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			{{POV-because\|Systematic exclusions of many supporting studies and findings, extremely biased presentation of specific historic cases, systematic exclusion of counter-arguments to criticism of the theory}}
	The '''democratic peace theory''' or simply '''democratic peace''' (often '''DPT''' and sometimes '''democratic pacifism''') is a ] in ] and ] which holds that ]—specifically, ]—never or almost never go to ] with one another. A more general version is that all kinds of systematic violence is rare in and by democracies. Despite criticism, it has grown in prominence among ] and has become influential in the policy world.
			{{OriginalResearch}}
	]]]
			{{citation style}}
			A '''democratic peace theory''' or simply '''democratic peace''' (often '''DPT''' and sometimes '''democratic pacifism''') is a ] in ], ], and ] which holds that ]—specifically, ]—never or almost never go to ] 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 ].

	==History ~~of the theory~~==		==History==
			{{See main\|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.
	The idea came relatively late in political theory, one contributing factor being that democracies were very rare before the late nineteenth century. 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. ] believed that republics were by nature excellent war-makers and empire-builders, citing Rome as the prime example. It was ] who first foreshadowed the theory in his essay ''Perpetual Peace'' written in ],{{ref\|Kant}} although he thought that democracy was only one of several necessary conditions for a perpetual peace. US President ] advocated the idea in politics during and after ].

			In early modern times, the word ''democracy'' usually meant ], which was treated with suspicion. Even the idea that ]s tend to be peaceful is recent; ] believed that republics were by nature excellent war-makers and empire-builders, citing Rome as the prime example. Interesingly, Islamic tradition holds that peace will prevail within the '']'' or "house of submission" to the faith, but war, including '']'', beyond that zone.
	In ], ] was the first to claim that statistical evidence supported the theory. 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.{{ref\|Bibliography}} Despite criticism, it has grown in prominence among political scientists and has become influential in the policy world. Scholar ] made an oft-quoted assertion that the theory is "as close as anything we have to an empirical law in international relations"{{ref\|Quote}}

			], in his essay ''Perpetual Peace'' (]),{{ref\|Kant}} 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 ] slogan: ''"a war to end all war"'' (originated by ]). ]'s policy for the ] settlement was largely based on all three planks of Kant's program.
	]s of both ] parties have expressed support for the theory. ]: "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."{{ref\|Clinton}} ]: "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."{{ref\|Bush}}

			In ], ], a Wisconsin criminologist, published the first theory of democratic peace; he published two papers in obscure journals and were ognored. The first prominent DPT was stated by ], of the ], beginning in the middle seventies. Thereafter, an increasing amount of research has been done on the theory and related subjects. (For the numerous researchers on the subject, see Rummel's bibliography, under ].)
	==Statistical studies supporting the DPT==
	''War'' and ''liberal democracy'' can be defined in different ways. The studies supporting the DPT have often defined war as any military action with more than 1000 killed in battle. This is the definition used in the ] which has also supplied the data regarding the wars and the militarized disputes for many of the studies. The early researcher ] required liberal democracies to have voting rights for at least 2/3 of all adult males and that the democracy should be older than 3 years at the start of the war. He also had some implicit criteria; for example, the chief officer of the democracy must have had a contested election. Another example is requiring that at least 50% of the adult population is allowed to vote and that there has been at least one peaceful, constitutional transfer of executive power from one independent political party to another by means of an election. Many researchers have used the ] which scores states for democracy on a continuous scale for every year from ] to ]. There are also many other data sets used in conflict research.{{ref\|Data1}}{{ref\|Data2}}

			]s of both the major ] parties have expressed support for the theory. Former President ] of the ]: "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."{{ref\|Clinton}} Current President ] of the ]: "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."{{ref\|Bush}} However, such use of democratic peace theory to justify a foreign policy that includes military action, such as the ], has proved controversial.{{ref\|Iraq}}
	Numerous studies using many different kinds of data, definitions, and statistical analyses have found support for the democratic peace theory. They have concluded that no wars have been fought between liberal democracies and that this is statistically significant when compared with the wars fought with and between nondemocracies during the last two centuries. There is also much research showing that all kinds of systematic violence is rare in and by democracies.{{ref\|Overview}}{{ref\|Bibliography2}} Most statistical work has focused on the 19th and 20th centuries, but there is also some research on the applicability of the theory outside this period.{{ref\|NeverWar}}

			:{{note\|Kant}} <small> </small>
	''Militarized interstate disputes'' (MIDs) include the disputes that later will become wars but also the disputes causing less than 1000 or even no battle deaths but including for example a military display of force. There have been more than 2000 MIDs since 1816, allowing more detailed statistical analyses than when looking at wars. Research using a continuous measure of democracy shows that the most democratic nations have the least MIDs. There is an ongoing debate regarding whether it is the most authoritarian or the intermediate regimes that have the most MIDs. When examining these MIDs in more detail, the inter-liberal disputes have on the average more hostility, but are less likely to involve third parties, hostility is less likely to be reciprocated, when reciprocated the response is usually proportional to the provocation, and the disputes are less likely to cause any loss of life.{{ref\|CharacMids}}{{ref\|Three}}{{ref\|NeuralMids}} Enduring militarized competition between democratic states is rare. After both states have become democratic, there is a decreasing probability for MIDs within a year and this decreases almost to zero within five years.{{ref\|Rivalry}}
			:{{note\|Clinton}} <small> {{Web reference \| Author=Clinton, Bill \| Title=1994 State Of The Union Address \| URL=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/states/docs/sou94.htm\|Date=2006-01-22 }}</small>
			:{{note\|Bush}} <small> {{Web reference \| title=President and Prime Minister Blair Discussed Iraq, Middle East \| url=http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/11/20041112-5.html\| date=October 3\| year=2005 }}</small>
			:{{note\|Iraq}} <small> </small>

			==Types of Theories==
	In international crises that include the threat or use of military force, if the parties are democracies, then relative military strength has no effect on who wins. This is different from when nondemocracies are involved. This pattern is the same for both allied and nonallied parties.{{ref\|WinLoss}}

			''Monadic'' theories claim that democracies tend 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. A recent paper claims that democracies fight fewer wars, start fewer wars and lesser conflcts, and reach more negotiated settlements. {{ref\|Monadic}}
	Research also shows that wars involving democracies are less violent and that democracies have much less ].{{ref\|Democide}} The most democratic and the most authoritarian states have few ]s, and intermediate regimes the most. The probability for a civil war is also increased by political change, regardless whether toward greater democracy or greater autocracy. Intermediate regimes continue to be the most prone to civil war, regardless of the time since the political change. 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 ].{{ref\|CivilWar}} The fall of ] and the increase in the number of democratic states were accompanied by a sudden and dramatic decline in total warfare, interstate wars, ] wars, ] wars, and the number of ] and ]s.{{ref\|PostWWII}}

			''Dyadic'' theories claim that democracies are more peaceable with each other; but make various assertions about their relations to other states. ''Separate peace'' theories claim that democracies are ''more'' likely to go to war with non-democracies. The ''militant democracy'' theory divides democracies into ''militant'' and ''pacifist'' types. Militant democracies have a tendency to distrust and use confrontational policies against dictatorships, which could actually make war more likely between a democracy and a non-democracy than in the case of relations between two non-democracies. Moreover, a ''democratic crusade corollary'' suggests that the belief in the validity DPT itself could become a cause of war. In the case of the United States intervention in World War I and recent invasion of Iraq, the promise of democratization bringing an end to war was used as a justification for war.
	Democracies do sometimes attack nondemocracies. Many earlier papers found that democracies in general are as warlike as nondemocracies, but according to several recent papers democracies are overall slightly less involved in war, initiate wars and MIDs less frequently than nondemocracies, and tend more frequently to seek negotiated resolutions.{{ref\|Monadic}} A recent theory is that democracies can be divided into "pacifist" and "militant". While both avoid attacking other democracies, "militant" democracies have a tendency to distrust and use confrontational policies against dictatorships. Most MIDs by democracies since ] have involved only four nations: the ], the ], ], and ].{{ref\|MilPac1}}{{ref\|MilPac2}} Research has examined the effect of different democratic institutions. One finding is that ] is associated with less external and internal systematic violence.{{ref\|Prop1}}{{ref\|Prop2}}

			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 ] 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.
	==Causes==
	One idea is that democracies have a common ] 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 ], and therefore the inhabitants may be used to resolve disputes through ] rather than by force. This may reduce the use of force between democracies.

			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 ]s, 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 ].{{ref\|CivilWar}}
	]]]
	Another idea is that democracy gives influence to those most likely to be killed or wounded in wars, and their relatives and friends. However, democracies sometimes attack non-democratic states. One explanation is that these democracies were threatened or otherwise were provoked by the non-democratic states. This idea also suggests that the relationship in the DPT became stronger when graphic movies and television made wars less romantic.

			:{{note\|Monadic}} <small></small>
	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.{{ref\|WarWinners}}
			:{{note\|CivilWar}} <small></small>

			==Claims==
	A ] 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.{{ref\|Game}}
			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===
	The book '']'' explains the democratic and also a related ] peace by the human tendency to classify other humans into ] and ].
			Democratic peace theorists have used different terms for the class of states they consider peaceable; Babst called them ], Rummell ], Doyle ]s. In general, these usually require not only that the government and legislature be chosen by free and actually contested elections, but more. The studies claiming ''absolute'' democratic peace often require that half or two-thirds of adult ''males'' be able to vote (requiring ] would mean no war between democracies was even possible before 1894); also ] (Babst), or a waiting time for the democracy to stabilize.

			Many researchers have used the ] which scores states for democracy on a continuous scale for every year from ] to ]; as well as others. {{ref\|Data}} Some recent papers have found that ] is associated with less external and internal systematic violence.{{ref\|Proportional}}
	==Criticisms==
	There are at least four logically distinguishable classes of criticism. One that the criteria has not been applied accurately to the historical record. For example, critics have argued that ] was a democracy at the time of ]. Another that the criteria are not appropriate. For example, critics may prefer that liberal democracy should exclude or include both of Germany and England at the time of WWI, rather than separate them into democratic and non-democratic. A third that the theory may not actually mean very much. For example, there were very few liberal democracies before the twentieth century. Democracies have fought many offensive ] and ] wars. A fourth that it is not democracy itself but some other external factor(s) associated with democratic states that explain the peace.

			:{{Note\|Data}} <small> Such additional data sources include the {{Web reference \| title=Conflict Data Set \| work=Stockholm International Peace Research Institute \| url=http://www.sipri.org/contents/conflict/conflictdatasets.html\| date=October 3 \| year=2005 }} and {{Web reference \| title=Data\| work=Peter D. Watson Center for Conflict and Cooperation\| url=http://www.watson.rochester.edu/resources/data.html\| date=October 3 \| year=2005 }}</small>
	These tend to overlap, being in fact complementary criticisms, and many critics make more than one of them. It is particularly hard to tell the first two classes apart on for example 1914 Germany and England, since they cannot be separated into democracy and nondemocracy using numerical factors like the percentage of the population having the right to vote, but must be separated by qualitative factors. These criticisms are discussed in the remaining sections.
			:{{Note\|Proportional}} <small>; </small>

			===War===
	==Specific historic examples==
			Many theorists have used the convenient list at the ] {{Ref\|COW}} at the ], 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 ], 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.)
	{\| {{prettytable}} ALIGN="left"
			<small>
	\|+ '''Number of wars 1816-1991{{ref\|NumberWars}}'''
			:{{Note\|COW}} See the site. Click on ''Available Data Sets'' for particular databases.
	\|-
			</small>
	\| Democracies vs. Democracies \|\| 0
	\|-
	\| Democracies vs. Nondemocracies \|\| 155
	\|-
	\| Nondemocracies vs. Nondemocracies \|\| 198
	\|-
	\|Other studies show similar results.{{ref\|NumberWars2}}
	\|}
	Note that the following concerns the claim of no wars between liberal democracies and not other claims like fewer MIDs. More examples are discussed in the article about the book '']'' which also discuss the role of oligarchies. These and other possible counter-examples have been discussed in great detail in the literature.{{ref\|Counter}}

	===~~Liberal~~ ~~democracy?~~===		===Kantian peace===
			Kant's plan for a perpetual peace included more than a government answerable to the people. He proposed a ] 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 ]. (He also proposed preliminary confidence-building measures, including disarmament; but these were a means rather than an end.)
	For the ] critics have argued that the ] was a democracy, (the ] was elected by universal male suffrage and it did vote overwhelmingly to fund the war), or that Britain was not a democracy (only three-fifths of British males could vote, to say nothing of the Empire beyond the Seas, the majority of which had no say in the decision at all). Supporters respond that the German ] had the executive power. He appointed and dismissed the ], the Imperial officials, and the officers. He could and did declare war together with the not democratically elected ], 30% of which was appointed by the Emperor, and most of the rest by the German princes. The Reichstag had little control over the executive power and its legislative power was greatly limited by the Bundesrat. The Emperor's appointees in the Bundesrat could themselves veto amendments to the ]. In 1913 the Chancellor ignored a ] and there were often threats of a military ] if the Reichstag should ignore the Emperor on important issues. In effect, therefore, especially in foreign and military affairs, there was little democratic control. The Emperor was also the King of ] which had 3/5 of the German population and the Prussian constitution gave him even greater power there. The landed ] of the ]s formed the officer corps of the army, dominated Prussia, and had strong influence on national politics as well.{{ref\|WW2-1}}{{ref\|WW2-2}}{{ref\|WW2-3}}{{ref\|WW2-4}}{{ref\|1913}} If Britain was not a liberal democracy, then this is another reason why WWI was not a war between democracies. The last argument may however weaken the statistical support for the DPT, because fewer democracies mean fewer possible wars.

			Several theorists, led by ] and ] and 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.{{Ref\|Kantian}}
	There can be similar responses to other objections. During the ], only a small minority had the right to vote in the ], many new urban areas had no representation, the ballot was not secret, many seats in ] were appointed or openly bought from the owners of ]s, and the ] could ] all laws. The defenders of DPT exclude the ] because, in addition to it being an internal conflict, in the ] less than 2/3 of the adult male population could vote, ] were censored and imprisoned, and there was never a competitive presidential election.{{ref\|AmerCivWar}} Only a minority had the right to vote in the ]s before the ].{{ref\|Boer}} ], the president of ] at the time of the ], used terror tactics to silence critical press and the previously independent judiciary, for example storming the ] in order to force the Chief Justice out of office. ], the president of the ] at the start of the latest conflicts with ], and ], the president of the ] during the ], can be criticized on similar grounds.{{ref\|Arafat}} {{ref\|Milosevic}} There was never a democratic election in the ] before the ]. All the ] presidents at the time of the conflicts with the U.S., like ], took their power in coup d'etats. At the time of the ], only one man in fifty could vote in ] and ].{{ref\|Pacific}} ] had the ] system and the monarchy retained important powers at the time of ].{{ref\|SAW}}

			:{{Note\|Kantian}}<small> See Russett & Oneal ''Triangulating Peace'' and the preliminary papers ; </small>
	Some ] may have a form of democracy in the extended kinship group but no effective control of personal raids against non-kin groups. These often gradually involves friends and relatives and escalate to ] and wars. Examples include the ] who frequently raided and eventually destroyed most of the ]. Such tribes and liberal democracies have fought one another.

			==Statistical Studies==
	===Liberal democracies before the nineteenth century?===
			There have been numerous statistical studies in the field. Many have claimed support for some theory of democratic peace; many have denied any such support. {{ref\|RayGowa}} 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.{{ref\|MID}} Most such disputes involving democracies since ] have involved only four nations: the ], the ], ], and ].{{ref\|MID2}}
	In ], ]s with limited democracy fought wars with one another. Most noted is the ] by the ] against ]. These states had large numbers of non-voting ]s and ]s. It is estimated that only 30-50% of adult males in Athens had the right to vote. The ] and ] had limited democracy and fought the three ]. There were persistent wars among ], ], ], and other ] city-states with limited democracy.

			The ], released in October 2005 by the ], documents the improved peace since the collapse of the Soviet Empire. It chiefly credits the end of the struggles of the ] and ]; but asserts also the underlying force of all the articles of the Kantian triad, which it calls interdependent. {{ref\|HumanSecurityReport}} The improvement in the peace of the world since the end of the Cold War has been tabulated here. {{Ref\|PostColdWar}}
	===Deaths in battle===
	The rule of at least 1000 killed in battle excludes attacks by one democracy on another in such overwhelming force that there is no effective resistance, and thus few deaths in battle. Some ] and small scale foreign interventions by the United States may be examples. One example is the non-battle deaths of 4000 ] indians during the ] in ]. The Cherokees had created a republican constitution in ] that in theory had many democratic rights. However, the nation allowed slaveholding and become increasingly authoritarian, in the end beating, censoring and even murdering those advocating a voluntary removal. The state of ] decreed that the government was dissolved in ] which was before three years had passed since the creation of the constitution.{{ref\|Cherokee}}

			There are also extensive difficulties in the application of statistical methods to the problem, especially to question of causation. {{Ref\|George}}
	Democracies have engaged in covert conflict resulting in a change of regime on the losing side. The British- and American-supported ] coup d'etat in ] against ] and the ] U.S.-backed coup in ], led by ] are examples of such events, also excluded.
			<small>
			:{{Note\|RayGowa}} See Ray (1998) and Gowa ''Bullets and Ballots'' below. These are pro and con, respectively.
			:{{note\|MID}} See ; ; ; for an argument that military conflicts between any two democracies are rarely repeated, see
			:{{Note\|MID2}};
			:{{Note\|HumanSecurity Report}} For which see
			:{{note\|PostColdWar}} See of the ].
			:{{Note\|George}} The difficulties and disputes involved are discussed at some length in ''Case studies and theory development in the social sciences'' by Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett.
			</small>

			==Causes==
	Five months after the start of the ], the United Kingdom reluctantly issued a formal ] on ] due to pressure from ]. However, the United Kingdom's only significant act of war happened prior to the declaration (a ] raid on German-run mining operations in ]), Finland spent the ] fighting a totalitarian opponent who had previously attacked the nation, the United Kingdom and Finland for almost the whole of WWII carefully avoided attacking one another, and the casualties were too few to be classified as a war statistically.{{ref\|Finland}} There have been very few formal declarations of war since WWII and using this as the definition of war would mean that for example the US has fought no wars since WWII. The lavish material support the United Kingdom and the United States provided to Soviet Union raises the question if democracies can make war against other democracies through ].
			One idea is that liberal democracies have a common ] 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 ], and therefore the inhabitants may be used to resolve disputes through ] rather than by force. This may reduce the use of force between democracies.<!-- could use a cite -->

			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 ], in which the ] 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.<!-- could use a cite -->
	Many of the above cases are MIDS, not wars, and as noted earlier the DPT only claims fewer MIDs between democracies, not that they do not exist.

			] dismisses these as superficial, {{Ref\|SocialField}} relying on ] and ]'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.
	===Rummel's time limit===
	Rummel's version of the DPT has a requirement that the democracies must be stable and therefore must be older than three years. This excludes the war between the ] and the ], the ]-] war between ] and the ], and the ]-] war between ] and ]. The ] is excluded if one considers the Ottoman Empire to have become democratic after the first election in November ] or when the constitution was amended so that the parliament could control the cabinet in April ]. The war started in October ], which would be before four years had passed. Critics instead argue that democracy occurred in July 1908 when a constitution was introduced. It is also doubtful if the opposing Christian states fulfill the democratic criteria since the Kings continued to have extensive powers in all of them. Studies using the Polity data set have required a score of least 7 out of 10, which excludes the French Second Republic (6), the Ottoman Empire (3), Croatia (3), and Yugoslavia (0) at the time of the wars.{{ref\|Polity}}

			A study argues 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. {{ref\|WarWinners}} Two of the militant democracies have been dominant naval powers, and have also had greater choice as to which wars to fight.
	The time limit and other requirements like democratic institutions and elections on both sides also exclude ]s within democracies over legitimacy or secession, such as the American Civil War, the ] War, the ] and the ] which followed, and the ] civil wars in ], ], ] and ].

			On the other hand, Mansfield and Snyder argue that ''democratizing'' leaders are ''more'' likely to fight wars, whether or not they win, as a means of handling internal tension{{Ref\|Mansfield}}
	==Colonial wars and imperialism==
	One criticism against a general peacefulness for 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. 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 ].{{ref\|Colonial}}

			A ] 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.{{ref\|Game}}
	Related to this is the human rights violations committed against ], 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 ]'s privately owned ], and in ]'s ]. England abolished and fought ] throughout the world when the nation become more democratic.

			The book '']'' explains the democratic and also a related ] peace by the human tendency to classify other humans into ] and ].
	==Correlation is not causation==
			<small>
	A statistical ] does not establish ]. Critics have thus argued that the absence of wars and the few MIDs may be explained by other factors in democratic states that are not related to democracy. Supporters of the DPT do not deny that other factors affect the risk of war but argue that many studies have controlled for such factors and that the DPT is still validated. Examples of factors controlled for are contiguity, power status, alliance ties, militarization, economic wealth and economic growth, power ratio, and political stability.{{ref\|DoesDemoPeace}}{{ref\|ConMulAna}}{{ref\|RuleOfThree}} Studies have also controlled for reverse causality from peace or war to democracy.{{ref\|RevCausa1}}{{ref\|RevCausa2}}{{ref\|RevCausa3}}
			:{{Note\|SocialField}} See for more.
			:{{note\|Game}}
			:{{Note\|Manfield}} ''Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War.'' EDWARD D. MANSFIELD and JACK SNYDER. : MIT Press, 2005, as reviewed in
			</small>

			==Criticisms==
	===The Kantian peace theory===
	]
	], one intergovernmental organization]]
	Several studies find that more ] causing greater economic ] and membership in more ] reduce the risk of war. Democracy, interdependence, and intergovernmental organizations are positively related to each other but each has an independent pacifying effect. This is often called the Kantian peace theory since it is similar to Kant's earlier theory about a perpetual peace.{{ref\|Kantian1}}{{ref\|Kantian2}} However, other studies find an effect from more democracy but no effect from more trade.{{ref\|TradeDubious}}

			There are at least four logically distinguishable classes of criticism of any theory of democratic peace.
	===Economic development===
	One study indicates that independently of trade, democracy is not a significant factor unless both of the democracies have a GDP/capita of at least 1400 USD. This level is quite low and 91% of all the democratic pairs passed this criteria during the 1885–1992 period and all in 1992. Still, higher economic development than this makes the effect of democracy stronger. Low economic development may hinder development of liberal institutions and values.{{ref\|Gdp}}

			*That the theorist has not applied his criteria, for democracy or war or both, accurately to the historical record.
	===Geographic isolation===
			*That the criteria are not reasonable. For example, critics may prefer that liberal democracy should exclude or include both of Germany and the ] at the time of WWI, rather than count one as democratic and the other non-democratic, when they were quite similar societies.
	Critics have argued that few democracies mean that they are geographically isolated and thus unable to make war with one another. As described above, several of the studies finding evidence for the DPT have controlled for this. One study has demonstrated that democratic pairs of nations have not been more geographically separated than non-democratic pairs.{{ref\|Geography}} Today more than 50% of all nations are democratic.{{ref\|DemoCent}}
			*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 ] and ] 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.

	===~~The~~ ~~Cold~~ ~~War peace~~===		===Specific historic cases===
			Any theory of democratic peace must face certain difficult counter-examples. The theories which claim an absolute democratic peace solve the following problems 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.
	] has argued that the ] was responsible for creating the illusion of a democratic peace. The United States and the Soviet Union "assumed dominance of what became essentially a bipolar world". The democratic states had a common interest due to the threat from the Communist states and allied with each other. She present statistical research that before 1914 inter-democratic MIDs were as likely as MIDs involving at least one nondemocracy. Looking at the time before the ], 1816-1904, she finds that the democratic states were less likely to ally and more likely to engage in MIDs with one another.{{ref\|Gowa}} At least one other study has shows similar results.{{ref\|GowaSupp}}

			Among those which have been mentioned are:
	While not statistical evidence, one intuitive counter-argument is that external threat did not prevent wars between the Communist states and did not prevent wars beteen democracies and nondemocracies in the Western bloc.{{ref\|ComWars}}
			*Athenian ], 415-413 BC
			*], 1838
			*] attack on the ], 1849
			*], 1861-1865
			*], 1879-1884
			*], 1898
			*], 1914-1918
			*The state of war between ] and the Western ], 1941-1944
			*Peru-Ecuador ], 1995
			*The ], 1999

			===Limited claims===
	Such wars include the ], the ], and the ]. There were also minor conflicts, not meeting the threshold of deaths, particularly the ] and the ]. In the Western bloc such wars include ] invasion of ] in ], at a time when Cyprus had British military bases and close ties to Turkey's NATO partner ]. Another is the ]. However, the US put pressure on the combatants to stop the Football War which fits the bloc peace theory. A third is the ] US invasion of the ]. The ] and the ] may also be wars within the Western bloc, because Iraq belonged to ], the US and the UK were also member, and the UK had nuclear weapons deployed on Cyprus for the defense of CENTO until 1975.{{ref\|Atomic}} Israel received extensive aid during the Yom Kippur War from the US. Bloc peace theory supporters note that the Soviet-Iraqi Treaty of Friendship was signed in 1972. All of these wars had more than 1000 military casualties. The ] almost qualify.{{ref\|Deaths}}
			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 ], the ] republics, the ], 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:
	More importantly, more recent studies find fewer MIDs between democracies also before the Cold War.{{ref\|Kantian1b}}{{ref\|Neural2}} Gowa's theory does not explain the low domestic violence in democracies or why relative military strength does not influence the outcome of crises between democracies.{{ref\|WinLoss2}} Gowa did not control for alliances, arguing that there are methodological problems. Many studies that have controlled for alliances like ] show support for the DPT.{{ref\|Alliance}}
			*From 1815 until the 1880's, there were at most three democratic states in his sense (the ], ] and ]). 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 ], 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, ] has been allied with ]. Most other democracies were either allied with this ] or benevolently neutral.
			*From 1945 to 1991, most of the world's democracies were allied against the ]; 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? Even the ] of 1884 fails to meet Rummell's stated criteria for democracy; and fails vastly short if the British Empire as a whole, or even India, is considered.

			Even if it were so explained, is this handful of facts sufficient to count on a democratic peace forever?
	DPT supporters also argue that there has been continued peace between democracies after the end of the Cold War. Critics disagree and even if true they note that the ] and NATO still exist and that they contain some of the democracies capable of maintaining a war. However, there are many democracies outside Europe.{{ref\|GlobalFreedom}} The threat from the Communist states which Gowa thought explained both the peace and the existence of alliances between democracies such as NATO has largely disappeared. Contrary to what could be expected from Gowa's theory, the fall of Communism was accompanied by a sudden and dramatic decline in interstate warfare and other armed conflicts{{ref\|PostWWIIWars}}. Some researchers argue that the increase in democracy associated with the end of the Cold War is the main cause for this decline in armed conflicts while others note that there has also been an increase in intermediate regimes and as noted earlier such states may be particularly prone to civil war. Other explanations for the decline in armed conflicts is the end of ] and the Cold War itself. {{ref\|Security}}{{ref\|Clock}}

			===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 ].{{ref\|Colonial}}

			Related to this is the human rights violations committed against ], 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 ]'s privately owned ], and in ]'s ]. England abolished slavery in British territory in ], immediately after the ] 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 ]. These theories are therefore perfectly compatible with, and not at all falsified by, established democracies preying upon nascent, attempted, proclaimed, or unstable democratic states.
			<small>
			:{{note\|Colonial}}
			</small>

			===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 ] and ]) that ] will produce and ensure peace,{{Ref\|FreeTrade}} 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.

			As often on academic matters, these criticisms are disputed. Papers have been done claiming significant correlation, even after controlling for such variables. {{ref\|ExternalCauses}}
			<small>
			:{{Note\|FreeTrade}}See John Morley:''Life of Richard Cobden'' and Francois Furet: ''Passing of an Illusion''.
			:{{Note\|ExternalCauses}} For examples, see; ;; . Other critical papers are cited in Rummel's website below.
			</small>

	==See also==		==See also==
			* ]
	*]
	*]		* ]
	*]		* ]
	*]		* ]
	*]		* ]

	*]
			<!--:{{note\|GowaSupp}} <small> This note refers to a nonfunctioning website.-->

	== References ==		==References==
			Many of the following are from Rummel's bibliography, see ] below.
	#{{note\|Kant}} {{Citepaper \| Author=Kant, Immanuel \| Title=Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch \| PublishYear=1795 \| URL=http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/kant/kant1.htm }}
	#{{note\|Bibliography}} {{Web reference_author \| Author=Rummel, R.J \| Title=Democratic Peace Bibliography Version 3.0 \| Work=Freedom, Democracy, Peace; Power, Democide, and War \| URL=http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/BIBLIO.HTML \| Date=October 2 \| Year=2005}}
	#{{note\|Quote}} {{Journal reference url \| Author=Ray, Jamee Lee \| Title= Does Democracy Cause Peace?\| Journal=Annual Review of Political Science \| Year=1998 \| Volume=1 \| Pages=27–46 \| URL=http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/ray.htm}}
	#{{note\|Clinton}} {{Citepaper \| Author=Clinton, Bill \| Title=1994 State Of The Union Address \| PublishYear=1994 \| URL=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/states/docs/sou94.htm }}
	#{{note\|Bush}} {{Web reference_simple \| title=President and Prime Minister Blair Discussed Iraq, Middle East \| URL=http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/11/20041112-5.html\| date=October 3\| year=2005}}
	#{{note\|Data1}} {{Web reference \| title=Conflict Data Set \| work=Stockholm International Peace Research Institute \| URL=http://www.sipri.org/contents/conflict/conflictdatasets.html\| date=October 3 \| year=2005}}
	#{{note\|Data2}} {{Web reference \| title=Data\| work=Peter D. Watson Center for Conflict and Cooperation\| URL=http://www.watson.rochester.edu/resources/data.html\| date=October 3 \| year=2005}}
	#{{note\|Overview}} Ray, 1998.
	#{{note\|Bibliography2}} {{Web reference_author \| Author=Rummel, R.J \| Title=Democratic Peace Bibliography Version 3.0 \| Work=Freedom, Democracy, Peace; Power, Democide, and War \| URL=http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/BIBLIO.HTML \| Date=October 2 \| Year=2005}}
	#{{note\|NeverWar}} {{Book reference \| Author=Weart, Spencer R \| Title=Never at War \| Publisher =Yale University Press \| Year=1998 \| ID=ISBN 0300070179 }}
	#{{note\|CharacMids}} {{Citepaper_version \| Author=Wayman, Frank\| Title=Incidence of Militarized Disputes Between Liberal States, 1816-1992\| PublishYear=2002 \| Version=Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, New Orleans, La., Mar. 23-27, 2002 \| URL=http://www.isanet.org/noarchive/wayman.html}}
	#{{note\|Three}} {{Citepaper_version \| Author=Oneal, John R., and Bruce Russet \| Title=Rule of Three, Let it Be? When More Really Is Better \| PublishYear=2004 \| Version=Revised version of paper presented at the annual meeting of the Peace Science Society\| URL=http://www.saramitchell.org/russettoneal04.pdf}}
	#{{note\|NeuralMids}} {{Journal reference url \| Author=Beck, Nathaniel, Gary King, and Langche Zend \| Title=Theory and Evidence in International Conflict: A Response to de Marchi, Gelpi, and Grynaviski \| Journal=American Political Science Review \| Year=2004 \| Volume=98(2) \| Pages= 379–389 \| URL=http://www.nyu.edu/classes/nbeck/q2/toe-resp.pdf }}
	#{{note\|Rivalry}} {{Journal reference url \| Author=Hensel, Paul R., Gary Goertz, and Paul F. Diehl \| Title=The Democratice Peace and Rivalries \| Journal=Journal of Politics \| Year=2000 \| Volume=64 \| Pages= 1173–88 \| URL=http://garnet.acns.fsu.edu/~phensel/Research/jop00.pdf }}
	#{{note\|WinLoss}} {{Journal reference url \| Author=Gelpi, Christopher F., and Michael Griesdorf \| Title=Winners or Losers? Democracies in International Crisis, 1918–94 \| Journal=American Political Science Review \| Year=2001 \| Volume=95(3) \| Pages= 633–647 \| URL=http://www.duke.edu/~gelpi/democratic.winners.pdf }}
	#{{note\|Democide}} {{Web reference_author \| Author=Rummel, R.J \| Title=The Democratic Peace \| Work=Freedom, Democracy, Peace; Power, Democide, and War \| URL=http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/MIRACLE.HTM \| Date=October 2 \| Year=2005}}
	#{{note\|CivilWar}} {{Journal reference url \| Author=Hegre, Håvard, Tanja Ellington, Scott Gates, and Nils Petter Gleditsch \| Title=Towards A Democratic Civil Peace? Opportunity, Grievance, and Civil War 1816-1992 \| Journal=American Political Science Review \| Year=2001 \| Volume=95 \| Pages=33–48\| URL=http://www.worldbank.org/research/conflict/papers/peace.htm }}
	#{{note\|PostWWII}} {{Web reference \| title=Global Conflict Trends \| work=Center for Systematic Peace \| URL=http://members.aol.com/CSPmgm/conflict.htm\| date=October 1\| year=2005}}
	#{{note\|Monadic}} {{Citepaper_version \| Author=Müller, Harald, and Jonas Wolff \| Title=Dyadic Democratic Peace Strikes Back\| PublishYear=2004a \| Version=Paper prepared for presentation at the 5th Pan-European International Relations Conference The Hague, September 9-11, 2004\| URL=http://www.sgir.org/conference2004/papers/Mueller%20Wolff%20-%20Dyadic%20Democratic%20Peace%20Strikes%20Back.pdf}}
	#{{note\|MilPac1}} {{Journal reference url \| Author=Müller, Harald \| Title=The Antimony of Democratic Peace \| Journal=International Politics \| Year=2004b \| Volume=41(4) \| Pages= 494–520 \| URL=http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/pal/ip/2004/00000041/00000004/art00003 }}
	#{{note\|MilPac2}} Müller, 2004a
	#{{note\|Prop1}} {{Journal reference url \| Author=David Leblang and Steve Chan \| Title=Explaining Wars Fought by Established Democracies: Do Institutional Constraints Matter? \| Journal= Political Research Quarterly \| Year=2003 \| Volume=56 \| Pages= 385–400 \| URL=http://www.prq.uncc.edu/December_2003abs.htm }}
	#{{note\|Prop2}} {{Citepaper_version \| Author=Binningsbø, Helga Malmin\| Title=Consociational Democracy and Postconflict Peace. Will Power-Sharing Institutions Increase the Probability of Lasting Peace after Civil War? \| PublishYear=2005 \| Version=Paper prepared for presentation at the 13th Annual National Political Science Conference, Hurdalsjøen, Norway, 5–7 January, 2005.\| URL=http://www.statsvitenskap.uio.no/konferanser/nfkis/cr/Binningsbo.pdf}}
	#{{note\|WarWinners}} Ray, 1998.
	#{{note\|Game}} {{Journal reference url \| Author=Levy, Gilat, and Ronny Razin \| Title=It Takes Two: An Explanation for the Democratic Peace \| Journal=Journal of the European Economic Association \| Year=2004 \| Volume=2(1) \| Pages= 1–29 \| URL=https://mitpress.mit.edu/journals/pdf/jeea_2_1_1_0.pdf }}
	#{{note\|NumberWars}} {{Book reference \| Author=Rummel, R.J \| Title=Death by Government \| Publisher = Transaction Publishers \| Year=1994 \| ID=ISBN 1560009276 \| URL=http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM }}
	#{{note\|NumberWars2}} Ray, 1998.
	#{{note\|Counter}} {{Web reference \| title=Annotated Bibliography \| work=The Miracle That Is Freedom: The Solution to War, Violence, Genocide, and Poverty\| URL=http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/MTF.ANNOTBIBLIO.HTM\| date=October 3 \| year=1995}}
	#{{note\|WW2-1}} {{Web reference \| title=Imperial Germany\| work=Country Studies, Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress\| URL=http://countrystudies.us/germany/28.htm\| date=October 3 \| year=1995}}
	#{{note\|WW2-2}} {{Citeencyclopedia \| ency=The Columbia Encyclopedia \| edition=6 \| year=2001 \| article=Prussia}}
	#{{note\|WW2-3}} {{Web reference \| title=The Second Empire until 1914\| work=Lecture Notes, Germany and Europe, 1871-1945\| URL=http://www.colby.edu/personal/r/rmscheck/GermanyB1.html\| date=October 3 \| year=2005}}
	#{{note\|WW2-4}} {{Citepaper_publisher \| Author=Quick, John\| Title=A Digest of Federal Constitutions\| Publisher=The University of Sidney\| PublishYear=1896 \| URL=http://purl.library.usyd.edu.au/setis/id/fed0030}}
	#{{note\|1913}} {{Web reference_author \| Author=Gerard, James W \| Title=Chapter 1 My first year in Germany \| Work=My Four Years in Germany\| URL=http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/memoir/Gerard/4yrs1.htm\| Date=October 3 \| Year=2005}}
	#{{note\|AmerCivWar}} {{Book reference \| Author=Ray, James Lee \| Title=Democracy and International Conflict \| Publisher=University of South Carolina Press \| Year=1995 \| ID=ISBN 1570030413 }} p. 110-111. Weart, 1998, p. 114-119, 311.
	#{{note\|Boer}} {{Citeencyclopedia \| ency=Encyclopedia Britannica\| edition=11 \| year=1911 \| article=Orange Free State and Transvaal}}
	#{{note\|Arafat}} {{Web reference \| title=World Report 2001: Israel, the Occupied West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Palestinian Authority Territories \| work=Human Rights Watch\| URL=http://www.hrw.org/wr2k1/mideast/israel.html\| date=October 26 \| year=2005}}
	#{{note\|Milosevic}} {{Citepaper_version \| Author=Nedovic, Slobodanka, et al.\| Title=Guide Through Electoral Controverseries in Serbia\| PublishYear=2000 \| Version=Centar Za Slobodne Izobre I Demoratiju\| URL=http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/UNTC/UNPAN017176.pdf}}
	#{{note\|SAW}} Ray, 1995, p. 111-115. Weart, 1998, p. 141-2, 204-205, 311.
	#{{note\|Pacific}} Weart, 1998, p. 67.
	#{{note\|Cherokee}} Weart, 1998, p. 225-226, 306-7.
	#{{note\|Finland}} Weart, 1998, p. 313.
	#{{note\|Polity}} {{Web reference_simple \| title=Polity IV Project \| URL=http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/polity/\| date=October 26 \| year=2005}}
	#{{note\|Colonial}} {{Citepaper_version \| Author=Ravlo, Hilde, and Nils Peter Glieditsch \| Title=Colonial War and Globalization of Democratic Values\| PublishYear=2000 \| Version=Paper Presented to the Workshop on ‘Globalization and Armed Conflict’ at the Joint Session of Workshops, European Consortium for Political Research Copenhagen, 15–19 April 2000\| URL=http://scholar.google.com/url?sa=U&q=http://www.essex.ac.uk/ecpr/events/jointsessions/paperarchive/copenhagen/ws18/ngleditsch_p.pdf }}
	#{{note\|DoesDemoPeace}} Ray, 1998.
	#{{note\|ConMulAna}} {{Citepaper_version \| Author=Ray, James Lee \| Title=Constructing Multivariate Analyses (of dangerous dyads) \| PublishYear=2003 \| Version=Revised version of paper presented at the annual meeting of the Peace Science Society\| URL=http://www.saramitchell.org/ray05.pdf}}
	#{{note\|RuleOfThree}} Oneal, 2004
	#{{note\|RevCausa1}} {{Journal reference url \| Author=Mousseau, Michael, and Yuhand Shi \| Title=A Test for Reverse Causality in the Democratic Peace Relationship \| Journal=Journal for Peace Research \| Year=1999 \| Volume=36(6) \| Pages= 639–663 \| URL=http://home.ku.edu.tr/~mmousseau/Mous_Shi_JPR_Nov99.pdf }}
	#{{note\|RevCausa2}} {{Journal reference url \| Author=Reiter, D\| Title=Does Peace Nature Democracy? \| Journal=Journal of Politics\| Year=2001 \| Volume=63(3) \| Pages= 935–948 \| URL=http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/jopo/2001/00000063/00000003/art00095 }}
	#{{note\|RevCausa3}} {{Journal reference url \| Author=Reuveny, Rafael, and Quan Li \| Title=The Joint Democracy–Dyadic Conflict Nexus: A Simultaneous Equations Model\| Journal=Journal of Politics\| Year=2003 \| Volume=47 \| Pages= 325–346 \| URL=http://polisci.la.psu.edu/faculty/li/research_papers/paper_files/jointdem_isq_2003.pdf}}
	#{{note\|Kantian1}}{{Journal reference url \| Author=Oneal, John R., and Bruce Russet \| Title=The Kantian Peace: The Pacific Benefits of Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations\| Journal=World Politics \| Year=1999 \| Volume=52(1) \| Pages= 1–37 \| URL=http://www.yale.edu/unsy/brussett/KantianPeaceWP.pdf }}
	#{{note\|Kantian2}} {{Journal reference url \| Author=Russet, B., and J.R. Oneal, and D. R. David \| Title=The Third Leg of the Kantian Tripod for Peace: International Organizations and Militarized Disputes, 1950–85 \| Journal=International Organization\| Year=1998 \| Volume=52(3) \| Pages= 441–467 \| URL=http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/mitpress/io/1998/00000052/00000003/art00001}}
	#{{note\|TradeDubious}} {{Journal reference url \| Author=Goenner, Cullen F\| Title=Uncertainty of the Liberal Peace\| Journal= Journal of Peace Research\| Year=2004 \| Volume=41(5) \| Pages= 589–605 \| URL=http://www.business.und.edu/goenner/research/Papers/LiberalPeaceV4.3.pdf}}
	#{{note\|Gdp}} {{Journal reference url \| Author=Mousseau, Michael, Håvard Hegre, and John R. Oneal \| Title=How the Wealth of Nations Conditions the Liberal Peace\| Journal=European Journal of International Relations \| Year=2003 \| Volume=9(2) \| Pages= 227–314 \| URL=http://home.ku.edu.tr/~mmousseau/Mous_Hegre_Oneal_EJIR_Jun03.pdf}}
	#{{note\|Geography}} Ray, 1998.
	#{{note\|DemoCent}} {{Web reference \| title=Democracy's Century: A Survey of Global Political Change in the 20th Century \| work=Freedom House \| URL=http://www.freedomhouse.org/reports/century.html \| date=October 3 \| year=2005}}
	#{{note\|Gowa}}{{Book reference \| Author=Gowa, Joanne\| Title= Ballots and Bullets: The Elusive Democratic Peace\| Publisher=Princeton University Press\| Year=1999 \| ID=ISBN 0691070229}}
	#{{note\|GowaSupp}} {{Citepaper_publisher \| Author=Beck, N., and Tucker R \| Title=Democracy and Peace: General Law or Limited Phenomenon?\| Publisher= Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association \| PublishYear=1998 \| URL=http://www.vanderbilt.edu/~rtucker/papers/dempeace/mwpsa98/}}
	#{{note\|ComWars}} Ray, 1998.
	#{{note\|Atomic}} {{Web reference \| title=Where Her Majesty's weapons were\| work=Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists \| URL=http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=jf01moore_050\| date=October 3 \| year=2005}}
	#{{note\|Deaths}} {{Web reference \| title=Source List and Detailed Death Tolls for the Man-made Megadeaths of the Twentieth Century\| work=Historical Atlas of the Twentieth Century\| URL=http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstatx.htm\| date=October 3 \| year=2005}}
	#{{note\|Kantian1b}} Oneal, 1999
	#{{note\|Neural2}} {{Citepaper_publisher \| Author=Lagazio, Monica, and Bruce Russet \| Title=A Neural Network Analysis of Militarized Disputes, 1885-1992: Temporal Stability and Causal Complexity1\| Publisher= in ''Toward a Scientific Understanding of War: Studies in Honor of J. David Singer.'', Diehl, Paul (ed.) \| PublishYear=2003 \| URL=http://www.yale.edu/unsy/brussett/NeuralNets.pdf}}
	#{{note\|WinLoss2}} Gelpi, 2001.
	#{{note\|Alliance}} Ray, 1998.
	#{{note\|GlobalFreedom}} {{Web reference \| title=Freedom in the World 2004: Selected Data from Freedom House's Annual Global Survey of Political Rights and Civil Liberties \| work=Freedom House\| URL=http://www.freedomhouse.org/research/survey2004.htm\| date=October 3 \| year=2005}}
	#{{note\|PostWWIIWars}} {{Web reference \| title=Global Conflict Trends \| work=Center for Systematic Peace \| URL=http://members.aol.com/CSPmgm/conflict.htm\| date=October 1\| year=2005}}
	#{{note\|Security}} {{Web reference \| title=The Human Security Report 2005 \| work=Human Security Centre \| URL=http://www.humansecurityreport.info/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1\| date=October 18 \| year=2005}}
	#{{note\|Clock}} {{Web reference \| title=Democratic peace clock\| work=Freedom, Democracy, Peace; Power, Democide, and War\| URL=http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DP.CLOCK.HTM\| date=October 18 \| year=2005}}

			*{{Journal reference url \| Author=Beck, Nathaniel, Gary King, and Langche Zend \| Title=Theory and Evidence in International Conflict: A Response to de Marchi, Gelpi, and Grynaviski \| Journal=American Political Science Review \| Year=2004 \| Volume=98(2) \| Pages= 379–389 \| URL=http://www.nyu.edu/classes/nbeck/q2/toe-resp.pdf}}.
	== Further reading ==
			*{{Citepaper_publisher \| Author=Beck, N., and Tucker R \| Title=Democracy and Peace: General Law or Limited Phenomenon?\| Publisher= Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association \| PublishYear=1998 \| URL=http://www.vanderbilt.edu/~rtucker/papers/dempeace/mwpsa98/}} Link failed 22 January 2006.
			* {{Citepaper_version \| Author=Binningsbø, Helga Malmin\| Title=Consociational Democracy and Postconflict Peace. Will Power-Sharing Institutions Increase the Probability of Lasting Peace after Civil War? \| PublishYear=2005 \| Version=Paper prepared for presentation at the 13th Annual National Political Science Conference, Hurdalsjøen, Norway, 5–7 January, 2005.\| URL=http://www.statsvitenskap.uio.no/konferanser/nfkis/cr/Binningsbo.pdf}}
	*Brown, Michael E., Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller. ''Debating the Democratic Peace''. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996. ISBN 0262522136.		*Brown, Michael E., Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller. ''Debating the Democratic Peace''. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996. ISBN 0262522136.
	*Doyle, Michael W. ''Ways of War and Peace''. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997. ISBN 0393969479.		*Doyle, Michael W. ''Ways of War and Peace''. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997. ISBN 0393969479.
			*{{Book reference\|Last=George\|First=Alexander L.\|Coauthor=Andrew Bennett\|title=Case studies and theory development in the social sciences \|Location = Cambridge, Mass.\|Publisher= MIT Press\|Year =2005}}
	*Gowa, Joanne. ''Ballots and Bullets: The Elusive Democratic Peace''. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. ISBN 0691070229.
			*Gowa, Joanne. ''Ballots and Bullets: The Elusive Democratic Peace''. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. ISBN 0691070229.
			*{{Journal reference \| Author=Hegre, Håvard, Tanja Ellington, Scott Gates, and Nils Petter Gleditsch \| Title=Towards A Democratic Civil Peace? Opportunity, Grievance, and Civil War 1816-1992 \| Journal=American Political Science Review \| Year=2001 \| Volume=95 \| Pages=33–48\| URL=http://www.worldbank.org/research/conflict/papers/peace.htm }}
			*{{Journal reference \| Author=Hensel, Paul R., Gary Goertz, and Paul F. Diehl \| Title=The Democratice Peace and Rivalries \| Journal=Journal of Politics \| Year=2000 \| Volume=64 \| Pages= 1173–88 \| URL=http://garnet.acns.fsu.edu/~phensel/Research/jop00.pdf }}
			*{{Web reference\|Author=''Human Security Centre''\|url=http://www.humansecurityreport.info/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=63\|title=Human Security Report\|format=pdf\|date=2006-01-24\|Publishyear=2005}} This is a table of contents; actual document is pdf.
	*Huth, Paul K., et al. ''The Democratic Peace and Territorial Conflict in the Twentieth Century''. Cambridge University Press: 2003. ISBN 0521805082.		*Huth, Paul K., et al. ''The Democratic Peace and Territorial Conflict in the Twentieth Century''. Cambridge University Press: 2003. ISBN 0521805082.
			*{{Citepaper \| Author=Kant, Immanuel \| Title=Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch \| PublishYear=1795 \| URL=http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/kant/kant1.htm }}
	*Lipson, Charles. ''Reliable Partners: How Democracies Have Made a Separate Peace''. Princeton University Press: 2003. ISBN 0691113904.
			*{{Journal reference \|First = David \|Last= Leblang\|Coauthor= Steve Chan \| Title=Explaining Wars Fought by Established Democracies: Do Institutional Constraints Matter? \| Journal= Political Research Quarterly \| Year=2003 \| Volume=56 \| Pages= 385–400 \| URL=http://www.prq.uncc.edu/December_2003abs.htm }}
			*{{Journal reference \| Author=Levy, Gilat, and Ronny Razin \| Title=It Takes Two: An Explanation for the Democratic Peace \| Journal=Journal of the European Economic Association \| Year=2004 \| Volume=2(1) \| Pages= 1–29 \| URL=https://mitpress.mit.edu/journals/pdf/jeea_2_1_1_0.pdf }}
			*Lipson, Charles. ''Reliable Partners: How Democracies Have Made a Separate Peace''. Princeton University Press: 2003. ISBN 0691113904.
			*{{Journal reference \| Author=Mousseau, Michael, and Yuhand Shi \| Title=A Test for Reverse Causality in the Democratic Peace Relationship \| Journal=Journal for Peace Research \| Year=1999 \| Volume=36(6) \| Pages= 639–663 \| URL=http://home.ku.edu.tr/~mmousseau/Mous_Shi_JPR_Nov99.pdf }}
			* {{Journal reference \| Author=Müller, Harald \| Title=The Antinomy of Democratic Peace \| Journal=International Politics \| Year=2004 \| Volume=41(4) \| Pages= 494–520 \| URL=http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/pal/ip/2004/00000041/00000004/art00003 }}
			* {{Citepaper_version \| Author=Müller, Harald, and Jonas Wolff \| Title=Dyadic Democratic Peace Strikes Back\| PublishYear=2004 \| Version=Paper prepared for presentation at the 5th Pan-European International Relations Conference The Hague, September 9-11, 2004\| URL=http://www.sgir.org/conference2004/papers/Mueller%20Wolff%20-%20Dyadic%20Democratic%20Peace%20Strikes%20Back.pdf}}
			*{{Journal reference \| Author=Oneal, John R., and Bruce Russet \| Title=The Kantian Peace: The Pacific Benefits of Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations\| Journal=World Politics \| Year=1999 \| Volume=52(1) \| Pages= 1–37 \| URL=http://www.yale.edu/unsy/brussett/KantianPeaceWP.pdf }}
			*{{Citepaper_version \| Author=Oneal, John R., and Bruce Russet \| Title=Rule of Three, Let it Be? When More Really Is Better \| PublishYear=2004 \| Version=Revised version of paper presented at the annual meeting of the Peace Science Society\| URL=http://www.saramitchell.org/russettoneal04.pdf}}
			* {{Journal reference \| Author=Owen, John M., IV \| Year=2005\| Title=Iraq and the Democratic Peace \| Journal=Foreign Affairs \| Issue = Nov.-Dec. 2005\|URL=http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20051101fareviewessay84611/john-m-owen-iv/iraq-and-the-democratic-peace.html }}
			*{{Citepaper_version \| Author=Ravlo, Hilde, and Nils Peter Glieditsch \| Title=Colonial War and Globalization of Democratic Values\| PublishYear=2000 \| Version=Paper Presented to the Workshop on ‘Globalization and Armed Conflict’ at the Joint Session of Workshops, European Consortium for Political Research Copenhagen, 15–19 April 2000\| URL=http://scholar.google.com/url?sa=U&q=http://www.essex.ac.uk/ecpr/events/jointsessions/paperarchive/copenhagen/ws18/ngleditsch_p.pdf }}
	*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. ''Democracy and International Conflict: An Evaluation of the Democratic Peace Proposition''. University of South Carolina Press: 1998. ISBN 1570032416.
			*{{Journal reference url \| Author=Reiter, D\| Title=Does Peace Nature Democracy? \| Journal=Journal of Politics\| Year=2001 \| Volume=63(3) \| Pages= 935–948 \| URL=http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/jopo/2001/00000063/00000003/art00095 }};
			*{{Journal reference \| Author=Reuveny, Rafael, and Quan Li \| Title=The Joint Democracy–Dyadic Conflict Nexus: A Simultaneous Equations Model\| Journal=Journal of Politics\| Year=2003 \| Volume=47 \| Pages= 325–346 \|URL=http://polisci.la.psu.edu/faculty/li/research_papers/paper_files/jointdem_isq_2003.pdf}}
	*Rummel, R.J. ''Power Kills: Democracy As a Method of Nonviolence''. Transaction Publishers: 2003. ISBN 0765805235.		*Rummel, R.J. ''Power Kills: Democracy As a Method of Nonviolence''. Transaction Publishers: 2003. ISBN 0765805235.
	*Russett, Bruce & Oneal, John R. ''Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations''. W. W. Norton & Company: 2001. ISBN 039397684X.		*Russett, Bruce & Oneal, John R. ''Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations''. W. W. Norton & Company: 2001. ISBN 039397684X.
			* {{Journal reference \| Author=Russet, B., and J.R. Oneal, and D. R. David \| Title=The Third Leg of the Kantian Tripod for Peace: International Organizations and Militarized Disputes, 1950–85 \| Journal=International Organization\| Year=1998 \| Volume=52(3) \| Pages= 441–467 \| URL=http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/mitpress/io/1998/00000052/00000003/art00001}}
			*{{Web reference \| title=Global Conflict Trends \| work=Center for Systematic Peace \| url=http://members.aol.com/CSPmgm/conflict.htm\| date=October 1\| year=2005 }}
			*{{Citepaper_version \| Author=Wayman, Frank\| Title=Incidence of Militarized Disputes Between Liberal States, 1816-1992\| PublishYear=2002 \| Version=Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, New Orleans, La., Mar. 23-27, 2002 \| URL=http://www.isanet.org/noarchive/wayman.html}};
	*Weart, Spencer R. ''Never at War: Why Democracies Will Not Fight One Another''. Yale University Press: 2000. ISBN 0300082983.		*Weart, Spencer R. ''Never at War: Why Democracies Will Not Fight One Another''. Yale University Press: 2000. ISBN 0300082983.

	==External links==		==External links==
			*
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	===Supportive===		===Supportive===
	*		*
	*		*
	*		*
	* a moderated webchat with ] hosted by the ], International Information Program.		* a moderated webchat with ] hosted by the ], International Information Program.

	===Critical===		===Critical===
			*
	*
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	]		]
	]		]
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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.

In early modern times, the word democracy usually meant direct democracy, which was treated with suspicion. Even the idea that republics tend to be peaceful is recent; Nicolo Machiavelli believed that republics were by nature excellent war-makers and empire-builders, citing Rome as the prime example. Interesingly, Islamic tradition holds that peace will prevail within the dar al-Islam or "house of submission" to the faith, but war, including jihad, beyond that zone.

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; he published two papers in obscure journals and were ognored. The first prominent DPT was stated by R. J. Rummel, of the University of Hawaii, beginning in the middle seventies. Thereafter, an increasing amount of research has been done on the theory and related subjects. (For the numerous researchers on the subject, see Rummel's bibliography, under External links.)

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

Kant:Perpetual peace 1795

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"President and Prime Minister Blair Discussed Iraq, Middle East". October 3. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= and |year= / |date= mismatch (help)

Owen 2005

Types of Theories

Monadic theories claim that democracies tend 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. A recent paper claims that democracies fight fewer wars, start fewer wars and lesser conflcts, and reach more negotiated settlements.

Dyadic theories claim that democracies are more peaceable with each other; but make various assertions about their relations to other states. Separate peace theories claim that democracies are more likely to go to war with non-democracies. The militant democracy theory divides democracies into militant and pacifist types. Militant democracies have a tendency to distrust and use confrontational policies against dictatorships, which could actually make war more likely between a democracy and a non-democracy than in the case of relations between two non-democracies. Moreover, a democratic crusade corollary suggests that the belief in the validity DPT itself could become a cause of war. In the case of the United States intervention in World War I and recent invasion of Iraq, the promise of democratization bringing an end to war was used as a justification for war.

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.

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.

Müller and Wulf 2004

Hegre et al. 2001

Claims

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 usually require not only that the government and legislature be chosen by free and actually contested elections, but more. The studies claiming absolute democratic peace often require that half or two-thirds of adult males be able to vote (requiring universal suffrage would mean no war between democracies was even possible before 1894); also secret ballot (Babst), or a waiting time for the democracy to stabilize.

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 recent papers have found that proportional representation is associated with less external and internal systematic violence.

Such additional data sources include the "Conflict Data Set". Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. October 3. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= and |year= / |date= mismatch (help) and "Data". Peter D. Watson Center for Conflict and Cooperation. October 3. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= and |year= / |date= mismatch (help)

Binningsbø 2000; Leblang and Chan 2003

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.)

See the Correlates of War site. Click on Available Data Sets for particular databases.

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, led by Bruce Russet and John R. Oneal and 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.

See Russett & Oneal Triangulating Peace and the preliminary papers Russet et al. (1998); Oneal and Russet (1999)

Statistical Studies

There have been numerous statistical studies in the field. Many have claimed support for some theory of democratic peace; many have denied any such support. 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. Most such disputes involving democracies since 1950 have involved only four nations: the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, and India.

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. The improvement in the peace of the world since the end of the Cold War has been tabulated here.

There are also extensive difficulties in the application of statistical methods to the problem, especially to question of causation.

See Ray (1998) and Gowa Bullets and Ballots below. These are pro and con, respectively.

See Wayman 2002; Russet and Oneal 2004; Beck et al. 2004; for an argument that military conflicts between any two democracies are rarely repeated, see Hensel et al. 2000

Müller 2004; Müller and Wolff 2004

For which see Human Security Report 2005

See the Global Confilict Trends page of the Center for Systematic Peace.

The difficulties and disputes involved are discussed at some length in Case studies and theory development in the social sciences by Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett.

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.

A study argues 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. Two of the militant democracies have been dominant naval powers, and have also had greater choice as to which wars to fight.

On the other hand, Mansfield and Snyder argue that democratizing leaders are more likely to fight wars, whether or not they win, as a means of handling internal tension

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.

See website for more.

Levy and Razin 2004

Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War. EDWARD D. MANSFIELD and JACK SNYDER. : MIT Press, 2005, as reviewed in Owen 2005

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 cases

Any theory of democratic peace must face certain difficult counter-examples. The theories which claim an absolute democratic peace solve the following problems 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.

Among those which have been mentioned are:

Athenian Sicilian Expedition, 415-413 BC
Trail of Tears, 1838
French Second Republic attack on the Roman Republic, 1849
American Civil War, 1861-1865
War of the Pacific, 1879-1884
Spanish-American War, 1898
World War I, 1914-1918
The state of war between Finland and the Western Allies, 1941-1944
Peru-Ecuador Cenepa War, 1995
The Kargil War, 1999

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 in his sense (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? Even the Third Reform Bill of 1884 fails to meet Rummell's stated criteria for democracy; and fails vastly short if the British Empire as a whole, 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.

Ravlo and Glieditsch 2000

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.

See John Morley:Life of Richard Cobden and Francois Furet: Passing of an Illusion.

For examples, seeRusset and Oneal 2004; Mousseau and Shi 1999;Reiter 2001; Reuveny and Li 2003. Other critical papers are cited in Rummel's website below.

References

Many of the following are from Rummel's bibliography, see #External links below.

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Brown, Michael E., Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller. Debating the Democratic Peace. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996. ISBN 0262522136.
Doyle, Michael W. Ways of War and Peace. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997. ISBN 0393969479.
Case studies and theory development in the social sciences. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |First= ignored (|first= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Last= ignored (|last= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Location= ignored (|location= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Publisher= ignored (|publisher= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Year= ignored (|year= suggested) (help)
Gowa, Joanne. Ballots and Bullets: The Elusive Democratic Peace. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. ISBN 0691070229.
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"Human Security Report" (pdf). 2006-01-24. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |Author= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Publishyear= ignored (help) This is a table of contents; actual document is pdf.
Huth, Paul K., et al. The Democratic Peace and Territorial Conflict in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge University Press: 2003. ISBN 0521805082.
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Lipson, Charles. Reliable Partners: How Democracies Have Made a Separate Peace. Princeton University Press: 2003. ISBN 0691113904.
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Ray, James Lee. Democracy and International Conflict: An Evaluation of the Democratic Peace Proposition. University of South Carolina Press: 1998. ISBN 1570032416.
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Rummel, R.J. Power Kills: Democracy As a Method of Nonviolence. Transaction Publishers: 2003. ISBN 0765805235.
Russett, Bruce & Oneal, John R. Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations. W. W. Norton & Company: 2001. ISBN 039397684X.
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"Global Conflict Trends". Center for Systematic Peace. October 1. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= and |year= / |date= mismatch (help)
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Weart, Spencer R. Never at War: Why Democracies Will Not Fight One Another. Yale University Press: 2000. ISBN 0300082983.

External links

Supportive

Rummell's website
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: