The Dearth of Jointly Dyadic Democratic Interventions

The Democratic Peace Proposition, which states that no two democracies have ever gone to war with each other, has been questioned by scholars who claim that such pacific behavior among free states does not apply to lower forms of conflict. In particular, Kegley and Hermann contend that democracies intervene in the affairs of other liberal states via overt military acts or covert machinations. In many cases, they argue that dyadic democratic interventions (DDIs) occur more frequently than would be expected given the number of jointly democratic dyads in the international system. I examine their research design and suggest changes to their concepts of states, interventions, and regime type, as well as their sample size and definition of dyads in the international system. I implement these changes and retest such arguments on a sample of interventions from 1945 to 1991. I find 11 cases where a democracy intervenes against another democracy, but these cases are rare in comparison to interventions conducted by democratic and/or autocratic states in undemocratic states, or by autocratic states against democratic states. Furthermore, these DDIs are less likely to occur than the presence of democracy in the international system would suggest.     

Incomplete Democratization and the Outbreak of Military Disputes

Whereas most research on the democratic peace has focused on relations within pairs of states, research on the relationship between democratization and armed conflict has centered primarily on the behavior of individual states. Moreover, the existing literature has placed primary emphasis on explaining the effects of democratization on war, rather than military disputes more generally. In this article, we find that certain types of democratic transitions markedly increase the risk of such disputes within dyads, even when economic and political relations between states are taken into account. Particularly prone to violence are dyads in which either state undergoes an incomplete democratic transition; that is, a shift from an autocratic to a partially democratic (or anocratic) regime that stalls prior to the establishment of consolidated democratic institutions.     

An Experimental Test of Selectorate Theory

This article uses a laboratory experiment to test one of the main predictions of selectorate theory, that is, that democratic leaders invest more resources in public goods than autocratic leaders. The results of the experiment confirm this prediction and further show citizens are better off on average under democratic institutions than autocratic institutions. Meanwhile, autocratic leaders receive higher payoffs than democratic leaders. Additionally, this article attempts to bring domestic politics into international relations experimentation with a focus on how communication may allow democracies to organize more efficiently for war than autocracies. A game theoretical model shows democracies have the potential to organize optimally and use their citizens’ skills to their full advantage while autocracies do not. The results of the experiment reveal some evidence that democracies organize more efficiently than autocracies, but that this increased efficiency did not produce a higher percentage of conflict wins.     

Generalized Social Trust and International Dispute Settlement

What determines the success of a peaceful settlement attempt of a border dispute? In order to fully understand why decision makers choose to put an end to an ongoing conflict, it is necessary to consider the social trust levels of the general populations in both states. International conflict settlement requires public support at the domestic level. If a state’s general population perceives the potential dangers of a settlement as too severe, the conclusion of a peace agreement will be difficult. We argue that high levels of social trust allow citizens (1) to favor more conciliatory foreign policies and (2) to be more optimistic about the future behavior of other states. In democratic settings, these public attitudes serve as powerful constraints for decision makers. As a result, high aggregate levels of social trust should be directly related to concession-granting behavior by democracies as well as effective dispute settlement among jointly democratic dyads. We test these expectations with a new aggregate-level measure of social trust and find mixed support for our hypotheses: While trust does not influence the behavior of challenger states, it does have strong effects on democratic target states and jointly democratic dyads.     

The Democratic Peace Through the Lens of Culture, 1820–1989

This article examines the extent to which cultural similarity vitiates the relationship between joint democracy and the incidence of interstate war. Previous empirical findings which suggest that cultural/normative explanations of the democratic peace are more robust than institutional/structural ones invite an analysis of the impact of broader cultural factors on the relationship between joint democracy and war involvement. The author suggests several ways that cultural factors might mitigate the democratic peace phenomenon and conducts a multivariate logistic analysis of state dyads from 1820 to 1989 to test the main query. Of the cultural variables, religious similarity within dyads is associated with a decreased likelihood of war onset, while both ethnic and linguistic similarity have the opposite effect. Democratic dyads, on average, have higher religious similarity levels than nondemocratic dyads, which, ostensibly, might play a role in reducing conflict within democratic dyads. However, the findings clearly demonstrate that although cultural factors are significant correlates of war they do not vitiate the impact of joint democracy on war. It appears that where a pair of states share a common democratic political culture it exerts a conflict dampening impact that overrides ethnic, linguistic, or religious factors.     

Causes of Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations, 1885–1992

Previous studies provide strong evidence for the Kantian theory of peace, but a satisfactory evaluation requires establishing the causal influence of the variables. Here we focus on the reciprocal relations between economic interdependence and interstate conflict, 1885–1992. Using distributed-lags analyses, we find that economically important trade does have a substantively important effect in reducing dyadic militarized disputes, even with extensive controls for the influence of past conflict. The benefit of interdependence is particularly great in the case of conflict involving military fatalities. Militarized disputes also cause a reduction in trade, as liberal theory predicts. Democracy and joint membership in intergovernmental organizations, too, have im-portant pacific benefits; but we find only limited support for the role of costly signals in establishing the liberal peace. We find no evidence that democratization increases the incidence of interstate disputes; and contrary to realists' expectations, allies are not less conflict prone than states that are not allied. Democracies and states that share membership in many international organizations have higher levels of trade, but allies do not when these influences are held constant.     

A Quality of Government Peace? Explaining the Onset of Militarized Interstate Disputes, 1985–2001

That democracies do not wage wars against each other is one of the most widely accepted claims within the study of international relations, although challenged lately by the capitalist peace argument. In addition to confirming both the democratic and capitalist peace effects, this article finds that the impact of quality of government—that is, having an impartial, nonpoliticized, and noncorrupt bureaucracy—on the risk of interstate conflict is at least on par with the influence of democracy. This result draws on dyadic Militarized Interstate Disputes (MIDs) data in 1985–2001 and holds even under control for incomplete democratization and economic development, as well as for fatal MIDs, the Cold War era, and within politically relevant dyads. I argue that the causal mechanism underlying this finding is that quality of government reduces information uncertainty among potentially warring parties and improves their ability to credibly commit to keeping their promises. Both democratic and capitalist peace theory needs to be complemented by theories “bringing the state back in” to the study of interstate armed conflict.     

Give Me Shelter: Reexamining Military Intervention and the Monadic Democratic Peace

Increasing empirical evidence points to the existence of a monadic democratic peace. However, the quantitative literature on international conflict has yet to produce any compelling evidence that such a peace holds for one of the most prominent types of interstate force in use today, foreign military intervention. This study tests the hypotheses that democracies are less prone to intervene militarily and less likely to be the targets of such incursions. In doing so, it compares six overlapping theoretical perspectives on the monadic democratic peace. No empirical support is lent to the hypothesis that democracies intervene less often than nondemocracies, but considerable evidence indicates that democracies are rarely the targets of foreign military intervention. The latter result remains consistent across six different intervention populations from 1975 to 1996. Of the six theoretical perspectives analyzed, the institutional approach recently advanced by Bueno de Mesquita and his associates fares best. Its predictions match the empirical outcomes exactly. None of the other theoretical frameworks is even half right. In sum, it seems that democratic governance provides a barrier against foreign military intervention, but it does not limit intervention abroad.     

Arab national security in the 1980's. Threats and strategies

Scholars increasingly are accepting the empirical generalization that democracies almost never go to war with each other, and infrequently even engage in militarized disputes with each other. It has not been clear, however, whether the rarity of conflict between democracies is caused by some aspect of being democratic, or whether it is caused by some other variable or variables that may be correlated with democracy. Using data on all independent states for the period 1946–1986, we examine the effects of political system type, distance, wealth, economic growth, alliances, and political stability. The results suggest that, although most of the other variables do have an effect, as hypothesized, there still seems to be an independent effect of political system type: democracies engage in militarized disputes with each other less than would be expected by chance. The effect may be enhanced by political stability; that is, states which can be perceived as stable democracies are less likely to be involved in disputes with other democracies.     

Dyadic effects of democratization on international disputes

I explore the dyadic, as opposed to monadic, effect of democratizationon war. Using a simple repeated game of interstate interaction,I show that, as a state shifts towards democracy, its citizensaquire more opportunities and become more willing to removethose leaders that they expect will reduce their welfare. Rationalleaders anticipate this consequence, and their incentives tomaintain cooperative relationships with other democracies increaseas their states become democratic. The hypothesis drawn fromthe model predicts that democratization will have a pacifyingeffect in a dyadic relationship between democracies. Empiricaltesting is designed to isolate the dyadic effect from the monadicand to distinguish among competing hypotheses. The predictionsare tested with widely used data on political institutions andmilitarized interstate disputes. The result shows that democratizationindeed reduces the likelihood of waging war. However, this pacifyingeffect is largely attributed to the dyadic effect with a democraticopponent; the risk of war remains unchanged when facing a non-democraticopponent.     

Rejecting the gift horse: international politics of disaster aid refusal

This is a study of the increasingly common phenomenon of developing states refusing some or all international aid following serious natural disaster. Aid refusal by the Myanmar junta following a 2008 cyclone is only the most recent prominent example of this practice, and I present here an original dataset of all cases of disaster aid refusal occurring between 1982 and 2006. Through quantitative analysis, I show that although poorer states are indeed less likely to refuse aid than wealthier states, recipient need does not alone drive the decision-making process. Nor are autocratic regimes any more or less likely to refuse aid than democratic regimes. Rather, just as recently transitioned states have been shown by other scholars to be particularly likely to engage in military conflict, I find that they are also particularly likely to publicly and explicitly refuse aid and insist on their own ability to handle disaster relief and recovery. Aid refusal, much like aid provision, is at its core a political act.     

Assessing the statistical rarity of wars between democracies

The ‘small numbers objection’ to the democratic peace claims that the relative rarity of militarized conflict between democracies is due to their small numbers coupled with the infrequency of violent interstate conflict, not to an alleged pacifying effect of democracy. This study assesses this objection directly by treating the number of militarized disputes between democracies as a random variable. Since the historical record provides only one observation for this variable, full estimation of its distributional characteristics requires repeated simulation of the process by which dyads are ‘selected’ for conflict We employ Monte Cario techniques to carry out this process. The simulation results indicate no support for the small numbers objection. The results remain stable when important control variables are introduced and when the analysis employs a weaker definition of democracy. Finally, the simulation enables a precise identification of the point within the 1816–1992 temporal domain when the democratic peace moved from an apparent statistical artifact to significant phenomenon.     

Democracy,Regional Security Institutions,and Rivalry Mitigation: Evidence From Europe,South America,and Asia

The fact that democracies maintain peaceful relations with each other is regarded as one of the few law-like correlations in international relations, but the causes of this empirical phenomenon remain contested. This paper tries to fill this theoretical gap by attributing the remarkable stability between democracies to inter-democratic institutions. At the same time, it contributes to the debate on the need to differentiate among international organizations in order to assess their peace-building effects. We identify transnational and trans-governmental linkages as crucial features that distinguish inter-democratic from traditional institutions with non-democratic or mixed membership. In order to explain these institutions’ peace-building effect, we analyze the impact of international institutions on rivalry mitigation with a view to five pairs of states: France-Germany, Greece-Turkey, Argentina-Brazil, Indonesia-Malaysia, and Japan-South Korea. Those dyads all look back at a history of rivalry, conflict, and mutual threat perceptions, and they are located in highly institutionalized regional settings but vary with regard to their political regime type. The controlled comparison of cases demonstrates that the embeddedness of international institutions in transnational and trans-governmental linkages corresponds to each member's regime type and that these institutional differences are responsible for the varying extent of rivalry mitigation.     

The Nexus of Market Society, Liberal Preferences, and Democratic Peace: Interdisciplinary Theory and Evidence

Drawing on literature from Anthropology, Economics, Political Science and Sociology, an interdisciplinary theory is presented that links the rise of contractual forms of exchange with in a society with the proliferation of liberal values, democratic legitimacy, and peace among democratic nations. The theory accommodates old facts and yields a large number of new and testable ones, including the fact that the peace among democracies is limited to market-oriented states, and that market democracies—but not the other democracies—perceive common interests. Previous research confirms the first hypothesis; examination herein of UN roll call votes confirms the latter: the market democracies agree on global issues. The theory and evidence demonstrate that (a) the peace among democratic states may be a function of common interests derived from common economic structure; (b) all of the empirical research into the democratic peace is underspecified, as no study has considered an interaction of democracy with economic structure; (c) interests can be treated endogenously in social research; and (d) several of the premier puzzles in global politics are causally related—including the peace among democracies and the association of democratic stability and liberal political culture with market-oriented economic development.     

Regime and Power in International Terror Crises: Strong Democracies Fight Back Hard

This study explores regime, power, and violence in international terror crises (ITCs). It examines terror strikes and retaliations against the terror groups and their hosts. The exploration tests two hypotheses: first, democracies, like other states, retaliate, even at the risk of escalation; and second, strong democracies fight back with massive violence as do authoritarian regimes. Historical narratives of ITCs from 1934 to 2006 show that strong democracies were the most common targets of terror. Like authoritarian states, they responded to terror, but were the most violent retaliators, followed by weaker states, democratic or not. So the democratic constraints affect weaker states more than stronger ones. These trends draw attention to the destabilizing nature of international terror and its challenge to the peaceful resolution of international disputes.     

The Chicken or the Egg?: A Coevolutionary Approach to Disputed Issues and Militarized Conflict

Is state behavior influenced by the context in which it occurs, or does context arise because of the way in which states behave? I investigate these questions in the context of international disputes over issues and states’ militarized behavior. The prevalent assumption in interstate conflict research is that disputed issues are exogenous to militarization patterns. I question the validity of this assumption, arguing there are reasons to suspect certain states self-select into disputes. I use a coevolution modeling strategy to allow the existence of disputes and states’ behavior to mutually affect one another. I find disputes are not exogenous to states’ militarized behavior. States that resort to militarized behavior are more likely to dispute an issue than peaceful states. I also find evidence of behavioral contagion among states engaged in disputes: Militarized behavior begets militarized behavior.     

Democratic Synergy and Victory in War, 1816–1992

This study investigates the question of why democracies are more likely to win wars than non-democracies. I argue that due to the transparency of the polities, and the stability of their preferences, once determined, democracies are better able to cooperate with their partners in the conduct of wars, and thereby are more likely to win wars. In support of my argument, the main findings in this study show that, other things being equal, the larger the number of democratic partners a state has, the more likely it is to win; moreover, democratic states are more likely to have democratic partners during wars. These results are in contrast with those in current literature about the high likelihood of prevailing by democracies in wars, which emphasize, on the one hand, the superior capacity of democratic states to strengthen military capabilities and, on the other hand, to select wars in which they have a high chance of winning.     

The Liberal Peace Revisited: The Role of Democracy,Dependence, and Development in Militarized Interstate Dispute Initiation, 1950–1999

We test a model of the liberal peace by examining the initiation of militarized interstate disputes at the monadic level of analysis from 1950–1999. Liberal peace theory contends that both economic dependence and democratic political systems reduce conflict propensities. Extant empirical analyses of the monadic liberal peace, however, are under-specified. First, the concept of economic dependence not only includes trade, but also foreign investment. Second, existing models do not control for the influence of economic development. Previous research on the monadic liberal peace has also failed to distinguish between the initiation of conflict and participation in conflict. We find evidence for a liberal peace: trade dependence, foreign investment, and democracy reduce a state’s propensity to initiate militarized disputes.     

Media Dependency: Mass Media as Sources of Information in the Democratizing Countries of Central and Eastern Europe

The theory of media dependency states that for societies in states of crisis or instability, citizens are more reliant on mass media for information and as such are more susceptible to their effects. As there is little empirical evidence of how citizens use mass media in democratizing countries, this article demonstrates that individuals' media use is not only heightened during democratic transition but is also a function of a deliberate information-seeking strategy. Using surveys from six Central and Eastern European countries in 1996–1997, the article presents empirical evidence that citizens of new democracies purposively use the media for obtaining political information. This pattern of media use is especially pronounced in new democracies that have not proceeded very far in the process of democratic consolidation. These findings begin to fill the gap in our knowledge about the role of mass media in democratizing countries and chart clear directions for broadening our understanding of the process of political socialization in such countries.     

Does Democracy Promote Interstate Cooperation? Lessons from the Mercosur Region

A rapidly growing body of research suggests that democracy enhances prospects for the peaceful settlement of interstate conflicts. To what extent can democracy also be linked with increased international cooperation? Building upon the literature on political cooperation as well as recent discussions of the "democratic peace," this study offers a plausibility probe of the hypothesis that democracy increases the likelihood of interstate agreement. The analysis, which draws upon a data set covering dyadic interactions among Mercosur nations during the 1947–1985 period, utilizes both logistic regression and negative binomial regression methods to assess the relationship between democracy and cooperation. The findings offer only limited support for the hypothesis that democracy promotes cooperation and challenge the recent literature on the relative peace among democracies in several theoretically suggestive ways. The study points to the potential fruitfulness of more extensive and rigorous research on the nexus between domestic institutions and international cooperation.