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Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 1998. 1:27-46.

DOES DEMOCRACY CAUSE PEACE?

James Lee Ray

Department of Political Science, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37235; e-mail:

[email protected]

ABSTRACT

The idea that democratic states have not fought and are notlikely to fight interstate wars

against each other runs counterto the realist and neorealist theoretical traditions thathave

dominated the field of international politics. Since themid-1970s, the generation of new data

and the developmentof superior analytical techniques have enabled evaluatorsof the idea to

generate impressive empirical evidence in favorof the democratic peace proposition, which is

reinforced bysubstantial theoretical elaboration. Some critics argue thatcommon interests

during the Cold War have been primarily responsiblefor peace among democracies, but both

statistical evidence andintuitive arguments cast doubt on that contention. It hasalso been

argued that transitions to democracy can make stateswar-prone, but that criticism too has

been responded to persuasively.The diverse empirical evidence and developing theoretical

basesthat support the democratic peace proposition warrant confidencein its validity.
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]


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INTRODUCTION

The proposition that democratic states do not fight interstatewars against each other is one

of the most influential ideasto appear in the academic subfield of international politicsin

recent years. Nevertheless, the basic idea is an old one.This review briefly traces the history

of the idea that democracyis an important cause of peace and evaluates the evidence inits

favor, necessarily including a discussion of its theoreticalunderpinnings. This essay focuseson the proposition that democraticstates are peaceful in their relationships with each

other,and not on the related but distinct notions that democraticstates are less war-prone in

general, or that the greaterthe number of democratic states in the international system,the

lower the incidence of war in that system. Evidence providedby Morgan & Schwebach

(1992),Bueno de Mesquita & Lalman(1992),Rummel (1995, 1997), Siverson (1995), Benoit

(1996),Rousseau et al (1996), Huth (1996), Gleditsch & Hegre (1997),among others, casts

some doubt on the validity of the widespreadassumption or assertion that democratic states

are just asconflict- or war-prone as undemocratic states, in general [thoughnot in their

relationships with each other (see Ray 1998)].Theoretical discussions and interpretations of

relationshipsbetween the proportion of democratic states in the systemand the incidence of

war in the system (Maoz & Abdolali1989, Maoz 1996, McLaughlin 1996, Gleditsch & Hegre

1997,Senese 1997) have tended to overlook or obscure problems involvedin making

inferences across different levels of analysis (seeRay 1997b).

THE HISTORY OF THE IDEA

The most often cited classical source of the idea that democracyis an important force for

peace is Immanuel Kant's 1795essay,"Perpetual Peace." Kant was, however, no admirer of
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democracy.According to him, perpetual peace would occur only when stateshad civil

constitutions establishing republics. According toDoyle (1983a, p. 226), for Kant a republic

was a regime thatrespected private property and established a legal equalityamong citizens

as subjects "on the basis of a representativegovernment with a separation of powers."

More recent influences have come into play, of course, amongthem Woodrow Wilson.

"President Wilson became the world's mostinfluential statesmen in the aftermath of the First

World War.His arguments dominated the new utopian discipline of InternationalRelations"

(Knutsen 1994, pp. 19697).

Although in the 1920s this new American discipline was dominatedby Wilsonian ideas and

ideals, this was a brief preliminaryphase that was beginning to end by the 1930s and was

buriedcompletely by the Second World War. "Realism" or "neorealism"came to dominate the

field during that timeor such isthe oft-repeated consensus.

But the consensus is not universal. One of the best-known andmost influential realists in the

field, Henry Kissinger, hasan expansive view of the extent to which "Wilsonianism"

dominatesAmerican thought on international politics. According to Kissinger'srecent volume

on diplomacy,

Woodrow Wilson was the embodiment of the tradition ofAmerican exceptionalism, and

originated what would becomethe dominant intellectual school of American foreign

policy....The idea that peace depends above all on promoting democraticinstitutions has

remained a staple of American thought to thepresent day. Conventional American

wisdom has consistentlymaintained that democracies do not make war against each

other.(Kissinger 1994, pp. 33, 44)

As important as Kissinger's opinion may be, it is more commonlyasserted that realism and

neorealism predominate among theoreticalideas in the North American academic scene.

However, the researchagenda fostered by the democratic peace proposition and

the"neoliberal" theoretical notions supporting it, have posedwhat may turn out to be a

significant challenge to that predominance(Kegley 1995).
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CONTEMPORARY ORIGINS OF THE DEMOCRATIC PEACE PROPOSITION

Even during the Cold War, when realism clearly predominated,the idea that regime type has

an important impact on foreignpolicies and international politics received some attention.One

ultimately important research effort by Babst (1972), however,was virtually invisible to most

specialists in internationalpolitics at the time. Utilizing data from Wright (1942), aswell as a

reasonably clear, operational definition of democracy,Babst (1972 p. 55) concluded that "nowars have been foughtbetween independent nations with elective governments

between1789 and 1941."

Because it was published in Industrial Research, this articleescaped the attention of almost

all specialists in internationalpolitics. One who did cite it was RJ Rummel, in the fourth

bookof his five-volume Understanding Conflict and War(19751981).The first three volumes

of this work develop the theoreticalbases for 54 propositions, 33 of which focus specifically

onthe causes and conditions of conflict. The eleventh of the 33propositions about conflict is

that "Libertarian systems mutuallypreclude violence" (Rummel 1979, p. 279).

Although Rummel cites Babst in his discussion of the democraticpeace proposition, probably

few would be aware of Babst'swork had it not been cited by Small & Singer (1976),

whoattempted to discredit Babst's assertion that democratic statesare peaceful in their

relationships with each other. Their attemptsuffered from several shortcomings. The most

serious was theirinability to compare the rates of war proneness for democraticand

autocratic states. Their data analyses were limited to thequestion of whether wars involving

democratic states havehistorically been significantly different in length or indegree of

violence than wars involving only autocratic states."Even if democratic states had been, over

the time periodanalyzed, 99 percent less likely to become involved in warsthan autocratic

states and 100 percent less likely to becomeinvolved in wars with each other, the wars in

which they didbecome involved might still have been equivalent in lengthand severity to

those involving only autocratic states" (Ray1995, pp. 1213).

Nevertheless, the paper by Small & Singer helped evoke theinterest in the democratic peace

proposition manifested sometwo decades later. It saved from obscurity Babst's claim

aboutthe peaceful nature of relationships among democratic states.More importantly, it
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distinguished the national-level relationshipbetween regime type and international war

proneness from thedyadic-level relationship between regime type and conflict.

This distinction was important, because the national-level ideathat democracy has a

pacifying effect had been around for along time and was discounted by most analysts. Even55 yearsago, for example, Wright (1942) observed that "statisticscan hardly be invoked to

show that democracies have been lessoften involved in war than autocracies...probably

there aretendencies toward both peace and war in democracies as thereare in autocracies

tendencies which approximately neutralizeeach other and...render the probabilities of war for

statesunder either form of government about equal." An attempt inthe 1980s or 1990s to

revive the idea that democracies aremore peaceful, period, might well have confronted

insurmountableskepticism. During that period, however, the focus on relationshipsamong

democratic states [a focus brought to mind, perhaps, bySmall & Singer's (1976)distinction

between the national-and dyadic-level relationship] was sufficiently distinct fromthe idea in its

traditional form that it received a more responsivehearing.

Another important source of the current interest in the democraticpeace proposition was a

pair of articles by Doyle (1983a,b). He highlighted the Kantian basis for the democratic

peaceproposition and articulated its dyadic form. "Constitutionallysecure liberal states have

yet to engage in war with one another"(Doyle 1983a, p. 213). These two papers had an

important long-rangeeffect. Their essential contents were ultimately publishedin a more

visible outlet (i.e. Doyle 1986), gaining the attentionof the many potentially interested

analysts not familiar withthe work of Rummel, Babst, or Singer & Small. In additionDoyle, like

Rummel, performed a systematic analysis of dataregarding the validity of the democratic

peace proposition.That is, both authors analyzed authoritative data on interstatewars (from

the Correlates of War project at the University ofMichigan; see Singer & Small 1972,Small &

Singer 1982)and systematically attempted to classify by regime type allthe states involved in

those wars. (Doyle made a particularlyenergetic effort to categorize political regimes.) This

allowedDoyle to reiterate with more authority the claim made byBabst(1972), acknowledged

somewhat begrudgingly by Small &Singer (1976) and repeated by Rummel (197581), that

notwo democratic states have ever fought an interstate war againsteach other.

This absence of wars between democratic states may be the singlemost important and

psychologically persuasive piece of evidencesupporting the democratic peace proposition

and probably accountsfor its current prominence more than any other. The absenceof wars

between democracies seems to underlieLevy's (1988,p. 662) oft-quoted assertion that the

democratic peace propositionis "as close as anything we have to an empirical law in

internationalrelations," or the equally sweeping statement by Gleditsch (1992,p. 372) that the

"perfect" correlation between democracy andnonwar in dyads implies that "most behavioral

research onconditions for war and peace in the modern world can now bethrown on the

scrap-heap of history, and researchers can startall over again on a new basis."
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Statements like these, as well as the current prominence ofthe democratic peace

proposition, warrant at least a brief discussionof the validity of the assertion that, as a rule,

democraticstates do not fight interstate wars against each other. A lengthylist of possible

exceptions to the rule has been discussed (Ray1993, 1995), including the War of 1812

between the United Statesand Great Britain, the American Civil War, the Boer War,theSpanish-American War, the First World War, and the "wars" betweenFinland and

democratic allies of the Soviet Union that occurredwithin the Second World War. A resolution

of the debate overthese putative exceptions requires the solution of at leastthree basic

conceptual problems.

The first problem is the definition of the concept "interstatewar." With the exception ofBabst's

(1972), most efforts toaddress this issue relied on the definition devised some timeago by the

Correlates of War project, which stipulates thatonly military conflict between independent

states leading toat least 1000 battle deaths (that is, the deaths of soldiers)will count as an

interstate war. This definition is not freeof controversy. It excludes, for example, the AmericanCivilWar (on the grounds that the South was not an independent state),as well as the various

wars between US troops and American Indiantribes.

But most of the controversy has focused on the second conceptualproblem, the definition of

"democracy." There is a widespreadview that democracy is an essentially contested and

time-dependentconcept (Oren 1995). If this view is accepted, the validityof the democratic

peace proposition is impossible to evaluatein any systematic or convincing fashion, because

politicalregimes cannot be categorized in a consistent manner acceptableto a sufficiently

large proportion of analysts to serve as abasis for consensus.

A democratic government is typically thought of as one basedon the consent of, and

responding to the wishes of, its constituents.Surely a fundamental reason for the difficulty of

devising auniversal definition of democracy is that governments of widelyvarying, even

diametrically opposed, structure and attributescan be perceived as responsive to the needs

and desires of theirconstituents. "Bourgeois" republics, fascist dictatorships,and dictatorships

of the proletariat can be and have been perceivedby numerous and passionate advocates to

meet this essentialcriterion for "democracy."

Perhaps, though, "the debate about the democratic peace propositionneed not resolve the

philosophical debate about which regimesare `truly' democratic" (Ray 1997a, p. 52), or which

regimesmost faithfully reflect and respond to (or best serve, forthat matter) the interests and

preferences of their constituents.Advocates of the democratic peace proposition have an

admittedlyprocedural concept of democracy, focusing on competitive elections,widespread

suffrage, civil rights, freedom of the press, etc.Many of these attributes and structures are

relatively easyto identify. Whether they lead to governments that truly servethe interests of

their constituents is an interesting question,but its resolution is not crucial to the debate
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about thedemocratic peace proposition. That debate can focus insteadon whether political

regimes possessing such relatively easy-to-identifycharacteristics as competitive elections,

widespread suffrage,and civil rights, for example, behave differentlyespeciallytoward each

otherthan do other sorts of regimes.

Admittedly, even identifying political regimes possessing thesestructures and attributes is no

trivial task. Most of thecurrent efforts to categorize regimes for the purpose of evaluatingthe

democratic peace proposition have been based on data generatedby Gurr and his

colleagues (see Gurr 1974,1978;,Gurr et al,1989, 1990;, Jaggers & Gurr 1995). The most

current formof the dataset is referred to as Polity III. Although valuable,these data are not

without their limitations as a basis forresolving the debate about whether, or how often, there

havebeen wars between democratic states (Gleditsch & Ward 1997).Gurr et al apply an 11-

point ordinal scale of democracy toalmost every state in the world for every year from 1800

tothe 1990s. Those democracy scores are themselves sums of scoreson various dimensions

reflecting, for example, the selectionof government executives by election, the openness ofexecutiverecruitment, and the parity between the executive and legislativebranches of

government. These separate dimensions are themselvescomplex, and when their scores are

added, the resulting overalldemocracy score consists of compounded layers of

complexity.Arguments that a particular state at a given time cannot becategorized as

democratic because it does not rate a score of7 on the Polity III democracy index are not

likely to be persuasiveto skeptics, or even disinterested observers, because the thresholdof

7, or of any other score on the Polity III index, is unclear.

Nevertheless, the selection of some kind of threshold is logicallynecessary in order to

address the question of whether therehas ever been a war between democratic states. In

one sensethis creates an insoluble problem (the third of three conceptualproblems alluded to

above). Democracy is a continuous concept;states are democratic to lesser or greater

degrees, and thereforeit is impossible to sort states into two categories, democraticand not

democratic. This makes it necessary for "those who attemptto defend [or evaluate] the

assertion that democracies neverfight wars against one another to acknowledge that in

realitythe assertion that they are defending, in more precise termsis `States that have

achieved a certain level of democracy...havenever fought wars against each other", (Ray

1995, p. 90).

Ideally, that "certain level" would be a threshold that is simple,intuitively appealing,

operational, and theoretically defensible.One could, for example, stipulate that states are

sufficientlydemocratic to avoid wars against each other if their executiveand legislative

leaders are selected in a process based on fair,competitive elections. For the purpose of

identifying this threshold,competitive elections could be defined as those in which atleast two

formally independent political parties (or other groups)present candidates. Elections might be

designated "fair" ifat least 50% of the adult population is allowed to vote, andif the political
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system in question has produced at leastone peaceful, constitutional transfer of executive

power fromone independent political party to another by means of anelection. This last

criterion, focusing on constitutionaltransfers of power, is both easily discernible in most

empiricallyrelevant cases and crucial to the identification of statessufficiently democratic as

to behave in ways recognized byimportant theoretical approaches to "democracy." If thisthresholdis applied to states involved in various controversial cases,such as the War of 1812

between the United States and GreatBritain, the American Civil War, the Boer War, or the

Spanish-AmericanWar, it is possible to argue that no dispute between stateshas ever

escalated to interstate war unless at least one ofthe states involved was not (sufficiently)

democratic (Ray1993, 1995).

ANALYZING DATA REGARDING THE DEMOCRATIC PEACE PROPOSITION

Even were it universally agreed that there has never been aninterstate war between

democratic states, that fact mightbe devoid of theoretical or practical significance.

Somethingon the order of 99% of all the pairs of states in the worldhave peaceful

relationships in an average year. Until recently,the proportion of democratic states in the

world has been small.So it is possible in principle that the only reason there hasnever been a

war between democratic states is that such an eventis statistically unlikely.

Substantial progress has been made in examining this possibilitysince Small & Singer (1976)

published their groundbreakingwork. First, because they did not have data on regime type

overthe long period on which they focused (18161965), Small& Singer were able to

generate data only on the regimesof states actually involved in wars. Thus they were

unableto compare systematically the rates of warfare of democraticpairs of states with those

of others.

Small & Singer did report an absence of wars between democraticstates with "marginal

exceptions," but they discounted thesignificance of this pattern. What they did not do,

againat least partly because they had no comprehensive data onregime types, was to

evaluate the statistical likelihood ofthis absence of war between democratic states.

Rummel (1983) made a significant step toward dealing withthis problem by using data on
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regime type generated by Gastil(1981), as well as Correlates of War data on interstate

war(Small & Singer 1982). He analyzed virtually all pairs ofstates in the world in the years

from 1976 to 1980, summingup the number of pairs each year for a total of 62,040

observations.From these data he concluded that the absence of war betweendemocratic

states, compared with the rate of warfare amongother states, is statistically significant. Butthis findinghad limited impact, because it only applied to the period from1976 to 1980. He

acknowledged that "unfortunately, I do nothave data to determine the number of

democracies in the worldfor the 18161965 period" (Rummel 1983, pp. 4748).

Maoz & Abdolali (1989)made a significant contribution towardsolving this problem, using the

data generated by Gurr (1974,1978). They analyzed virtually every pair of states in theworld

in the years from 1816 to 1976, for a total of 271,904observations. They reported not only

that there have beenno interstate wars between democratic states over this lengthyperiod,

but also that this number of wars (i.e. zero) is significantlyless than would be statistically

expected, despite the rarityof both wars and democratic states.

Maoz & Abdolali's work also reflects another important advance,that is, the development of

data on militarized disputes thatfall short of escalating all the way to interstate war. Theseare

disputes in which at least one state overtly threatens,displays, or actually uses military force

against another (Gochman& Maoz 1984). Analyzing such data, Maoz & Abdolali (1989,p. 21)

reported that in the years from 1816 to 1976, "democraticstates never fight one another.

They are also less likely toengage in lower-level conflicts with each other...."

Subsequently, Gurr and his associates developed annual regime-typescores for most states

in the international system from 1800onward [Maoz & Abdolali (1989) had relied heavily on

extrapolation],which contributed significantly toward subsequent comparisonsof the rates of

warfare between democratic states with the ratesof warfare between states not jointly

democratic. Bremer (1992)analyzed data on virtually every pair of states in the

internationalsystem from 1816 to 1965, for a total of 202,778 observations.His central

conclusion was that from 1816 to 1965 the ratesof warfare between democratic states

versus those between otherpairs are significantly different.

Statistically speaking, Bremer's claim may be valid, but hisobserved proportion of democratic

pairs of states involvedin interstate wars between 1816 and 1965 was essentially zero,and

his proportion of other pairs of states at war during thissame period was 0.0005. Can that

difference really be substantivelysignificant?

One reason Bremer observed such a microscopic difference betweenthe rate of warfare

between jointly democratic states andthat of other pairs of states is that his analysis

includedmany irrelevant pairs. There were so few democratic states inthe preWorld War II

era (18161939) that one mightquestion the utility of analyzing those years at all. In
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addition,a huge number of the pairs of states Bremer included are sogeographically isolated

from each other that there is no realisticchance of war between them. Such pairs as Burma

and Boliviaor Chad and Chile will never, it is safe to predict, fightwars against each other.

Maoz & Russett (1992) focused only on the period from 1946to 1986, thus eliminating fromconsideration all those less-relevantyears during which democracies were relatively rare.

Still,because the number of states in the system increased so dramaticallybetween 1965 (the

terminal year in Bremer's analysis) and 1986,Maoz & Russett, who included almost every

pair of statesevery year, ended up with 264,819 observationsslightlymore than Bremer

(1992) analyzed. They reduced that numbersubstantially by analyzing only "politically

relevant" pairsof states, which they defined as pairs that are geographicallycontiguous or that

include at least one major power. (Thedefinition of a "major power" is an issue excluded to

conservespace. During the Cold War a widely accepted list of major powersincluded China,

France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, andthe United States.) This restriction reduced their

numberof observations to 29,081. Their data showed no democraticstates at war with eachother. The proportion of observationsof nondemocratic pairs involved in an interstate war in

theyears from 1946 to 1986 is reported to be 0.001. Again, contrastingthe absence of wars

between democratic states to the occurrenceof wars 0.1% of the time between states not

jointly democraticmight not seem substantively significant (even though it isstatistically

significant.) But, as Bueno de Mesquita (1984,p. 354) pointed out in a different context, the

proportion ofcigarette smokers who develop cancer is only 0.001482 higherthan the

proportion of nonsmokers who develop it. Perhapsit is not unreasonable to argue that such

small absolute differencesare not intrinsically trivial.

Small & Singer (1976, p. 67) discounted their finding ofthe absence of wars between

democratic states on the groundsthat most wars occur between geographically contiguous

states,and "bourgeois democracies do not border upon one another veryfrequently over

much of the period since 1816." They must havebased that conclusion on an unsystematic

review of the availableinformation, because at that time there were no availabledata

categorizing pairs of states in the international systemas geographically contiguous or not.

This is another fronton which research has made substantial progress since 1976.The

Correlates of War project has generated data on the geographicalrelationships of virtually all

pairs of states in the internationalsystem since 1816 (Gochman 1991). These data allowed

Bremer(1992), as well as Maoz & Russett (1992) and by now manyothers, to control for the

impact of contiguity on rates ofwarfare between pairs of states while evaluating the impactof

regime type. This analysis established definitively thatthe speculation by Small & Singer

(1976) regarding the impactof contiguity on the relationship between regime type and

conflictproneness was erroneous. Using data on distance between states,Gleditsch (1995)

demonstrated persuasively that democraticstates have not historically been geographically

separated substantiallymore than nonjointly democratic pairs of states.
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SinceSmall & Singer (1976) were unable to generate dataon the relative rates of warfare for

democratic pairs versusother pairs of states, they could not evaluate the possibilitythat the

difference between those rates (even if statisticallysignificant) might not result from regime

type. In other words,correlation does not prove causation, and even if there isa correlation

between regime type and conflict or war proneness,the pattern might be produced by somethird factor that hasan impact on both war proneness and regime type. The mostrecent

research on the democratic peace proposition has consideredthis possibility thoroughly.

Bremer (1992, 1993), for example, examined the relationshipbetween regime type and

international conflict while controllingfor contiguity, power status, alliance ties,

militarization,economic development, and power ratios. Maoz & Russett (1992,1993),

Russett (1993) focused, unlike Bremer, only on the periodfrom 1946 to 1986, and primarily

on "politically relevant"pairs of states. They controlled for contiguity, allianceties, economic

wealth and growth, political stability, and powerratios. These analyses represent significant

progress overthe effort made by Small & Singer (1976) not only becausethey control foradditional factors, but also because they takeadvantage of such techniques as logistic

regression, poissonregression, and negative binomial analyses, which are bettersuited to the

type of data being analyzed than the traditionalordinary least squares method relied on in

earlier decades (King1989). In general, the findings of these analyses are supportiveof the

democratic peace proposition.Bremer (1993, p. 246) concludes,for example, that "even after

controlling for a large numberof factors...democracy's conflict-reducing effect remains

strong."

ATTACKS ON THE EVIDENCE IN SUPPORT OF DEMOCRATIC PEACE

Impressive though it may be, research on the democratic peaceproposition has generated

vigorous criticism attempting todiscredit the evidence marshaled on its behalf. One of the

counterargumentsfocuses on the lack of independence of the observations of,for example,

all pairs of states in the international systemon an annual basis. The observations of Great

Britain and theUnited States in successive years, for example, are not independentfrom each

other. It is unfair or misleading, according tothis argument, to count each annual observation

of peace betweenGreat Britain and the United States as a statistical victoryof sorts for the

democratic peace proposition (Spiro 1994).
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One of the responses to this criticism has involved moving awayfrom the dyad-year as the

unit of observation for statisticalcalculation, and instead making a single observation for

eachpair of states over a given period, say from 1946 to 1986. Pairsare categorized by their

regime types, i.e. both democratic,only one democratic, or neither democratic. Then the

probabilitycan be calculated that all pairs at war with each other duringthat period would beeither mixed dyads (one democratic, oneautocratic) or uniformly autocratic. Both Russett

(1995),Rummel(1997) performed analyses along these lines and concludedthat the absence

of any democratic pairs among those statesbecoming involved in wars against each other

from 1946 to 1986is unlikely to have occurred by chance. Maoz (1997) has

completedanalogous analyses for the years 1816 to 1986 and came to thesame conclusion.

Admittedly, such applications of significance tests do not conformto their classical purpose of

generalizing from a sample toa population, but there are convincing rationales for relyingon

significance tests even if one has access to the populationof cases being analyzed; a good

recent rationale can be foundin Rummel (1997, p. 46).

Another approach relies on statistical techniques designed todeal with at least some of the

problems created by interdependenceof observations, as well as by binary dependent

variables,building on the work ofHuber (1967). Beck & Tucker (1996)report that application

of such techniques to dyad-years from1946 to 1986 provides evidence in support of the

democraticpeace proposition.

Farber & Gowa (1995, 1997) offered additional importantcriticism of the idea that democracy

is an important pacifyingforce, arguing that the bulk of the evidence in its favorcomes from

the Cold War era, during which democracies probablyavoided serious conflicts with each

other because of commoninterests generated by their confrontation with communism.The

majority of democratic states that have ever existed haveemerged during the Cold War era,

and it is possible that thathistorical epoch may prove idiosyncratic with respect to

relationshipsamong democratic states. Only time will tell whether the largenumber of

democratic states that have emerged in recent yearswill fight wars against each other in the

absence of a seriousthreat from the Soviet Union or, perhaps, any other undemocraticstate.

But Thompson & Tucker (1997) have cast some doubt on thearguments and evidence

provided by Farber & Gowa (1995),and especially on the theoretical rationale they

developedto account for their findings. Maoz (1997, p. 174175)among others has pointed

out that alliance ties would seema likely indicator of the common interests among

democraticstates that Farber & Gowa claim really account for peacefulrelationships among

them. In their own analyses, Farber &Gowa discuss methodological problems in introducing

allianceties as a control variable. These problems indubitably exist,but Bremer (1992), Maoz

& Russett (1992, 1993), Russett(1993), Oneal et al (1996), Barbieri (1996a), Oneal &

Russett(1997), Oneal & Ray (1997), among others, all utilizealliance ties as a control
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variable in analyses of the relationshipbetween regime type and international conflict. All

report thatjoint democracy is significantly related to decreases in conflictfor pairs of states,

with alliance ties (reasonable proxiesfor common interests, as even Farber & Gowa

acknowledge)controlled for.

On a more intuitive level, one might reasonably infer that ifthe opposition of the communists

was sufficient to create commoninterests guaranteeing peace among the democratic ( or

anticommunist)states of the world, then the opposition of the "Free World"(even more

formidable, by most measures) should have been sufficientto guarantee peace among the

communist states. Yet during theCold War the Soviet Union invaded Hungary and

Czechoslovakia,as well as Afghanistan, and experienced serious border clasheswith

communist China. Meanwhile, Vietnam attacked and occupiedmost of Cambodia, provoking

a retaliatory attack by communistChina.

The "opposition leads to common interests leads to peace" ideawould also be hard-pressedto account for the fact that peacedid not prevail uniformly on the anticommunist side of

theCold War divide. For example, El Salvador fought a war withHonduras in 1969, Turkey

and Greece became embroiled in a warover the fate of Cyprus in 1974, and Great Britain

clashedwith Argentina over the Falkland/Malvinas islands in 1982.These cases are not

anomalies for advocates of the democraticpeace proposition; each of those wars involved at

least oneundemocratic state.

Probably the most visible attack on the credibility of the democraticpeace proposition was

that by Mansfield & Snyder (1995a,b), ably defended from initial criticism in Mansfield

&Snyder (1996). Interestingly, however, theirs was not a directattack on the proposition. They

did not claim that joint democracyhas no significant pacifying affect on relationships

betweenstates. Rather, they argued that democratization, that is, regimetransitions from

autocracy to democracy, make states significantlymore war-prone.

This claim evoked a debate in print (initiated with direct repliesfrom Wolf 1996, Weede

1996a, Enterline 1996) that has becomeexceedingly fine-grained. Evidence generated by

Bremer (1996),Enterline (1996) and unpublished data), Oneal & Russett(1997),Thompson &

Tucker (1997), Oneal & Ray (1997),among others, indicates that democratization does not

increasethe probability of war, except perhaps as a result of a dyadic-levelpattern in which

the democratization of states surrounded byautocratic states increases the "political

distance," or differencein regime type, between themselves and their neighbors. Inother

words, while democratization in and of itself may notincrease war proneness, it can have the

effect of increasingthe likelihood of war between a democratizing state and anyof its

neighbors if the neighbors are autocratic.
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THEORETICAL BASES FOR THE DEMOCRATIC PEACE PROPOSITION

Additional criticisms of the evidence regarding the democraticpeace propositionsuch as

those contending that it ismisinterpreted as a result of cultural bias, or limited to arelatively

narrow Western cultural region (Oren 1995, Cohen1994), or that it is actually peace that

produces democracyrather than democracy that leads to peace (Thompson 1996)

areacknowledged but not examined here in order to conserve spacefor consideration of themore fundamental and common argumentthat the absence of war between democratic

states (even ifone acknowledges it) is merely an empirical oddity for whichno convincing

theoretical explanation or rationale exists.

One reason for the common opinion that peace between democraticstates is an empirical

pattern devoid of sound theoreticalbases is the lack of attention paid to Rummel's

UnderstandingConflict and War (19751981), which provided threevolumes of

epistemological, even metaphysical, not to mentiontheoretical elaboration before presenting

the democratic peaceproposition in the fourth volume (Ray 1998). Another reasonmay be

that some of the more elaborate, systematic, empiricalevidence in support of the proposition

(e.g. Maoz & Abdolali1989;, Bremer 1992;, Maoz & Russett 1992, 1993) was

presentedwithout much elaborate theoretical defense of the idea.

But there are in fact several well-developed theoretical notionsregarding relationships

between democratic states, at leastsome of which are potentially complementary rather than

competitive.Rummel (1997) has recast and updated his theoretical defenseof the idea that

democracy is an important pacifying force,emphasizing the impact of public opinion, cross-

pressuresin democratic societies, and a field theory focusing on thedifferences between

political processes in democratic andautocratic societies. In the "first book since...volume 4of

Understanding Conflict and War(1979) to explicitly testwhether democracies don't make war

on each other" (Rummel1997, p. 36), Bueno de Mesquita & Lalman (1992) developa game-

theoretical analysis of international interactionsthat emphasizes the impact of various

domestic political incentiveson bargaining among democratic states. Russett's (1993)

structuraland cultural theoretical frameworks in defense of the democraticpeace proposition

take the form of interrelated propositionsabout the impact of regime type on international

conflict;the structural framework deals with institutional constraintsthat lead to peaceful
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resolutions of conflicts, and the culturalframework emphasizes the effect of cultural and

normativerestraints on bargaining between democratic states.

Relying mainly on the work of Maoz & Russett (1993), aswell as Weart (1994 and

unpublished data), one recent reviewof research on the democratic peace propositionconcludesthat "normative explanations of the democratic peace have beenshown to be more

persuasive than structural explanations,"and that "normative explanations have fared better

in research"(Chan 1997, p. 7778). The normative approach, with animpressive forebear in

Deutsch et al (1957), has spawned supportiveresearch on regime type and related factors

that foster peacebetween democratic states, and on propositions related to butdistinct from

the democratic peace proposition.Oneal et al(1996),Oneal & Russett (1997),Oneal & Ray

(1997),for example, provide evidence that international trade amongdemocratic states may

have a pacifying impact complementaryto that of regime type;1 Russett (1997) finds that

internationalorganizations may also contribute to peaceful relationshipsamong democratic

states (and among states in general). Inaddition, Dixon (1993,1994), Raymond (1994) reportthat democraticstates, once involved in disputes, are more likely than undemocraticstates to

rely on such conflict-resolution techniques as mediationand arbitration, and that such

techniques are more likelyto be successful if the states employing them are

democratic.[Raymond (1996), however, also reports that although democraticpairs of states

are more likely to choose a binding method ofarbitration for disputes between them, they are

not more likely,once having become involved in such a process, to successfullyresolve the

dispute in question through that method.]

But there is another important theoretical thrust regardingthe impact of regime type that

relies less on the idea thatdemocracy evokes normative commitments to the peaceful

resolutionof conflicts, and more on the idea that "leaders in democraciesmight avoid wars

against other democratic states...becausethey feel that fighting such wars might be harmful

to theirchances of staying in power" (Ray 1995, p. 40). Bueno de Mesquitaet al (1992),

Bueno de Mesquita & Siverson (1995) find thatinterstate wars do have important impacts on

the fate of politicalregimes, and that the probability that a political leaderwill fall from power in

the wake of a lost war is particularlyhigh in democratic states. Interestingly, Lake (1992)

reportsthat democratic states are more likely than autocratic statesto win the wars in which

they participate. He argues thatthis is because democracies, for internal political and

economicreasons, have greater resources to devote to national security.This might mean

that democratic leaders are unlikely to selectother democratic states as targets because they

perceive themto be particularly formidable opponents. Siverson (1995) argues,however, that

democracies tend to select their opponents inwars more carefully than do autocratic states,

being more likelyto target opponents they are relatively certain they can defeat.(Why this

would make them unlikely to pick democratic opponentsis addressed below.)

Recently a formal model was developed (B Bueno de Mesquita,R Siverson, unpublished
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data) based on the axiom that politicalleaders in democracies, autocracies, military juntas,

monarchies,and other forms of government share a common feature: "Theydesire to remain

in office" (emphasis in the original). Buenode Mesquita & Siverson claim that this model can

accountnot only for the absence of wars among democratic states,but also for five additional,

related, important empiricalregularities: (a) the tendency for democratic states to fightotherkinds of states with considerable regularity, (b) thetendency for democratic states to win the

wars in which theyparticipate, (c) the tendency for democratic states to experiencefewer

battle deaths in the wars they initiate, (d) the tendencyfor disputes between democracies to

reach peaceful settlements,and (e) the tendency for major-power democracies to be

moreconstrained to avoid war than less powerful democracies.

This list is potentially instructive because debates about competingexplanations of the

democratic peace are more likely to be resolvedby successful subsumption of the absence

of war between democraticstates within related patterns and propositions than

direct,increasingly detailed empirical examination of the relationshipbetween joint democracyand the incidence of war, or analysisof individual cases (seeElman 1997). The list generated

byBueno de Mesquita & Siverson is also interesting becauseit omits one important pattern in

the relationship betweenregime type and international conflict, the tendency for

democraticpairs of states to be less likely than other pairs to becomeinvolved in serious,

militarized disputes, convincingly demonstratedby Bremer (1993), Maoz & Russett (1993)

among others.

It is possible that the leaders of democratic states, once theybecome involved in relatively

serious disputes, avoid wars againstother democratic states for the strategic, logical, or self-

interestedreasons, e.g. the impact of lost wars on their personal politicalfates, stressed by

Bueno de Mesquita & Siverson (unpublisheddata). It is also possible that democratic states

get intoserious disputes with each other at a significantly lower ratethan other kinds of states

because of the normative or culturalconstraints emphasized by a related, but nevertheless

partiallycompetitive, strand of research on the democratic peace proposition.

There is, however, at least one potential problem with the logicalarguments provided by

Bueno de Mesquita & Siverson. In theirattempt to account for the propensity of democratic

dyadsto negotiate disputes peacefully, Bueno de Mesquita & Siverson(unpublished data)

argue that when two democracies confronteach other in a dispute, generally, one has a good

chanceof winning and the other does not.

Is it necessarily the case, in confrontations between democraticstates or any states, that one

has a good chance of winningand the other does not? Is it not the case instead that

sometimesthe probable winner of the dispute is relatively clear, andin others it is not? This

partially rhetorical question bringsto mind the argument by Vasquez (1993, p. 6465) that

interstatewars, for the purpose of analysis, need to be categorized. Inshort, he argues that
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wars between states of approximatelyequal military-industrial capabilities ought to be

consideredseparately from wars between states that are clearly unequalin such capabilities.

Perhaps such a categorization would alsobe helpful in the analysis of serious, militarized

disputes.If so, then democratic leaders in confrontations with eachother may be most likely

to fear the kind of punishment emphasizedby Bueno de Mesquita & Siverson (unpublisheddata) iftheir states' capabilities are nearly equal.

An additional factor, most likely to be relevant when democraticdisputants are clearly

unequal in tangible military capabilities,is the greater ability of democratic states to make

crediblecommitments (Fearon 1994), because they are visibly facedwith greater "audience

costs" if they back down (see also Eyerman& Hart 1996). In other words, the processes

leading to warsbetween unequal states are distinct from those leading towars between equal

states. For example, fear of failure (a lostwar) may be more likely to have a constraining

effect on theleaders of states roughly equivalent in capabilities (Buenode Mesquita &

Siverson, unpublished data). However, ifthe capabilities of the disputing democratic statesare highlydisparate, intangible elements may play a particularly importantrole in the

decisionmaking processes on both sides of the dispute(Bueno de Mesquita et al 1997). The

superior ability of democraticstates to make credible commitments or to demonstrate

resolvemay help unequal, democratic states avoid the confusion oruncertainty that makes

disputes involving unequal, undemocraticstates more likely to escalate to war.

CONCLUSION

Does democracy cause peace? The empirical evidence in favorof the proposition that

democratic states have not initiatedand are not likely to initiate interstate wars against

eachother is substantial, especially when compared with that whichcould be brought to bear

by specialists in the 1970s. Criticismof this evidence has so far met with reasonably

persuasivecounterarguments by the defenders of the proposition. Despitea common opinion

to the contrary, the theoretical bases forthe hypothesis regarding the absence of war

between democraticstates are highly developed and may to some extent be

complementaryas well as competitive. For example, some factors may makedemocratic

states unlikely to become involved in serious, militarizeddisputes in the first place, while

other factors enable themto resolve serious disputes without warfare when they do occur.No
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scientific evidence is entirely definitive, and the greaternumber of democratic states in the

postCold War era mayincrease opportunities for conflicts that will cast grave doubtson the

democratic peace proposition. But for the moment at least,well-developed theoretical bases

reinforce a lengthy list ofsystematic empirical analyses in support of that

proposition.Moreover, the multiple streams of arguments and evidence supportingtheproposition are highly diverse in character: epistemological(Rummel 1975), philosophical

(Doyle 1986), formal (Bueno deMesquita & Lalman 1992; B Bueno de Mesquita, R

Siverson,unpublished data), historical (Weart 1994, Ray 1995, Owen 1994),experimental

(Mintz & Geva 1993), anthropological (Emberet al 1992, Crawford 1994), psychological

(Kegley & Hermann1995), economic (Brawley 1993,Weede 1996b), political (Gaubatz1991),

and statistical (Ray & Russett 1996, p. 458). Perhaps,then, the more defensible of the two

possible definitive answersto the question "Does democracy cause peace?" is "Yes."

FOOTNOTES

1 Barbieri (1996a, b) provides contrasting evidence suggestingthat trade can exacerbate

conflict. Weede (1996a), on the otherhand, incorporates a hypothesized pacifying impact of

internationaltrade into his sweeping comprehensive and integrative theoreticalanalysis of

both international conflict and international politicaleconomy, arguing essentially that trade

leads to wealth whichin turn leads to democracy as well as peace.

Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 1998. 1:27-46

Copyright 1998 by Annual Reviews Inc. All rights reserved
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