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	Strictly speaking, the theory of a Kantian peace contradicts the absolute theories of democratic peace. If three factors are required for a perpetual peace, no one of them can be the only thing needed. Similarly, other critics argue that an increase in world prosperity, and world trade, has produced ''both'' democracy and peace; so, although the two products will be correlated, one is no more the cause of the other than height the cause of puberty.		Strictly speaking, the theory of a Kantian peace contradicts the absolute theories of democratic peace. If three factors are required for a perpetual peace, no one of them can be the only thing needed.

			There has also been a confluence of the old theory (dating back to ] and ]) that ] will produce and ensure peace, with the modern theory that trade will produce democracy, or at least spread it to the non-democratic trading partner, as argued by ] and others. According to this, democracy and peace are indeed correlated, because they arise from a common cause, either common trade or common prosperity.


	Other critics again argue that any apparent association between democracy and peace is an illusion, due in part to chance, and in part to peace being induced by other and transient causes. For example, Joanne Gowa observes that much of the data used to infer an absolute democratic peace consists of Western democracies not going to war with each other while allied against the Soviet Union, and argues that this offers limited hope that non-allied democracies will remain at peace. Other critics have ascribed the democratic peace to the relative isolation of democratic states (particularly those not part of the Western alliance). This again overlaps with the third category above, since there is also an argument that the relative peace of the twenty-first century (so far), is due to the completion of decolonization.		Other critics again argue that any apparent association between democracy and peace is an illusion, due in part to chance, and in part to peace being induced by other and transient causes. For example, Joanne Gowa observes that much of the data used to infer an absolute democratic peace consists of Western democracies not going to war with each other while allied against the Soviet Union, and argues that this offers limited hope that non-allied democracies will remain at peace. Other critics have ascribed the democratic peace to the relative isolation of democratic states (particularly those not part of the Western alliance). This again overlaps with the third category above, since there is also an argument that the relative peace of the twenty-first century (so far), is due to the completion of decolonization.

Revision as of 21:37, 18 January 2006

A democratic peace theory or simply democratic peace (often DPT and sometimes democratic pacifism) is a theory in international relations, political science, and Philosophy which holds that democracies—specifically, liberal democracies—never or almost never go to war with one another. A more general version is that all kinds of systematic violence is rare in and by liberal democracies. It can trace its philosophical roots to Immanuel Kant.

History

Main article: Perpetual peace

At least partly because of the low frequency of democratic governments, and of sociologists, before the 19th century, democratic peace theory is a relatively new development. No ancient author seems to have considered it true. Early authors referred to republics rather than democracies, since the word democracy had acquired a bad name until early modern times. Nicolo Machiavelli believed that republics were by nature excellent war-makers and empire-builders, citing Rome as the prime example. Immanuel Kant, in his essay Perpetual Peace (1795), affirmed that responsible governments would not lightly go to war with each other, although he thought that this was only one of several necessary conditions for a perpetual peace. The hope of a democratic peace was the content of the First World War slogan: "a war to end all war" (originated by H.G. Wells). Woodrow Wilson's policy for the Versailles settlement was largely based on all three planks of Kant's program.

In 1964, Dean Babst, a Wisconsin criminologist, published the first theory of democratic peace; thereafter, an increasing amount of research has been done on the theory and related subjects. More than one hundred researchers have contributed to the literature, according to an incomplete bibliography. Despite criticism, it has grown in prominence among political scientists and has become influential in the policy world.

Presidents of both the major American parties have expressed support for the theory. Former President Bill Clinton of the Democratic Party: "Ultimately, the best strategy to ensure our security and to build a durable peace is to support the advance of democracy elsewhere. Democracies don't attack each other." Current President George W. Bush of the Republican Party: "And the reason why I'm so strong on democracy is democracies don't go to war with each other. And the reason why is the people of most societies don't like war, and they understand what war means.... I've got great faith in democracies to promote peace. And that's why I'm such a strong believer that the way forward in the Middle East, the broader Middle East, is to promote democracy."

However, this use of democratic peace theory to justify a foreign policy that has included military action, such as the 2003 Iraq War, has proved controversial.

Contents of the Theories

Monadic theories claim that democracies tned to conduct their affairs more peaceably, whether with other democracies or not. More general theories developed from the monadic version claim that two democracies are less likely to make war on each other than other pairs of states.

Dyadic theories claim that democracies are more peaceable with each other; but make various assertions about their relations to other states (The separate peace and militant democracy theories claim that democracies are more likely to go to war with non-democracies). Another type of peace theory divides democracies into militant and pacifist. Militant democracies have a tendency to distrust and use confrontational policies against dictatorships. Most MIDs by democracies since 1950 have involved only four nations: the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, and India.

Some dyadic theories, such as those forwarded by Babst, Singer, Rummel and Doyle claim that democracies, properly defined, have never made war on each other. (Rummel also classifies 155 of the wars since Waterloo as between democracies and non-democracies, 198 as between non-democracies. Given the limited number of democracies he acknowledges, democracies have, in his view, gone to war more often than other states, but not with each other.) These theorists then argue that there are special reasons why wars between democracies do not occur.

A democratic peace theory has to define what it means by "democracy" and what it means by "peace" (or, more often, "war"), and what it claims as the link between the two.

Democracy

Democratic peace theorists have used different terms for the class of states they consider peaceable; Babst called them elective, Rummell liberal democracies, Doyle liberal regimes. In general, these require not only that the government and legislature be chosen by free and genuinely contested elections, but more besides. Many researchers have used the Polity Data Set which scores states for democracy on a continuous scale for every year from 1800 to 2003; as well as others. Some papers have found that proportional representation is associated with less external and internal systematic violence.

War

Many theorists have used the convenient list at the Correlates of War Project at the University of Michigan, which compiled the wars from 1816 to 1991 with at least a thousand battlefield deaths. This data is particularly convenient for statistical analysis, and the large-scale statistical studies cited below have generally used this definition. (Also the Falklands War, although it killed only 910 (or 936, or 960) soldiers, satisfied most other criteria to be a full-scale war, and a few dozen deaths should not exclude it.)

Kantian peace

Kant's plan for a perpetual peace included more than a government answerable to the people. He proposed a League of Nations to keep the peace; and a right to "hospitality" which should be recognized everywhere. This latter was a freedom of international travel and commerce, in some ways resembling the Schengen Treaty. (He also proposed preliminary confidence-building measures, including disarmament; but these were a means rather than an end.)

Several theorists have found multiple causes for such general peace as we have seen; quite often three which resemble Kant's. (The last is sometimes world prosperity rather than freedom of trade or travel, which are harder to measure.) Several of these theorists call their result the Kantian peace.

Statistical Studies supporting a DPT

Numerous studies using many different kinds of data, definitions, and statistical analyses have found support for some democratic peace theory. There have also been numerous studies debunking the idea. However, democratic peace theories are highly controversial, and the findings of individual studies are often vigorously disputed.

Studies have also argued that lesser conflicts (Militarized Interstate Disputes in the jargon) have been more violent, but less bloody, and less likely to spread.

Some democratic peace theorists also hold that violence, especially mass violence, is less common within democracies. The most democratic and the most authoritarian states have few civil wars, and intermediate regimes the most. In the long run, since intermediate regimes are less stable than autocracies, which in turn are less stable than democracies, durable democracy is the most probable end-point of the process of democratization.

Causes

One idea is that liberal democracies have a common culture and that this creates good relations. However, there have been many wars between non-democracies that share a common culture. Democracies are however characterized by rule of law, and therefore the inhabitants may be used to resolve disputes through arbitration rather than by force. This may reduce the use of force between democracies.

Another idea is that democracy gives influence to those most likely to be killed or wounded in wars, and their relatives and friends (and to those who pay the bulk of the war taxes). This was Kant's argument; and it is supported by the example of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, in which the Sejm vetoed more than half the royal proposals for war. This monadic theory must, however, explain why democracies do attack non-democratic states. One explanation is that these democracies were threatened or otherwise were provoked by the non-democratic states. This idea would suggest that the relationship in the DPT became stronger when graphic movies and television made wars less romantic.

R. J. Rummel dismisses these as superficial, relying on Kurt Lewin and Andrew Ushenko's proposition that democracy involves a pervasive social mechanism (called a "social field") in which, "The primary mode of power is exchange, political system is democratic, and democratic government is but one of many groups and pyramids of power." In contrast, authoritarian systems involve a "social anti-field", " divides its members into those who command and those who must obey, thus creating a schism separating all members and dividing all issues, a latent conflict front along which violence can break out." Thus, the citizens of a democracy are habituated to compromise, conflict resolution, and to viewing unfavorable outcomes as temporary and/or tolerable.

Studies show that democratic states are more likely than autocratic states to win the wars. One explanation is that democracies, for internal political and economic reasons, have greater resources. This might mean that democratic leaders are unlikely to select other democratic states as targets because they perceive them to be particularly formidable opponents. One study finds that interstate wars have important impacts on the fate of political regimes, and that the probability that a political leader will fall from power in the wake of a lost war is particularly high in democratic states.

A game-theoretic explanation is that the participation of the public and the open debate send clear and reliable information regarding the intentions of democracies to other states. In contrast, it is difficult to know the intentions of nondemocratic leaders, what effect concessions will have, and if promises will be kept. Thus there will be mistrust and unwillingness to make concessions if at least one of the parties in a dispute is a nondemocracy.

The book Never at War explains the democratic and also a related oligarchic peace by the human tendency to classify other humans into ingroup and outgroup.

Criticisms

There are at least four logically distinguishable classes of criticism of any theory of democratic peace.

That the theorist has not applied his criteria, for democracy or war or both, accurately to the historical record.
That the criteria are not reasonable. For example, critics may prefer that liberal democracy should exclude or include both of Germany and the United Kingdom at the time of WWI, rather than count one as democratic and the other non-democratic, when they were quite similar societies.
That the theory may not actually mean very much, because it has limited its data below the level of significance, or because it promises only a limited peace, involving only a small class of states; for example, democracies have fought many offensive colonial and imperialistic wars.
That it is not democracy itself but some other external factor(s) which happened to be associated with democratic states that explain the peace.

Often, the same theory will be seen as vulnerable to several of these criticisms at the same time.

Specific historic examples

Any theory of democratic peace must face certain difficult examples. The theories wnich claim an absolute democratic peace solve the problem by restricting the definition of democracy (and sometimes of war); the Kantian peace theories generally look for explanations in the absence of international pressure, trade, or prosperity; the other modern theories will observe that any tendency will, in the perversity of human affairs, have exceptions.

World War I.
the Spanish-American War,
the American Civil War,
the War of the Pacific,
the Continuation War,
the Trail of Tears,
the Sicilian Expedition
the war between the French Second Republic and the Roman Republic (19th century).

Limited claims

This class of criticism is particularly cogent against the theories of absolute democratic peace, which claim that no two democracies have ever gone to war. These theorists accomplish this by arguing that the Confederate States of America, the Boer republics, the Second French Republic, and so on, were not real democracies for one or another reason.

When all these reasons are added up, few democracies remain, and the theory doesn't actually say all that much about them. Rummel's data, for example, consist largely of the following:

From 1815 until the 1880's, there were at most three democratic states (the United States, Switzerland and San Marino). It is true they did not go to war, but some would ascribe this to geography.
From then until 1904, there were several crises among the democratic powers, as among the others. The only war between any two Powers that resulted was the Spanish-American War, between a democracy and a borderline democracy (which side of the border depends on which edition of Ted Gurr's list you read).
From 1904 on, Great Britain has been allied with France. Most other democracies were either allied with this Entente or benevolently neutral.
From 1945 to 1991, most of the world's democracies were allied against the Soviet Union; the remainder were few and isolated.
Since 1991, there have been very few full-scale wars. None of that few have been between democracies.

Is, for example, the Entente to be explained by the democracy of the two Contracting Powers? The Third Reform Bill barely meets, if at all, Rummell's stated criteria for democracy; and fails entirely if the British Empire, or even India, is considered.

Even if it were so explained, is this handful of facts sufficient to count on a democratic peace forever?

Colonial wars and imperialism

One criticism against a general peacefulness for liberal democracies is that they were involved in more colonial and imperialistic wars than other states during the 1816-1945 period. On the other hand, this relation disappears if controlling for factors like power and number of colonies. Liberal democracies have less of these wars than other states after 1945. This might be related to changes in the perception of non-European peoples, as embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Related to this is the human rights violations committed against native people, sometimes by liberal democracies. One response is that many of the worst crimes were committed by nondemocracies, like in the European colonies before the nineteenth century, in King Leopold II of Belgium's privately owned Congo Free State, and in Stalin's Soviet Union. England abolished slavery in British territory in 1833, immediately after the First Reform Bill had significantly increased democracy. (Of course, the abolition of the slave trade had begun under the Tories; and many DPT's would disclaim so undemocratic a state as Melbourne's England in other contexts.)

Many democratic peace theories implicitly or explicitly exclude the first years of democracies; for example, by requiring that the executive derive from genuinely contested elections, which would eliminate both administrations of George Washington. These theories are therefore perfectly compatible with, and not at all falsified by, established democracies preying upon nascent, attempted, proclaimed, or unstable democratic states.

External causes

Strictly speaking, the theory of a Kantian peace contradicts the absolute theories of democratic peace. If three factors are required for a perpetual peace, no one of them can be the only thing needed.

There has also been a confluence of the old theory (dating back to Richard Cobden and Benjamin Constant) that Free Trade will produce and ensure peace, with the modern theory that trade will produce democracy, or at least spread it to the non-democratic trading partner, as argued by Houshang Amiramahdi and others. According to this, democracy and peace are indeed correlated, because they arise from a common cause, either common trade or common prosperity.

Other critics again argue that any apparent association between democracy and peace is an illusion, due in part to chance, and in part to peace being induced by other and transient causes. For example, Joanne Gowa observes that much of the data used to infer an absolute democratic peace consists of Western democracies not going to war with each other while allied against the Soviet Union, and argues that this offers limited hope that non-allied democracies will remain at peace. Other critics have ascribed the democratic peace to the relative isolation of democratic states (particularly those not part of the Western alliance). This again overlaps with the third category above, since there is also an argument that the relative peace of the twenty-first century (so far), is due to the completion of decolonization.

As often on academic matters, these criticisms are disputed. Papers have been done claiming significant correlation, even after controlling for such variables.

Human Security Report

The Human Security Report, released in October 2005 by the Human Security Centre, documents the improved peace since the collapse of the Soviet Empire. It chiefly credits the end of the struggles of the Cold War and decolonization; but asserts also the underlying force of all the articles of the Kantian triad, which it calls interdependent.

References

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/kant/kant1.htm. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |Author= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |PublishYear= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |Title= ignored (|title= suggested) (help)
Rummel, R.J (October 2). "Democratic Peace Bibliography Version 3.0". Freedom, Democracy, Peace; Power, Democide, and War. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= and |year= / |date= mismatch (help)
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/states/docs/sou94.htm. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |Author= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |PublishYear= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |Title= ignored (|title= suggested) (help)
"President and Prime Minister Blair Discussed Iraq, Middle East". October 3. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= and |year= / |date= mismatch (help)
"Iraq and the Democratic Peace". Foreign Affairs. December 19. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= and |year= / |date= mismatch (help)
. ISBN 1560009276 http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |Author= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Publisher= ignored (|publisher= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Title= ignored (|title= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Year= ignored (|year= suggested) (help)
Ray, 1998.
"Global Conflict Trends". Center for Systematic Peace. October 1. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= and |year= / |date= mismatch (help)
Ray, 1998.
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/PK.CHAP1.HTM Accessed 18:33, 15 January 2006 (UTC) (search on "field")
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"Annotated Bibliography". The Miracle That Is Freedom: The Solution to War, Violence, Genocide, and Poverty. October 3. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= and |year= / |date= mismatch (help)
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For such critical papers see Template:Journal reference url; Template:Citepaper version; Template:Citepaper version; Template:Journal reference url;Template:Journal reference url; Template:Journal reference url
For which see the HSR website

External links

Summary of common examples and arguments

Supportive

The Democratic Peace
Democide, Democracy and the Man from Hawaii
A summing-up in favor of Rummellism as of 1998
Spread of Democracy Will Make World Safer, Historian Says a moderated webchat with Victor Davis Hanson hosted by the Department of State, International Information Program.

Critical

Categories:

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