
  of internal violence.
• 5. Modern democracies have virtually no democide.
  

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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.

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Democide

• If all these dead were to populate a nation, out
  of some 190 nations in the world it would be the
  sixth largest.
• A related but slightly different concept is
  Rummels law, which states that the less freedom
  a people have, the more likely their rulers are
  to murder them.

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Causes of the democratic peace?

• Many theoretical arguments have been put forward
  as explanations for the democratic peace
• Democracies are characterized by the RULE OF LAW,
  and are therefore more likely to resolve disputes
  between them through arbitration.
• Democracies share A COMMON CULTURE the citizens
  of democratic societies are less likely to view
  the citizens of other democracies as enemies.
  Because their support for war is necessary (due
  to democratic decision-making), war is less
  likely.

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Causes of the democratic peace?

• Democracies are INHERENTLY PEACEFUL. Wide citizen
  participation ensures that decision making power
  lies in the hands of those most likely to be
  killed or wounded in wars, and their relatives
  and friends (Rummel).
• Democratic countries tend to be capitalist
  states, whose TRADE RELATIONS with one another
  create interdependence among them (Schumpeter).
• This INTERDEPENDENCE limits the ability and
  willingness of democratic nations to go to war
  with each other, due to the incurred costs in
  lost trade.

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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.

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Statistical Evidence

• There were thus 6,876 state dyads, of which 990
  were democratic-democratic dyads. None of the 990
  fought each other.
• The probability of this lack of war between
  democracies being due to chance is virtually 100
  to 1.

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Statistical Evidence

• Babst (1972) concluded that no wars had been
  fought between democracies between 1789 and 1941.
  
• Singer (1976) supported this.
• Doyle (1983) found that constitutionally secure
  liberal states have yet to engage in wars with
  one another.
• Ray (1993, 1995) found no wars between
  democracies.

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Statistical Evidence

• Maoz Abdolai (1989) analyzed all wars between
  1816 and 1976 and found no wars between
  democracies.
• They found that this is statistically
  significant.
• They also found less lower-level conflicts
  between democracies.
• Breemer (1992) reported similar findings for the
  years between 1816 and 1965.

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Definitions

• 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.
• Democracy is defined as a stabilized liberal
  democracy.

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Definitions

• - 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.

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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.

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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.

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Criticisms of the theory

• Critics point out that democracy and peace
  are essentially contested concepts.
• They are difficult to operationalize for
  measurement.
• They are subjective, so there is a risk of
  manipulation to arrive at a predetermined
  conclusion.

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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

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Criticisms of the theory

• The criteria for liberal democracies leave very
  few democracies before the late nineteenth
  century. For example
• During much of the period of Rummels study, the
  US barely met Rummels criteria, if at all.
• The UK did not qualify until after the Third
  reform Bill 1888.

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Criticisms of the theory

• Critics argue that Rummel actually uses a tighter
  definition of democracy than that which he
  offers in his official criteria.
• This leaves few democracies before the late
  nineteenth century.
• This makes the theory weaker, since very few
  democracies mean very few possible wars between
  democracies.

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Criticisms of the theory

• Rummel's requirement that democratic states must
  be older than three years excludes some wars.
• Rummels criteria also exclude civil wars within
  democracies over legitimacy or secession, such as
  the American Civil War.

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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 detat in Iran.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Criticisms of the bloc peace theory

• Supporters of the DPT argue that according to the
  logic of Gowas 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 Cambodian-Vietnamese 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.

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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.

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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.

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Further responses to criticism of the theory

• Maoz Russet studied the period between 1945 and
  1986. They discounted all dyads that did not
  involve a major power or nations that were not
  geographically continuous. The DPT was still
  validated.
• Bremer (1992) and other studies also support this
  conclusion.
• Gliditsch (1995) demonstrated that democratic
  dyads have not been more separated than
  non-democratic dyads.
• Supporters of the theory also note that today
  many more nations are democratic.

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End of Lecture.
Thank you for your attention.