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Famous philosopher Immanuel Kant first posited an early theory of democratic peace in the late 18th century.

The democratic peace theory or simply democratic peace (often DPT and sometimes democratic pacifism) is a theory in political science and philosophy which holds that democracies—specifically, liberal democracies—almost never go to war with one another. Scholars have proposed a number of explanations for this phenomenon. Many believe that democracies tend to find alternatives to violent conflict (such as negotiation or arbitration); whereas others believe that the accountability of democratic governments makes leaders less likely to engage in armed conflict.

Despite criticisms, the democratic peace theory has grown in prominence among political scientists in the last two decades and has become influential in the policy world in Western countries. Jack Levy remarked that the democratic peace is "the closest thing we have to a law in international politics."

1 History of the theory
2 Causes
3 Empirical evidence
4 Criticisms
5 Sources
6 See also
7 External Links

[edit] History of the theory

The idea that democracy is a source of world peace came relatively late in political theory. No ancient author seems to have thought so. Early authors referred to republics rather than democracies, since the word democracy had acquired a bad name until early modern times. Niccolò Machiavelli believed that republics were by nature excellent war-makers and empire-builders, citing Rome as the prime example. It was Immanuel Kant who first foreshadowed the theory of a peace between liberal democracies in his essay "Perpetual Peace" written in 1795. At that time, however, there were very few republics in the Western world (the United States, France, some Italian city states and Swiss cantons) and none of them was truly democratic by today's standards. Early in the 20th century, Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter argued that capitalism made modern states inherently peaceful and opposed to conquest and imperialism, which economically favored the old aristocratic elites. 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.

Kant's theory was revived in the 1960s by Dean Babst, then a research scientist at the New York Narcotic Addiction Control Commission, and expanded in the 1970s by R.J. Rummel, professor of Political Science at the University of Hawaii. Rummel wrote that democracy is a "method of nonviolence." The term also refers to an ever-increasing state of world peace, which Rummel credits to democracy. The following propositions formed the basis of Rummel's original theory:

Democracies do not make war on each other.
The more democratic two nations are, the less the violence between them.
Democracies engage in the least amounts of foreign violence.
Democracies display, by far, the least amounts of internal violence.
Modern democracies have virtually no "democide" (i.e. genocide and mass murder)

A related but slightly different concept is Rummel's Law, which states that the less freedom a people have, the more likely their rulers are to murder them.

Rummel's ideas combined propositions about the external and internal behavior of democratic regimes with regards to violence. As the theory took shape in the 1980s, particularly through the work of Michael Doyle and Bruce Russett, it increasingly focused on the weak proposition that democracies (or liberal regimes, as Doyle preferred it) tend to behave peacefully towards each other. Rummel advocates the most extreme form of this, no wars at all between democracies. The strong proposition that democracies are in general more peaceful in world affairs drew less wide acceptance.

[edit] Causes

The democratic peace is primarily a statistical association, and association does not establish causality. There is currently no definitive theory as to why the democratic peace theory would be true, in whichever level of DPT the theorist supports.

Many theoretical arguments have been put forward as explanations for the democratic peace. Dating back to Immanuel Kant, many have argued that democracies are characterized by the rule of law, and are therefore inclined to resolve disputes between them through arbitration.

Following Schumpeter, some hypothesize that the phenomenon is explained by the fact that democratic countries tend to be capitalist states, whose trade relations with one another create interdependence among them. This interdependence constrains the ability and willingness of democratic nations to go to war with each other due to the incurred costs in lost trade. However, this interpretation fails to take into account the existence of non-democratic capitalist states, who often have made war with each other or with democratic states. But a recent study do show that economically important trade has an substantively important pacifying effect which is indepdent of democracy. This study also indicates that the DPT is not significant factor unless both of the democracies has a GDP/capita of at least 1400 USD. Economic development below this may hinder the development of liberal institutions. [1].

Other scholars suggest a theory of common culture: the citizens of democratic societies are less likely to view the citizens of other democracies as enemies, and since their support for the war is necessary (due to the democratic system), war is less likely.

Following Rummel, some support the idea that democracies are inherently peaceful because 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. This last argument cannot explain why democracies are very bellicose towards non-democratic states while remaining peaceful towards each other, unless we also suppose that citizens of democratic states feel constantly threatened by the existence of non-democracies or otherwise are provoked by them. The argument that democratic peace arises from citizens avoiding casualties is strengthened by democracies seeming less reluctant to start low-conflict conflicts. This idea also suggests that the relationship in the DPT became stronger when graphic movies and television made wars less romantic.

A recent theory is that democracies can be divided into "pacifist" and "militant". While both avoid attacking democracies, "militant" democracies have tendency to deep distrust and confrontational policies against dictatorships and may initiate wars against them. Most wars by democracies since 1950 have involved only four nations: the U.S., the U.K., Israel, and India. [2][3].

Some statical [sic] research indicates that enduring rivalries of all types are rare among democratic dyads. This pacifying effect of democracy appears to strengthen over time after the transition to joint democracy, which is consistent with the onset and deepening of democratic norms. Rivalries show a decreasing propensity for militarized conflict within a year of the transition to joint democracy, and this propensity decreases almost to zero within five years [4].

[edit] Empirical evidence

From an early point on, statistical studies were employed to examine the validity of the theory. Rummel studied all the wars from 1816 to 1991. He defined:

war as any military action with more than 1000 killed in battle,
democracy as a stabilized liberal democracy with voting rights for at least 2/3 of all adult males,
and stability as being older than 3 years at the start of the war.

He also implicitly imposed some other related criteria; for example, the chief officer of the democracy must have had a contested election. (See the analysis of the American civil war below.)

Under these definitions, his study found 198 wars between non-democracies, 155 wars between democracies and non-democracies, and 0 wars between democracies. See Rummel's web site. Even some his supporters acknowledge that the exact line between democracies and not democracies is somewhat arbitrary, drawn to include the maximum number of democratic states while excluding any exceptions to the theory.

(This is a statistical weakness. Rummel's theory includes parameters: in this case, 2/3 as the minimum proportion of enfranchised males and 3 years as the minimum duration. The proper odds to judge a set of data which satisfies a theory deriving its parameters from that data is the chance that the data would satisfy the theory using, not those particular parameters, but any possible parameters.)

More recent research often uses a continuous scale to measure democracy rather than Rummel's classification. Using some 2,000 cases of war or other armed conflicts after 1816, the Correlates of War Project did not find a single case where the theory did not hold. The most widely used data set in democratic peace theory research is the Polity Data Set put together by a number of scholars, most prominent among whom is Ted Gurr. The Polity Data Set does not codify states in a binary fashion (democracy/non-democracy) but rather gives each state a democracy and an autocracy score for any given period, based on a number of criteria. Studies using the Polity Data Set have concluded that the theory is also validated when a continuous measure of democracy is used (i.e. the higher two countries' joint scores, the lower their chance of being involved in a war against each other).

Democracies do sometimes initiate wars against authoritarian states. Some argue that democracies usually enter these wars because they are provoked by authoritarian states. New statistical research shows that democracies are slightly, but significantly less involved in wars in general than others states, and that they also initiate wars less frequently than non-democratic states. a conference paper

Some statical research indicates that enduring rivalries of all types are rare among democratic dyads. This pacifying effect of democracy appears to strengthen over time after the transition to joint democracy, which is consistent with the onset and deepening of democratic norms. Rivalries show a decreasing propensity for militarized conflict within a year of the transition to joint democracy, and this propensity decreases almost to zero within five years. [5]

The historical definition of democracy has shifted over time, as civil and political rights have been expanded to greater segments of the population. Continuous measures of democracy used in statistical studies attempt to create a consistent scale of comparison for all states. Most statistical work on the democratic peace has focused on the 19th and 20th centuries, but there is a significant body of literature on the applicability of the theory outside the modern western world.

Overviews of studies supporting the theory can be found here. [6] and also on Rummel's site

[edit] Criticisms

The following criticisms apply to the absolute form of DPT; many, but not all, critics agree that there is a tendency for democratic states to avoid war with each other, and to refrain from inflicting serious damage on each other.

There are two complementary objections to this strongest form of democratic peace theory. The first notes that states approach the democratic ideal to different degrees, and therefore the set of democracies depends strongly on the exact definition applied; the absolute form of DPT requires a restrictive definition of democracy, which leaves very few possible pairs of democracies to come into conflict. The second class observe that most of these democracies existed after 1945, and suggest other reasons why they did not go to war with each other then.

[edit] Accuracy and precision

The first type of objection has been expressed thus in a Hoover Institution paper: "Adopt a tough enough test of democracy and democratic pacifism applies to naught but the Cold War democracies. Relax the test just a bit and the doctrine becomes false." Furthermore, even if there is a middle position, it will omit serious conflicts between the most democratic states of their day.

There are therefore three questions: Has Rummel classified accurately? Are his standards justified? And do they leave enough data to draw any conclusions?

For the First World War, for example, critics have argued whether Rummel was mistaken, either in denying that Germany was a democracy (the Reichstag was elected by universal suffrage, its votes of no confidence did cause governments to fall, and it did vote on whether to fund the war - which passed overwhelmingly) or that he erred in affirming Britain to be one (the 1911 elections enfranchised only 60% of the British electorate, to say nothing of the Empire beyond the Seas, the majority of which had no say in the decision at all ). This draws attention to the general problem of mixed regimes—polities featuring both democratic and autocratic institutions, whose classification may be problematic

On a different question, they have argued that standards which exclude Germany should not be described as a statement about 'democracies'. Rummel has himself said that the word 'democracy' was not important to his argument.

Or they have argued that "if this was not a war between democracies, there were none" before 1918, and the nineteenth century therefore supplies no evidence for absolute DPT.

In addition to First World War (at least on the Western Front), critics cite the First Balkan War, the Boer Wars (especially the Transvaal War of 1880), the continuing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in recent years, the American Civil War, the War of 1812, the 1999 Kargil border war between Pakistan and India, the Philippine-American war, War of the Pacific, and several conflicts between the U.S. and Mexico (the Mexican-American War, U.S. occupation of Veracruz, 1914, and the Mexican Expedition of 1916) either as exceptions to Rummel's claim, or as examples that should be included in any actual list of wars between democracies.

These can all be defined away by employing a sufficiently stringent meaning of democracy, or of war, and Rummel and the defenders of the strong form of DPT have done so which is discussed in more detail below. Other criticisms of the here [7]. Rummel's reply to frequently asked questions can be found here [8] [9].

During much of the period of Rummel's study, Rummel's sample includes very few states, and it says very little about their behavior to each other. Until quite recently, the United States barely met Rummel's criteria, if at all. The United Kingdom did not qualify until after the Third Reform Bill - or rather 1888, three years after its implementation; France did not qualify until after the Presidency of General MacMahon. "Down to 1893 the electorate was exceedingly small. Property and other qualifications kept the voting power in the hands of a limited class. This may be judged from the fact that in the year named there were only 137,772 voters out of a population of 6 3/4 millions." -Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911: BELGIUM.This leaves even fewer democracies than stated by Rommel before the late nineteenth century which makes the theory weaker since very few democracies means very few possible wars between democracies.

(Rummel states that for certain years during 1800-1850 it would include the Swiss Confederation, United States, France, Belgium, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Piedmont, and Denmark. This is, although he does not acknowledge it, a second definition of "democracy", inconsistent with his initial criteria. This looser definition is probably insufficient to defend the absolute form of DPT. For example, if early-nineteenth century Piedmont, with its censorship and its appointed Senate, was a democracy, it becomes difficult to deny democracy to Wilhelmine Germnay or the Spanish constitutional monarchy of 1898.)

Some critics question the significance of Rummel's result. The following classes of wars can occur, without violating the absolute form of DPT, with some possible examples:

The thousand-death rule excludes attacks by one democracy on another in such overwhelming force that there is no effective resistance, and thus few deaths in battle (the Indian Wars of the United States , and gunboat diplomacy in the Caribbean, may be actual examples of this. The Mexican Expedition of 1916 also did not end in battle, because Pershing was unable to find his antagonist; although it had a large number of non-combat casualties.)

Nor does the strongest form of DPT deny democracies have engaged in covert conflict resulting in a change of regime on the losing side; critics cite British and American-supported 1953 coup d'etat in Iran against Mohammed Mossadegh and the 1954 U.S.-backed coup in Guatemala, led by Carlos Castillo Armas. The 1000-death rule excludes these events from Rummel's law.

The three-year rule excludes attacks by an established democracy upon a newly declared one; this omits the Philippine-American war, the U.S. occupation of Veracruz, 1914, and the [[Mexican-American war]]; as well as those by a new democracy on another, such as the war between the French Second Republic and Mazzini's [[Roman Republic (19th century)|Roman Republic]].

Rummel's criteria also exclude civil wars within democracies over legitimacy or secession, such as the American civil war, the Sonderbund war, the Anglo-Irish War and the [[Irish civil war]] which followed, and the 20th century civil wars in Colombia, Spain, Uruguay and [[Sri Lanka]].

Proponents defend Rummel on the quesion of accuracy that during the War of 1812, only a small minority had the right to vote in the United Kingdom, many new urban areas had no representation, the ballot was not secret, many seats in Parliament were appointed or openly bought from the owners of rotten boroughs, and the House of Lords could veto all laws. The defenders of DPT exclude the American Civil War since, in addition to it being an internal conflict, in the Confederate States of America, only 30-40% of male population could vote and that there was never a competitive presidential election. Similarly, only a minority had the right to vote in the Boer states. At the time of World War I the German Kaiser still had much power, he had control over the army, appointed and could dismiss the chancellor, and played a key role in foreign affairs. In effect, therefore, in foreign and military affairs, there was little democratic control. The Reichstag, however, did vote overwhelmingly to fund and support the war. Nawaz Sharif, the president of Pakistan, used terror tactics to silence critical press and the previously independent judiciary, for example storming the Supreme Court in order to force the Chief Justice out of office. Yassir Arafat, the president of the Palestinian Authority, can be criticized on similar grounds. There was never a democratic election in the Philippines before the war. All the Mexican presidents at the time of the conflicts with the U.S., like Mariano Paredes y Arrillaga, took their power in coup d'etats. The nations in the War of the Pacific were ruled by Caudillos or had suffrage requirements like literacy or property that excluded a large part of the populations.

Whether the pre-modern states that once identified themselves as democracies fulfill modern criteria remains controversial. In Ancient Greece, such city-states did fight wars between each other (most noted is the Athenian expedition against Syracuse during the Peloponnesian War). Many do not deem Ancient Greek city-states as sufficiently democratic because of the large numbers of slaves and other non-voting inhabitants. It is estimated that only 16% of the population in Athens had the right to vote. There were also three great wars between Rome and Carthage; and the Roman republic sacked Athens.

Similar questions arise about the persistent wars among Venice, Florence, Genoa, and other Renaissance city-states. These states were also not as democratic as modern democracies, but at least as much as Athens and more so than Syracuse.

An interesting case is the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which had some qualities of today's democracies and in which szlachta (the nobles), using Sejm (a parliament), blocked many monarchs' attempts to declare a war on other countries. Some scholars have put forward the Swiss Confederation (or parts of it) and the Six Iroquois Nations as early examples of communities of democratic states upholding the theory.

Freedom House argues that there was not a single liberal democracy with universal suffrage in the world in 1900, thus using stricter criteria than Rummel, but that in 2000 120 (62.5%) of the world 192 nations were such democracies. They count 25 (19.2%) nations with restricted democratic practices in 1900 and 16 (8.3%) today. They find 19 (14.6%) constitutional monarchies in 1900 in which constitution delineates the powers of the monarch and in which some power may have devolved to elected legislatures, and 0 such nations in 2000. Other nations had and have various forms of non-democratic rule. Supporters argue that this shows that the world is becoming increasingly democratic without resulting in wars between democracies [10]. Rummel clains the same percentage of democracies without listing them; either he is using their list, or including states they decline to recognize. Their list of democracies in 2000 includes Russia, the partial, and since failed, democracy of Nepal, the limited suffrage of the Baltic states, and the managed democracies (since overthrown), of Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan.

Rummel concedes that at least one democracy formally declared war on another when the United Kingdom's declaration of war on Finland on December 6, 1941 in reaction to the Continuation War, when Finland allied with Germany in attacking the Soviet Union. However, the United Kingdom's only significant act of war happened prior to the declaration (a Royal Air Force raid on the port of Petsamo on July 31, 1941). Democratic peace theory proponents point out that Finland spent World War II fighting a totalitarian opponent who had attacked the nation, that the United Kingdom and Finland for almost the whole of WWII carefully avoided attacking each other, and that the causalities in the conflict with the United Kingdom were too few to be classified as a war statistically. The lavish material support United Kingdom and United States provided to Soviet Union although raises the question if democracies can make war against other democracies through proxies.

[edit] Statistical analysis

Some proponents argue that even if there are one or a few examples of democracies making war against each other, thus disagreeing with Rummel, this is much less than the hundreds or thousands of war or armed conflicts fought between and against non-democracies during the same time period. They also note that many other researchers have used different approaches than Rummel to investigate the validity of theory. For example, recent statistical research supporting the theory use a continuous scale to measure the degree of democracy in a state rather than a simple binary classification of states as democracies or not democracies.

One statistical criticism of the theory, especially that few democracies means that there statistically should be few democratic wars even if democracies are aggressive against each other, and other aspects of the theory, can be found here, using binary classification similar to Rummel's. [11]. Note that this is not a peer-reviewed study. Several such statistical studies in support of the DPT which can be found in the "Empirical research" section above.

[edit] The bloc peace theory

Another common criticism, argued effectively by Joanne Gowa in Ballots and Bullets: The Elusive Democratic Peace, is that 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 many of today's democracies came into existence, the Cold War divided much of the world into two systems of permanent institutionalized alliances. (The People's Republic of China renounced her alliance with the Soviet Union in 1961, thereafter creating a third, much smaller bloc of her own.)

These critics claim the inter-democratic peace of the period is sufficiently explained by a larger "bloc peace theory": relations between states in the same system were never permitted to decline to the point of full-scale war - except for some cases in which a new regime in one state convinced other members of their system or bloc that the new regime was hostile or incompetent, and had to be replaced. The First World nations were allied with each other, chiefly in NATO, and abstained from attacking one another in a collective effort to contain the bigger threat posed by Communism; the critics conclude that democratic peace theory relies on a body of evidence drawn disproportionately from a time when gravitation toward the Eastern and Western poles overrode other potential conflicts.

Democracies, even by Rummel's criteria, have come close to conflict with each other. Before the Cold War, the limited period during which there was more than one non-allied democratic Great Power includes several crises between them, including the Fashoda crisis, between the United Kingdom and France, and the Venezuela crisis between the United Kingdom and the United States. These were conducted as fiercely as many diplomatic conflicts involving a non-democratic state; and war was popular on both sides. Thus, the second class of critics argue, although democracies have co-existed peacefully in modern times, they have done so due to external factors, not because of the reasons propounded by the democratic peace theory.

As with democracies, there were wars in which one or both sides had Communist regimes no more than 3 years old: the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Prague spring, the Ogaden War, and the Cambodian-Vietnamese War.There were also minor conflicts, not meeting Rummel's threshold of deaths, particularly the Sino-Soviet border conflict. Critics argue that China was still part of a Communist bloc, if all capitalist democracies are to be considered one bloc, and that the Sino-Vietnamese War thus is a counter example to the bloc peace theory.

The proposed bloc theory might face a genuine objection in the Suez Crisis: however, it was not yet four years since Nasser overthrew the civilian ministers of Fuad II. Even though Egypt was not a full member of any Western alliance, and had just recognized the People's Republic of China, the allies of the attackers suppressed the invasion in less than two weeks. The skeptics of DPT therefore see this as confirmation that potential attacks on full members would have been stopped before they began.

Another possible counter example is the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. However, any hold that Nagy's government was a new communist regime; they would consider in which case the war comes under the three-year rule; or that (despite the Stalinist record of its chief) it was effectively a non-Communist regime; which would still fall under the three-year rule, and may have ceased to be part of the Warsaw pact bloc, becoming either a neutral or a Western power. Supporters note that Nagy was a Communist, had been an agent for the Soviet security apparatus earlier, and was installed by the Hungarian Communist Party. They find the argument that the regime was a new communist regime strange, since Rummel do not disallow a new democratic regime that follow immediately after another democratic regime.

It is true that "bloc peace theory" does not explain the peace between the scattered democracies of the Third World that survived the Cold War. But few of them did, and most of those were island states, like Jamaica, too small to wage full-scale wars. The remainder are a problem for those who regard peace between India and Costa Rica as requiring explanation.

Supporters of the democratic peace theory disagree with the analysis of wars before the start of the Cold War, arguing that democracies did not make wars with each other before the arrival of the external threat of Communism, and claim that external causes similarly cannot explain the continued peace between democracies after the end of the Cold War. Critics respond that the European Union contains some of those democracies capable of maintaining a major war, and is also an institutionalized alliance. Supporters note that even those European states still have separate militaries and to a large degree separate foreign policy. They also note the many democracies outside Europe [12].

Regarding the Cold War, supporters argue that the critics seem to define "bloc" arbitrarily in order to avoid exceptions for the Communist states, arguing that the Western world similarly had many different "blocs" but without having wars. For instance, France was antagonistic with the United States and expelled the NATO headquarters from its territory; France, however, did not withdrew fornally from NATO, and retained or even increased its ties to the other nations in the European Union.

Supporters also note the many large-scale wars between dictatorships and between dictatorships and democracies in the Third World during the same period, although critcs in return note the few democracies there and then.

[edit] Sources

Beck, Nathaniel, and Richard Tucker. Democracy and Peace: General Law or Limited Phenomenon? Midwest Political Science Association: April 1998.
Correlates of War Project
Brown, Michael E., Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller. Debating the Democratic Peace. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996.
Do Democracies Fight Each Other? BBC. November 17, 2004.
Doyle, Michael W. Ways of War and Peace. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997.
Gowa, Joanne. Ballots and Bullets: The Elusive Democratic Peace. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.
Huth, Paul K., et al. The Democratic Peace and Territorial Conflict in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge University Press: 2003. ISBN 0521805082.
Levy, Jack S. “Domestic Politics and War.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 18, No. 4, (Spring, 1988), pp. 653-673.
Lipson, Charles. Reliable Partners: How Democracies Have Made a Separate Peace. Princeton University Press: 2003. ISBN 0691113904.
Polity IV Project: Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800-2002
Plourde, Shawn Democide, Democracy and the Man from Hawaii May, 2004
Ray, James Lee. Democracy and International Conflict: An Evaluation of the Democratic Peace Proposition. University of South Carolina Press: 1998. ISBN 1570032416.
Ray, James Lee. Does Democracy Cause Peace? Annual Review of Political Science 1998:1, 27-46
Rummel, R.J. Power Kills: Democracy As a Method of Nonviolence. Transaction Publishers: 2003. ISBN 0765805235.
Rummel, R.J. The Democratic Peace
Russett, Bruce. Grasping the Democratic Peace. Princeton University Press: 1994. ISBN 0691001642.
Schwartz, Thomas, and Kiron Skinner. The Myth of Democratic Pacifism. The Wall Street Journal. January 7, 1999.