Democratic Peace

Impact of Democracy

Recent interest evoked by democratic peace is the result, in an important part, of the strikingly simple claim that no two democratic states have ever fought a war against each other. This is not a trivial claim. Though interstate wars are far too common, statistically speaking, they are rare events. In most years, 99% of the pairs of states in the international system avoid fighting wars against each other. For the rate of warfare among democratic states to be significantly different from that for states, in general, the number of wars between democratic states must be at least close to zero.

So critics of democratic peace point out exceptions to the alleged rule about democratic states having universally peaceful relationships with each other. The War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain, the U.S. Civil War, the Spanish American War in 1898, even World War I, the official state of war between Great Britain and Finland in World War II, the war between Lebanon and Israel in 1948, and the military conflict between India and Pakistan in 1999 are among the most frequently mentioned wars on this list.

Resolving the debate about whether any or all of these are actually exceptions to the democratic peace rule obviously must involve definitions of “war” and “democracy.” A specific definition of war widely adopted by researchers focusing on quantitative analysis of evidence regarding its causes specifies that an interstate war involves military conflict between independent states leading to the deaths of at least 1,000 soldiers. This definition has been adopted by most analysts conducting systematic empirical evaluations of hypotheses regarding the causes of war for several decades.

Definitions and measures of democracy are probably more contestable. Most of the research on democratic peace has adopted a numerical threshold based on data consisting of annual scores rating states on a continuum from fully [Page 621]autocratic to entirely democratic. These thresholds are inescapably arbitrary to some extent. In fact, all definitions contain an important arbitrary element. Furthermore, to evaluate the validity of the statement that democratic states never fight wars against each other, all states must be sorted into “democratic” or “not democratic” categories. Obviously, states do not naturally or clearly fall into neatly exclusive or exhaustive categories of that kind. So, ultimately, the proposition that needs to be evaluated is “states that are sufficiently democratic never (or rarely) fight wars against each other.” How much democracy is enough, and how can that level of democracy be identified, are crucial questions with no answers that will generate universal consensus. One characteristic receiving some attention focuses on the ability of a state to stage elections in which executive leadership of the state passes from one independent political party to another, different independent political party.

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