The development of the scientific method
has made a significant contribution to how knowledge of the physical
world and its phenomena is acquired. To be termed scientific, a method
of inquiry must be based on gathering observable and measurableevidence subject to specific principles of reasoning and experimentation. The scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses. Science, and the nature of scientific knowledge have also become the subject of philosophy. As science itself has developed, scientific knowledge now includes a broader usage in the soft sciences such as biology and the social sciences – discussed elsewhere as meta-epistemology, or genetic epistemology, and to some extent related to "theory of cognitive development". Note that "epistemology"
is the study of knowledge and how it is acquired. Science is "the
process used everyday to logically complete thoughts through inference
of facts determined by calculated experiments." Sir Francis Bacon
was critical in the historical development of the scientific method;
his works established and popularized an inductive methodology for
scientific inquiry. His famous aphorism, "knowledge is power", is found in the Meditations Sacrae (1597).
Until recent times, at least in the Western tradition, it was
simply taken for granted that knowledge was something possessed only by
humans – and probably adult humans at that. Sometimes the notion might stretch to Society-as-such,
as in (e. g.) "the knowledge possessed by the Coptic culture" (as
opposed to its individual members), but that was not assured either. Nor
was it usual to consider unconscious knowledge in any systematic way until this approach was popularized by Freud.
Those who use the phrase "scientific knowledge" don't necessary claim to certainty, since scientists will never be absolutely certain when they are correct and when they are not. It is thus an irony of proper scientific method that one must doubt even when correct, in the hopes that this practice will lead to greater convergence on the truth in general.
Situated knowledge
Situated knowledge is knowledge specific to a particular situation. It was used by Donna Haraway as an extension of the feminist approaches of "successor science" suggested by Sandra Harding,
one which "offers a more adequate, richer, better account of a world,
in order to live in it well and in critical, reflexive relation to our
own as well as others' practices of domination and the unequal parts of
privilege and oppression that makes up all positions." This situation partially transforms science into a narrative, which Arturo Escobar
explains as, "neither fictions nor supposed facts." This narrative of
situation is historical textures woven of fact and fiction, and as
Escobar explains further, "even the most neutral scientific domains are
narratives in this sense," insisting that rather than a purpose
dismissing science as a trivial matter of contingency, "it is to treat
(this narrative) in the most serious way, without succumbing to its
mystification as 'the truth' or to the ironic skepticism common to many critiques."
Haraway's argument stems from the limitations of the human perception, as well as the overemphasis of the sense of vision in science. According to Haraway, vision in science
has been, "used to signify a leap out of the marked body and into a
conquering gaze from nowhere." This is the "gaze that mythically
inscribes all the marked bodies, that makes the unmarked category claim
the power to see and not be seen, to represent while escaping
representation." This causes a limitation of views in the position of science
itself as a potential player in the creation of knowledge, resulting in
a position of "modest witness". This is what Haraway terms a "god
trick", or the aforementioned representation while escaping
representation. In order to avoid this, "Haraway perpetuates a tradition of thought which emphasizes the importance of the subject in terms of both ethical and political accountability".
Some methods of generating knowledge, such as trial and error, or learning from experience,
tend to create highly situational knowledge.
Situational knowledge is often embedded in language, culture, or
traditions. This integration of situational knowledge is an allusion to
the community, and its attempts at collecting subjective perspectives
into an embodiment "of views from somewhere." Knowledge is also said to be related to the capacity of acknowledgement in human beings.
Even though Haraway's arguments are largely based on feminist studies, this idea of different worlds, as well as the skeptic stance of situated knowledge is present in the main arguments of post-structuralism. Fundamentally, both argue the contingency of knowledge on the presence of history; power, and geography, as well as the rejection of universal rules or laws or elementary structures; and the idea of power as an inherited trait of objectification.
Partial knowledge
The parable of the blind men and the elephant suggests that people tend to project their partial experiences as the whole truth
One discipline of epistemology
focuses on partial knowledge. In most cases, it is not possible to
understand an information domain exhaustively; our knowledge is always incomplete
or partial. Most real problems have to be solved by taking advantage of
a partial understanding of the problem context and problem data, unlike
the typical math problems one might solve at school, where all data is
given and one is given a complete understanding of formulas necessary to
solve them.
This idea is also present in the concept of bounded rationality which assumes that in real-life situations people often have a limited amount of information and make decisions accordingly.
"The knowledge that comes from the Holy Spirit, however, is not
limited to human knowledge; it is a special gift, which leads us to
grasp, through creation, the greatness and love of God and his profound
relationship with every creature." (Pope Francis, papal audience May 21,
2014)
Hinduism
विद्या दान (Vidya Daan) i.e. knowledge sharing is a major part of Daan, a tenet of all Dharmic Religions.
Hindu Scriptures present two kinds of knowledge, Paroksh Gyan and Prataksh Gyan. Paroksh Gyan (also spelled Paroksha-Jnana) is secondhand knowledge: knowledge obtained from books, hearsay, etc. Pratyaksh Gyan (also spelled Pratyaksha-Jnana) is the knowledge borne of direct experience, i.e., knowledge that one discovers for oneself. Jnana yoga ("path of knowledge") is one of three main types of yoga expounded by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita. (It is compared and contrasted with Bhakti Yoga and Karma yoga.)
Islam
In Islam, knowledge (Arabic: علم, ʿilm) is given great significance. "The Knowing" (al-ʿAlīm) is one of the 99 names reflecting distinct attributes of God. The Qur'an asserts that knowledge comes from God (2:239) and various hadith encourage the acquisition of knowledge. Muhammad
is reported to have said "Seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave"
and "Verily the men of knowledge are the inheritors of the prophets".
Islamic scholars, theologians and jurists are often given the title alim, meaning "knowledgeble".
Judaism
In Jewish tradition, knowledge (Hebrew: דעת da'ath) is considered one of the most valuable traits a person can acquire. Observant Jews recite three times a day in the Amidah
"Favor us with knowledge, understanding and discretion that come from
you. Exalted are you, Existent-One, the gracious giver of knowledge."
The Tanakh states, "A wise man gains power, and a man of knowledge maintains power", and "knowledge is chosen above gold".
The adaptive unconscious, first coined by social psychologist Daniel Wegner in 2002, is described as a set of mental processes that is able to affect judgement and decision-making, but is out of reach of the conscious mind. It is thought to be adaptive as it helps to keep the organism alive.
Architecturally, the adaptive unconscious is said to be unreachable
because it is buried in an unknown part of the brain. This type of
thinking evolved earlier than the conscious mind, enabling the mind to transform information and think in ways that enhance an organism's survival.
It can be described as a quick sizing up of the world which interprets
information and decides how to act very quickly and outside the
conscious view. The adaptive unconscious is active in everyday
activities such as learning new material, detecting patterns, and
filtering information. It is also characterized by being unconscious,
unintentional, uncontrollable, and efficient without requiring cognitive
tools. Lacking the need for cognitive tools does not make the adaptive
unconscious any less useful than the conscious mind as the adaptive
unconscious allows for processes like memory formation, physical balancing, language, learning, and some emotional and personalities processes that includes judgement, decision making, impression formation,
evaluations, and goal pursuing. Despite being useful, the series of
processes of the adaptive unconscious will not always result in accurate
or correct decisions by the organism. The adaptive unconscious is
affected by things like emotional reaction, estimations, and experience
and is thus inclined to stereotyping and schema
which can lead to inaccuracy in decision making. The adaptive conscious
does however help decision making to eliminate cognitive biases such as
prejudice because of its lack of cognitive tools.
Overview
The
adaptive unconscious is defined as different from conscious processing
in a number of ways. It is faster, effortless, more focused on the
present, and less flexible. It is thought to be adaptive as it helps to keep us alive. Processing information without us even realising then feeding any we do need to know to our conscious brain.
In other theories of the mind, the unconscious is limited to
"low-level" activities, such as carrying out goals which have been
decided consciously. In contrast, the adaptive unconscious is now
thought to also be involved in "high-level" cognition such as
goal-setting.
The theory of the adaptive unconscious was influenced by some of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung's
views on the unconscious mind. According to Freud, the unconscious mind
stored a lot of mental content which needs to be repressed, however the
term adaptiveunconscious reflects the idea that much of
what the unconscious does is actually beneficial to the organism, in
closer accordance with Jung's thought. For example, its various
processes have been streamlined through evolution to quickly evaluate and respond to patterns in an organism's environment.
Intuition
Malcolm Gladwell described intuition, not as an emotional reaction, but a very quick thinking.
He said that if an individual realized that a truck is about to hit
him, there would be no time think through all of his options and, to
survive, he must rely on this kind of decision-making apparatus, which
is capable of making very quick judgments based on little information. Gladwell also cited another example in the case of the kouros, which was a statue from ancient Greece acquired by the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. A team of scientists vouched for its authenticity but some historians such as Thomas Hoving instantly knew otherwise - that they felt an "intuitive repulsion" for the piece, which was eventually proved as fake.
Intuition comes from tapping into the adaptive unconscious. The
adaptive unconscious is that liminal zone between dreams and reality,
what might be called a reciprocal of experiences, memories, and dreams.
Working within the adaptive unconscious involves browsing through a
series of sense impressions
and making comparisons regarding a situation and using past experiences
to dissolve sensory boundaries which then results in intuition. There
is also a study that cited intuition as a result of the way our brain
stores, processes and uses the information of our subconscious. It becomes useful when reasoning and rationality provide no rapid answer.
The introspection illusion
The debate over the existence of introspection began in the late 19th
century with experiments involving placing people in different stimuli
contexts and them thinking about their thoughts and feelings after.
These types of experiments have continued since. Always asking the
participant to think about how they feel and their thoughts. However, we
can never know if they are accessing their unconscious as they do this
or if the information is just coming from their conscious mind. This makes research into this area more difficult creating the debate over introspection.
More recent research suggests that many of our preferences,
attitudes, and ideas come from the adaptive unconscious. However,
subjects themselves do not realize this, and they are "unaware of their
own unawareness".
People wrongly think they have direct insight into the origins of their
mental states. A subject is likely to give explanations for their
behavior (i.e. their preferences, attitudes, and ideas), but the subject
tends to be inaccurate in this "insight." The false explanations of
their own behavior is what psychologists call the introspection illusion.
In some experiments, subjects provide explanations that are
fabricated, distorted, or misinterpreted memories, but not lies – a
phenomenon called confabulation. This suggests that introspection is instead an indirect, unreliable process of inference.
It has been argued that this "introspection illusion" underlies a
number of perceived differences between the self and other people,
because people trust these unreliable introspections when forming
attitudes about themselves but not about others.
However, this theory of the limits of introspection has been
highly controversial, and it has been difficult to test unambiguously
how much information individuals get from introspection.
The difficulties in understanding the introspective method resulted in a
lack of theoretical development of the mind and more into behaviourism.
The difficulties of finding a method that worked (i.e. not
self-reporting by the patient) mean there was a halt in this area of
research until the cognitive revolution. Due to this the need to
understand the unconscious mind increased. Psychologists started to
focus on the limits of the conscious mind and more stimuli and learning
paradigm focused experiments for the unconscious mind. This helps understand the limitations of introspection or the lack of as some would argue.
Implicit-Explicit Relationships
The
theory of introspection is highly controversial as said above. This is
due to research showing inconsistencies between our introspective
reports and factors affecting our stimuli. This issue lead to a new way
to study introspective access by using the adaptive unconsciousness.
This is done by looking at the implicit-explicit relationship,
specifically the differences between the two. Explicit processes involve
cognitive resources and are done with awareness. On the other hand,
implicit processes require at least one of the following, lack of
intention, lack of management, reduced awareness of where the responses
came from and finally high efficiency of processing. This shows the
differences that occur between the two processes and the contention
around the differences as they cannot be pinned down to one specific
thing.
These differences between implicit and explicit factors is argued to be
able to be used as evidence for introspection existence.
If implicit processes become weaker than explicit processes then it can
result in larger differences between the two. This results in
consequences for future information processing and the well-being of the
person. However, if this occurs in the right conditions it can allow
for implicit processing output to enter the conscious mind. This leads
to a small self-insight into the adaptive unconscious allowing us to
understand it more.
Arguably, this argument of the independence of introspection
existence based on the implicit-explicit relationship may actually be
more conditional than originally thought. This view coincides with the
idea that access to our unconsciousness is dependent on the competition
between processes and their surrounding contexts. These contexts provide
the association our stimuli have with certain aspects of society. For
example, if you found pleasure in running, when running your cognitive
processes either implicit or explicit would tell your unconscious you
are feeling joy without you realising this was occurring. This could
then be translated into the conscious mind.
Adaptive unconscious versus conscious thinking
Many
used to think most of our behaviours, thoughts, feelings all came from
our conscious brain. However, as our understanding has grown it is
obvious our adaptive unconscious does much more than we originally
thought. Once we thought the creation of goals and self-reflection
occurred consciously but now we realise its all in our unconscious. Our
unconscious and conscious minds do have to work together though for us
to continue efficiently functioning. We need to understand the dual
system our brain uses between our adaptive unconscious and our conscious
mind more. Analysing information, attitudes and feelings in the
unconscious mind first which then contributes and creates our conscious
versions of this.
The debate is no longer whether the adaptive unconscious exists but
more which is more important in our everyday decision making? The
adaptive unconscious or the conscious mind. Some would say it is
becoming more and more apparent that our unconscious seems to be much
more important than we originally thought especially compared to our
conscious brain. The low-level processing we used to think our adaptive
unconscious did we now realise may actually be the job of our conscious
mind.
Our adaptive unconscious may actually be the power house in our brain
making the important decisions and holding the important information. It
does this all without us even realising.
The democratic peace theory posits that democracies are hesitant to engage in armed conflict with other identified democracies.
Among proponents of the democratic peace theory, several factors are
held as motivating peace between democratic states. Variations of the
democratic peace theory emphasize that liberal and republican forms of democracies are less likely to go to war with one another. Variations of the democratic peace hold its "monadic" (democracies are
in general more peaceful in their international relations); "dyadic"
(democracies do not go to war with other democracies); and "systemic"
(more democratic states in the international system makes the
international system more peaceful).
In terms of norms and identities, it is hypothesized that democratic publics are more dovish
in their interactions with other democracies, and that democratically
elected leaders are more likely to resort to peaceful resolution in
disputes (both in domestic politics and international politics). In
terms of structural or institutional constraints, it is hypothesized
that institutional checks and balances, accountability of leaders to the public, and larger winning coalitions make it harder for democratic leaders to go to war unless there are clearly favorable ratio of benefits to costs.
These structural constraints, along with the transparent nature
of democratic politics, make it harder for democratic leaders to
mobilize for war and initiate surprise attacks,
which reduces fear and inadvertent escalation to war. The transparent
nature of democratic political systems, as well as deliberative debates
(involving opposition parties, the media, experts, and bureaucrats), make it easier for democratic states to credibly signal their intentions. The concept of audience costs
entails that threats issued by democratic leaders are taken more
seriously because democratic leaders will be electorally punished by
their publics from backing down from threats, which reduces the risk of
misperception and miscalculation by states.
Those who dispute this theory often do so on grounds that it conflates correlation with causation;
that divergent conceptualizations of "democracy" and "war" lead to
divergent results; the purported causal mechanisms of the democratic
peace are not theoretically credible; and that omitted variables explain the correlation better than democratic peace theory. Alternative explanations for the correlation of peace among democracies include arguments revolving around institutions, commerce, alliances, and political stability.
Though the democratic peace theory was not rigorously or
scientifically studied until the 1960s, the basic principles of the
concept had been argued as early as the 18th century in the works of
philosopher Immanuel Kant and political theorist Thomas Paine. Kant foreshadowed the theory in his essay Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch
written in 1795, although he thought that a world with only
constitutional republics was only one of several necessary conditions
for a perpetual peace. Kant's theory was that a majority of the people
would never vote to go to war, unless in self-defense. Therefore, if all
nations were republics, it would end war, because there would be no
aggressors. In earlier but less cited works, Thomas Paine made similar
or stronger claims about the peaceful nature of republics. Paine wrote
in "Common Sense" in 1776: "The Republics of Europe are all (and we may
say always) in peace." Paine argued that kings would go to war out of
pride in situations where republics would not. French historian and social scientist Alexis de Tocqueville also argued, in Democracy in America (1835–1840), that democratic nations were less likely to wage war.
Dean Babst,
a criminologist, was the first to do statistical research on this
topic. His academic paper supporting the theory was published in 1964 in
Wisconsin Sociologist; he published a slightly more popularized version, in 1972, in the trade journal Industrial Research. Both versions initially received little attention.
Melvin Small and J. David Singer
responded; they found an absence of wars between democratic states with
two "marginal exceptions", but denied that this pattern had statistical
significance. This paper was published in the Jerusalem Journal of International Relations which finally brought more widespread attention to the theory, and started the academic debate. A 1983 paper by political scientist Michael W. Doyle contributed further to popularizing the theory. Rudolph J. Rummel was another early researcher and drew considerable lay attention to the subject in his later works.
Maoz and Abdolali extended the research to lesser conflicts than wars. Bremer, Maoz and Russett found the correlation between democracy and
peacefulness remained significant after controlling for many possible
confounding variables. This moved the theory into the mainstream of social science. Supporters of realism in international relations
and others responded by raising many new objections. Other researchers
attempted more systematic explanations of how democracy might cause
peace, and of how democracy might also affect other aspects of foreign relations such as alliances and collaboration.
There have been numerous further studies in the field since these pioneering works.
Most studies have found some form of democratic peace exists, although
neither methodological disputes nor doubtful cases are entirely resolved
Definitions
World population by political regime type.
Research on the democratic peace theory has to define "democracy" and "peace" (or, more often, "war").
Defining democracy
Democracies
have been defined differently by different theorists and researchers;
this accounts for some of the variations in their findings. Some
examples:
Small and Singer define democracy as a nation that (1) holds
periodic elections in which the opposition parties are as free to run as
government parties, (2) allows at least 10% of the adult population to
vote, and (3) has a parliament that either controls or enjoys parity
with the executive branch of the government.
Doyle requires (1) that "liberal regimes" have market or private
property economics, (2) they have policies that are internally
sovereign, (3) they have citizens with juridical rights, and (4) they
have representative governments. Either 30% of the adult males were able
to vote or it was possible for every man to acquire voting rights as by
attaining enough property. He allows greater power to hereditary
monarchs than other researchers; for example, he counts the rule of Louis-Philippe of France as a liberal regime.
Ray requires 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. This definition excludes long periods
often viewed as democratic. For example, the United States until 1800,
India from independence until 1979, and Japan until 1993 were all under
one-party rule, and thus would not be counted under this definition.
Rummel states that "By democracy is meant liberal democracy,
where those who hold power are elected in competitive elections with a
secret ballot and wide franchise (loosely understood as including at
least 2/3 of adult males); where there is freedom of speech, religion,
and organization; and a constitutional framework of law to which the
government is subordinate and that guarantees equal rights."
Non-binary classifications
The
above definitions are binary, classifying nations into either
democracies or non-democracies. Many researchers have instead used more
finely grained scales. One example is the Polity data series
which scores each state on two scales, one for democracy and one for
autocracy, for each year since 1800; as well as several others.
The use of the Polity Data has varied. Some researchers have done
correlations between the democracy scale and belligerence; others have
treated it as a binary classification by (as its maker does) calling all
states with a high democracy score and a low autocracy score
democracies; yet others have used the difference of the two scores,
sometimes again making this into a binary classification.
Young democracies
Several
researchers have observed that many of the possible exceptions to the
democratic peace have occurred when at least one of the involved
democracies was very young. Many of them have therefore added a
qualifier, typically stating that the peacefulness apply to democracies
older than three years.
Rummel argues that this is enough time for "democratic procedures to be
accepted, and democratic culture to settle in." Additionally, this may
allow for other states to actually come to the recognition of the state
as a democracy.
Mansfield and Snyder, while agreeing that there have been no wars
between mature liberal democracies, state that countries in transition
to democracy are especially likely to be involved in wars. They find
that democratizing countries are even more warlike than stable
democracies, stable autocracies or even countries in transition towards
autocracy. So, they suggest caution in eliminating these wars from the
analysis, because this might hide a negative aspect of the process of
democratization.
A reanalysis of the earlier study's statistical results emphasizes that
the above relationship between democratization and war can only be said
to hold for those democratizing countries where the executive lacks
sufficient power, independence, and institutional strength.
A review cites several other studies finding that the increase in the
risk of war in democratizing countries happens only if many or most of
the surrounding nations are undemocratic.
If wars between young democracies are included in the analysis, several
studies and reviews still find enough evidence supporting the stronger
claim that all democracies, whether young or established, go into war
with one another less frequently;) while some do not.
Defining war
Quantitative
research on international wars usually define war as a military
conflict with more than 1000 killed in battle in one year. This is the
definition used in the Correlates of War Project
which has also supplied the data for many studies on war. It turns out
that most of the military conflicts in question fall clearly above or
below this threshold.
Some researchers have used different definitions. For example, Weart defines war as more than 200 battle deaths.
Russett, when looking at Ancient Greece, only requires some real battle
engagement, involving on both sides forces under state authorization.
Militarized Interstate Disputes
(MIDs), in the Correlates of War Project classification, are lesser
conflicts than wars. Such a conflict may be no more than military
display of force with no battle deaths. MIDs and wars together are
"militarized interstate conflicts" or MICs. MIDs include the conflicts
that precede a war; so the difference between MIDs and MICs may be less
than it appears.
Statistical analysis and concerns about degrees of freedom
are the primary reasons for using MID's instead of actual wars. Wars
are relatively rare. An average ratio of 30 MIDs to one war provides a
richer statistical environment for analysis.
Monadic vs. dyadic peace
Most research is regarding the dyadic peace, that democracies do not fight one another. Very few researchers have supported the monadic
peace, that democracies are more peaceful in general. There are some
recent papers that find a slight monadic effect. Müller and Wolff, in
listing them, agree "that democracies on average might be slightly, but
not strongly, less warlike than other states," but general "monadic
explanations is neither necessary nor convincing." They note that
democracies have varied greatly in their belligerence against
non-democracies.
Possible exceptions
Some scholars support the democratic peace on probabilistic grounds:
since many wars have been fought since democracies first arose, we might
expect a proportionate number of wars to have occurred between
democracies, if democracies fought each other as freely as other pairs
of states; but proponents of democratic peace theory claim that the
number is much less than might be expected. However, opponents of the theory argue this is mistaken and claim there are numerous examples of wars between democracies.
Historically, troublesome cases for the Democratic peace theory include the Sicilian Expedition, the War of 1812, the U.S. Civil War, the Fashoda Crisis, conflicts between Ecuador and Peru, the Cod Wars, the Spanish–American War, and the Kargil War. Doyle cites the Paquisha War and the Lebanese air force's intervention in the Six-Day War. The total number of cases suggested in the literature is at least 50. The data set Bremer was using showed one exception, the French-Thai War of 1940; Gleditsch sees the state of war between Finland and United Kingdom during World War II,
as a special case, which should probably be treated separately: an
incidental state of war between democracies during large and complex war
with hundreds of belligerents and the constant shifting of geopolitical
and diplomatic boundaries.
However, the British did conduct a few military actions of minor scope
against the Finns, more to demonstrate their alliance with the Soviets
than to actually engage in war with Finland. Page Fortna discusses the
1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus and the Kargil War as exceptions, finding the latter to be the most significant.
However, the status of these countries as being truly democratic is a
matter of debate. For instance, in Spain in 1898, two parties alternated
in the government in a controlled process known as el turno pacífico,
and the caciques, powerful local figures, were used to manipulate
election results, and as a result resentment of the system slowly built
up over time and important nationalist movements as well as unions
started to form. Similarly, the Turkish intervention in Cyprus occurred
only after the Cypriot elected government was abolished in a coup
sponsored by the military government of Greece.
Limiting the theory to only truly stable and genuine democracies
leads to a very restrictive set of highly prosperous nations with little
incentive in armed conflict that might harm their economies, in which
the theory might be expected to hold virtually by definition.
One advocate of the democratic peace explains that his reason to
choose a definition of democracy sufficiently restrictive to exclude all wars between democracies are what "might be disparagingly termed public relations": students and politicians will be more impressed by such a claim than by claims that wars between democracies are less likely.
Statistical difficulties due to newness of democracy
Number of nations 1800–2003 scoring 8 or higher on Polity IV scale.
There have been no wars and in Wayman's listing of interliberal MIDs no
conflict causing any battle deaths between these nations.
One problem with the research on wars is that, as the RealistJohn Mearsheimer
put it, "democracies have been few in number over the past two
centuries, and thus there have been few opportunities where democracies
were in a position to fight one another".
Democracies have been very rare until recently. Even looser definitions
of democracy, such as Doyle's, find only a dozen democracies before the
late nineteenth century, and many of them short-lived or with limited
franchise. Freedom House finds no independent state with universal suffrage in 1900.
Wayman, a supporter of the theory, states that "If we rely solely
on whether there has been an inter-democratic war, it is going to take
many more decades of peace to build our confidence in the stability of
the democratic peace".
Studying lesser conflicts
Many
researchers have reacted to this limitation by studying lesser
conflicts instead, since they have been far more common. There have been
many more MIDs than wars; the Correlates of War Project counts several
thousand during the last two centuries. A review lists many studies that
have reported that democratic pairs of states are less likely to be
involved in MIDs than other pairs of states.
Another study finds that 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.
When examining the inter-liberal MIDs in more detail, one study
finds that they are less likely to involve third parties, and that the
target of the hostility is less likely to reciprocate, if the target
reciprocates the response is usually proportional to the provocation,
and the disputes are less likely to cause any loss of life. The most
common action was "Seizure of Material or Personnel".
Studies find that the probability that disputes between states
will be resolved peacefully is positively affected by the degree of
democracy exhibited by the lesser democratic state involved in that
dispute. Disputes between democratic states are significantly shorter
than disputes involving at least one undemocratic state. Democratic
states are more likely to be amenable to third party mediation when they
are involved in disputes with each other.
In international crises that include the threat or use of
military force, one study finds that if the parties are democracies,
then relative military strength has no effect on who wins. This is
different from when nondemocracies are involved. These results are the
same also if the conflicting parties are formal allies.
Similarly, a study of the behavior of states that joined ongoing
militarized disputes reports that power is important only to
autocracies: democracies do not seem to base their alignment on the
power of the sides in the dispute.
Conflict initiation
According
to a 2017 review study, "there is enough evidence to conclude that
democracy does cause peace at least between democracies, that the
observed correlation between democracy and peace is not spurious".
Most studies have looked only at who is involved in the conflicts
and ignored the question of who initiated the conflict. In many
conflicts both sides argue that the other side was initiator. Several
researchers have argued that studying conflict initiation is of limited
value, because existing data about conflict initiation may be especially
unreliable.
Even so, several studies have examined this. Reitner and Stam argue
that autocracies initiate conflicts against democracies more frequently
than democracies do against autocracies.
Quackenbush and Rudy, while confirming Reiter and Stam's results, find
that democracies initiate wars against nondemocracies more frequently
than nondemocracies do to each other.
Several following studies have studied how different types of
autocracies with different institutions vary regarding conflict
initiation. Personalistic and military dictatorships may be particularly
prone to conflict initiation, as compared to other types of autocracy
such as one party states, but also more likely to be targeted in a war having other initiators.
One 2017 study found that democracies are no less likely to settle border disputes peacefully than non-democracies.
Internal violence and genocide
Most of this article discusses research on relations between states.
However, there is also evidence that democracies have less internal
systematic violence. For instance, one study finds that the most
democratic and the most authoritarian states have few civil wars,
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 democratization. Abadie's study finds that the most democratic nations have the least terrorism. Harff finds that genocide and politicide are rare in democracies.[76] Rummel finds that the more democratic a regime, the less its democide. He finds that democide has killed six times as many people as battles.
Davenport and Armstrong II list several other studies and states:
"Repeatedly, democratic political systems have been found to decrease
political bans, censorship, torture, disappearances and mass killing,
doing so in a linear fashion across diverse measurements, methodologies,
time periods, countries, and contexts." It concludes: "Across measures
and methodological techniques, it is found that below a certain level,
democracy has no impact on human rights violations, but above this level
democracy influences repression in a negative and roughly linear
manner."
They also state that thirty years worth of statistical research has
revealed that only two variables decrease human rights violations:
political democracy and economic development.
Abulof and Goldman add a caveat, focusing on the contemporary
Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Statistically, a MENA democracy
makes a country more prone to both the onset and incidence of civil war,
and the more democratic a MENA state is, the more likely it is to
experience violent intrastate strife. Moreover, anocracies
do not seem to be predisposed to civil war, either worldwide or in
MENA. Looking for causality beyond correlation, they suggest that
democracy's pacifying effect is partly mediated through societal
subscription to self-determination and popular sovereignty. This may
turn “democratizing nationalism” to a long-term prerequisite, not just
an immediate hindrance, to peace and democracy.
Explanations
These
theories have traditionally been categorized into two groups:
explanations that focus on democratic norms and explanations that focus
on democratic political structures.
They usually are meant to be explanations for little violence between
democracies, not for a low level of internal violence in democracies.
Several of these mechanisms may also apply to countries of similar systems. The book Never at War finds evidence for an oligarchic peace. One example is the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, in which the Sejm resisted and vetoed most royal proposals for war, like those of Władysław IV Vasa.
Democratic norms
One
example from the first group is that liberal democratic culture may
make the leaders accustomed to negotiation and compromise.
Another that a belief in human rights may make people in democracies
reluctant to go to war, especially against other democracies. The
decline in colonialism, also by democracies, may be related to a change
in perception of non-European peoples and their rights.
Bruce Russett also argues that the democratic culture affects the
way leaders resolve conflicts. In addition, he holds that a social norm
emerged toward the end of the nineteenth century; that democracies
should not fight each other, which strengthened when the democratic
culture and the degree of democracy increased, for example by widening
the franchise. Increasing democratic stability allowed partners in
foreign affairs to perceive a nation as reliably democratic. The
alliances between democracies during the two World Wars and the Cold War
also strengthened the norms. He sees less effective traces of this norm
in Greek antiquity.
Hans Köchler relates the question of transnational democracy to empowering the individual citizen by involving him, through procedures of direct democracy,
in a country's international affairs, and he calls for the
restructuring of the United Nations Organization according to democratic
norms. He refers in particular to the Swiss practice of participatory democracy.
Mousseau argues that it is market-oriented development that
creates the norms and values that explain both democracy and the peace.
In less developed countries individuals often depend on social networks
that impose conformity to in-group norms and beliefs, and loyalty to
group leaders. When jobs are plentiful on the market, in contrast, as in
market-oriented developed countries, individuals depend on a strong
state that enforces contracts equally. Cognitive routines emerge of
abiding by state law rather than group leaders, and, as in contracts,
tolerating differences among individuals. Voters in marketplace
democracies thus accept only impartial ‘liberal’ governments, and
constrain leaders to pursue their interests in securing equal access to
global markets and in resisting those who distort such access with
force. Marketplace democracies thus share common foreign policy
interests in the supremacy—and predictability—of international law over
brute power politics, and equal and open global trade over closed trade
and imperial preferences. When disputes do originate between marketplace
democracies, they are less likely than others to escalate to violence
because both states, even the stronger one, perceive greater long-term
interests in the supremacy of law over power politics.
Braumoeller argues that liberal norms of conflict resolution vary
because liberalism takes many forms. By examining survey results from
the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union, the author
demonstrates that liberalism in that region bears a stronger resemblance
to 19th-century liberal nationalism than to the sort of universalist,
Wilsonian liberalism described by democratic peace theorists, and that,
as a result, liberals in the region are more, not less, aggressive than non-liberals.
A 2013 study by Jessica Weeks
and Michael Tomz found through survey experiments that the public was
less supportive of war in cases involving fellow democracies.
Democratic political structures
The case for institutional constraints goes back to Immanuel Kant, who wrote:
[I]f the consent of the citizens is
required in order to decide that war should be declared (and in this
constitution it cannot but be the case), nothing is more natural than
that they would be very cautious in commencing such a poor game,
decreeing for themselves all the calamities of war. Among the latter
would be: having to fight, having to pay the costs of war from their own
resources, having painfully to repair the devastation war leaves
behind, and, to fill up the measure of evils, load themselves with a
heavy national debt that would embitter peace itself and that can never
be liquidated on account of constant wars in the future.
Democracy thus 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 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.
Doyle argued that the absence of a monadic peace is only to be expected:
the same ideologies that cause liberal states to be at peace with each
other inspire idealistic wars with the illiberal, whether to defend
oppressed foreign minorities or avenge countrymen settled abroad.
Doyle also notes liberal states do conduct covert operations against
each other; the covert nature of the operation, however, prevents the
publicity otherwise characteristic of a free state from applying to the
question.
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.
As described by Gelpi and Griesdorf, several studies have argued
that liberal leaders face institutionalized constraints that impede
their capacity to mobilize the state's resources for war without the
consent of a broad spectrum of interests.
Survey results that compare the attitudes of citizens and elites in the
Soviet successor states are consistent with this argument.
Moreover, these constraints are readily apparent to other states and
cannot be manipulated by leaders. Thus, democracies send credible
signals to other states of an aversion to using force. These signals
allow democratic states to avoid conflicts with one another, but they
may attract aggression from nondemocratic states. Democracies may be
pressured to respond to such aggression—perhaps even
preemptively—through the use of force. Also as described by Gelpi and
Griesdorf, studies have argued that when democratic leaders do choose to
escalate international crises, their threats are taken as highly
credible, since there must be a relatively large public opinion for
these actions. In disputes between liberal states, the credibility of
their bargaining signals allows them to negotiate a peaceful settlement
before mobilization. A 2017 study by Jeff Carter found evidence that democratic states are slower to mobilize for war.
An explanation based on game theory
similar to the last two above 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 risk factors for certain types of state have, however,
changed since Kant's time. In the quote above, Kant points to the lack
of popular support for war – first that the populace will directly or
indirectly suffer in the event of war – as a reason why republics will
not tend to go to war. The number of American troops killed or maimed
versus the number of Iraqi soldiers and civilians maimed and killed in
the American-Iraqi conflict is indicative. This may explain the
relatively great willingness of democratic states to attack weak
opponents: the Iraq war was, initially at least, highly popular in the
United States. The case of the Vietnam War
might, nonetheless, indicate a tipping point where publics may no
longer accept continuing attrition of their soldiers (even while
remaining relatively indifferent to the much higher loss of life on the
part of the populations attacked).
Coleman uses economic cost-benefit analysis to reach conclusions
similar to Kant's. Coleman examines the polar cases of autocracy and
liberal democracy. In both cases, the costs of war are assumed to be
borne by the people. In autocracy, the autocrat receives the entire
benefits of war, while in a liberal democracy the benefits are dispersed
among the people. Since the net benefit to an autocrat exceeds the net
benefit to a citizen of a liberal democracy, the autocrat is more likely
to go to war. The disparity of benefits and costs can be so high that
an autocrat can launch a welfare-destroying war when his net benefit
exceeds the total cost of war. Contrarily, the net benefit of the same
war to an individual in a liberal democracy can be negative so that he
would not choose to go to war. This disincentive to war is increased
between liberal democracies through their establishment of linkages,
political and economic, that further raise the costs of war between
them. Therefore, liberal democracies are less likely to go war,
especially against each other. Coleman further distinguishes between
offensive and defensive wars and finds that liberal democracies are less
likely to fight defensive wars that may have already begun due to
excessive discounting of future costs.
Brad LeVeck and Neil Narang argue that democratic states are less
likely to produce decision-making errors in crises due to a larger and
more diverse set of actors who are involved in the foreign policy
decision-making process.
Using selectorate theory,
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, James D. Morrow, Randolph M. Siverson and
Alastair Smith argue that the democratic peace stems in part from the
fact that democratic leaders sustain their power through large winning
coalitions, which means that democratic leaders devote more resources to
war, have an advantage in war, and choose wars that they are highly
likely to win. These leads democratic states to avoid one another, but
war with weak non-democratic states.
Audience costs
A
prominent rational choice argument for the democratic peace is that
democracies carry greater audience costs than authoritarian states,
which makes them better at signaling their intentions in interstate
disputes.
Arguments regarding the credibility of democratic states in disputes
has been subject to debate among international relations scholars. Two
studies 2001, using the MID and ICB datasets, provided empirical support for the notion that democracies were more likely to issue effective threats.
However, a 2012 study by Alexander B. Downes and Todd S. Sechser found
that existing datasets were not suitable to draw any conclusions as to
whether democratic states issued more effective threats.
They constructed their own dataset specifically for interstate military
threats and outcomes, which found no relationship between regime type
and effective threats.
A 2017 study which recoded flaws in the MID dataset ultimately
conclude, " that there are no regime-based differences in dispute
reciprocation, and prior findings may be based largely on poorly coded
data." Other scholars have disputed the democratic credibility argument, questioning its causal logic and empirical validity. Research by Jessica Weeks argued that some authoritarian regime types have similar audience costs as in democratic states.
A 2021 study found that Americans perceived democracies to be
more likely to back down in crises, which contradicts the expectations
of the audience costs literature.
Criticism
There are several logically distinguishable classes of criticism.
They usually apply to no wars or few MIDs between democracies, not to
little systematic violence in established democracies. In addition,
there has been a list of wars between democracies.
Statistical significance
One
study has argued that there have been as many wars between democracies
as one would expect between any other couple of states. However, its
authors include wars between young and dubious democracies, and very
small wars.
Others state that, although there may be some evidence for
democratic peace, the data sample or the time span may be too small to
assess any definitive conclusions.
For example, Gowa finds evidence for democratic peace to be
insignificant before 1939, because of the too small number of
democracies, and offers an alternate realist explanation for the following period. Gowa's use of statistics has been criticized, with several other studies and reviews finding different or opposing results.
However, this can be seen as the longest-lasting criticism to the
theory; as noted earlier, also some supporters agree that the
statistical sample for assessing its validity is limited or scarce, at
least if only full-scale wars are considered.
According to one study, which uses a rather restrictive
definition of democracy and war, there were no wars between jointly
democratic couples of states in the period from 1816 to 1992. Assuming a
purely random distribution of wars between states, regardless of their
democratic character, the predicted number of conflicts between
democracies would be around ten. So, Ray argues that the evidence is
statistically significant, but that it is still conceivable that, in the
future, even a small number of inter-democratic wars would cancel out
such evidence.
Peace comes before democracy
Douglas
M. Gibler and Andrew Owsiak in their study argued peace almost always
comes before democracy and that states do not develop democracy until
all border disputes have been settled. These studies indicate that there
is strong evidence that peace causes democracy but little evidence that
democracy causes peace. Azar Gat
argues that it is not democracy in itself that leads to peace but other
aspects of modernization, such as economic prosperity and lower
population growth.
The hypothesis that peace causes democracy is supported by psychological and cultural theories. Christian Welzel'shuman empowerment theory posits that existential security leads to emancipative cultural values and support for a democratic political organization. This also follows from the so-called regality theory based on evolutionary psychology.
Wars against non-democracies
Several
studies fail to confirm that democracies are less likely to wage war
than autocracies if wars against non-democracies are included.
Some
authors criticize the definition of democracy by arguing that states
continually reinterpret other states' regime types as a consequence of
their own objective interests and motives, such as economic and security
concerns.
For example, one study reports that Germany was considered a democratic
state by Western opinion leaders at the end of the 19th century; yet in
the years preceding World War I, when its relations with the United
States, France and Britain started deteriorating, Germany was gradually
reinterpreted as an autocratic state, in absence of any actual regime
change. Shimmin moves a similar criticism regarding the western perception of Milosevic's Serbia between 1989 and 1999.
Rummel replies to this criticism by stating that, in general, studies
on democratic peace do not focus on other countries' perceptions of
democracy; and in the specific case of Serbia, by arguing that the
limited credit accorded by western democracies to Milosevic in the early
1990s did not amount to a recognition of democracy, but only to the
perception that possible alternative leaders could be even worse.
Some democratic peace researchers have been criticized for post hoc
reclassifying some specific conflicts as non-wars or political systems
as non-democracies without checking and correcting the whole data set
used similarly. Supporters and opponents of the democratic peace agree
that this is bad use of statistics, even if a plausible case can be made
for the correction. A military affairs columnist of the newspaper Asia Times has summarized the above criticism in a journalist's fashion describing the theory as subject to the no true Scotsman problem: exceptions are explained away as not being between "real" democracies or "real" wars.
Some democratic peace researchers require that the executive
result from a substantively contested election. This may be a
restrictive definition: For example, the National Archives of the United
States notes that "For all intents and purposes, George Washington was unopposed for election as President, both in 1789 and 1792". (Under the original provisions for the Electoral College,
there was no distinction between votes for president and
Vice-president: each elector was required to vote for two distinct
candidates, with the runner-up to be vice-president. Every elector cast
one of his votes for Washington,
John Adams received a majority of the other votes; there were several
other candidates: so the election for vice president was contested.)
Spiro made several other criticisms of the statistical methods used. Russett and a series of papers described by Ray responded to this, for example with different methodology.
Sometimes the datasets used have also been criticized. For
example, some authors have criticized the Correlates of War data for not
including civilian deaths in the battle deaths count, especially in
civil wars.
Cohen and Weeks argue that most fishing disputes, which include no
deaths and generally very limited threats of violence, should be
excluded even from the list of military disputes. Gleditsch made several criticisms to the Correlates of War data set, and produced a revised set of data. Maoz and Russett made several criticisms to the Polity I and II data sets, which have mostly been addressed in later versions. These criticisms are generally considered minor issues.
The most comprehensive critique points out that "democracy" is
rarely defined, never refers to substantive democracy, is unclear about
causation, has been refuted in more than 100 studies, fails to account
for some 200 deviant cases, and has been promoted ideologically to
justify one country seeking to expand democracy abroad.
Most studies treat the complex concept of "democracy" as a bivariate
variable rather than attempting to dimensionalize the concept. Studies
also fail to take into account the fact that there are dozens of types
of democracy, so the results are meaningless unless articulated to a
particular type of democracy or claimed to be true for all types, such
as consociational or economic democracy, with disparate datasets.
Microfoundations
Recent
work into the democratic norms explanations shows that the
microfoundations on which this explanation rest do not find empirical
support. Within most earlier studies, the presence of liberal norms in
democratic societies and their subsequent influence on the willingness
to wage war was merely assumed, never measured. Moreover, it was never
investigated whether or not these norms are absent within other
regime-types. Two recent studies measured the presence of liberal norms
and investigated the assumed effect of these norms on the willingness to
wage war. The results of both studies show that liberal democratic
norms are not only present within liberal democracies, but also within
other regime-types. Moreover, these norms show are not of influence on
the willingness to attack another state during an interstate conflict at
the brink of war.
Sebastian Rosato argues that democratic peace theory makes
several false assumptions. Firstly, it assumes that democratic populaces
will react negatively to the costs of war upon them. However, in modern
wars casualties tend to be fairly low and soldiers are largely
volunteers, meaning they accept the risks of fighting, so their families
and friends, whom the cost of their death falls on heaviest, are less
likely to criticise the government than the families and friends of
conscripted soldiers. Secondly, democratic peace theory ignores the role
of nationalism; democratic populaces are just as likely to be
influenced by nationalist sentiment as anyway else and if a democratic
populace believes that a war is necessary for their nation, the populace
will support it. Lastly, democratic leaders are as likely to guide
public opinion as they are to follow it. Democratic leaders are often
aware of the power of nationalist sentiment and thus seek to encourage
it when it comes to war, arguing that war is necessary to defend or
spread the nation's way of life. Democratic leaders may even have an
advatange over authoritarians in this regard, as they can be seen as
more legitimately representative. Rosato argues that this does not just
apply to wars of defence but also aggression; democratic populaces can
be roused by nationalist feelings to support aggressive wars if they are
seen as in the national interest.
Rosato also argues that authoritarian leaders have a reduced
incentive to go to war because civilian control over the military is
less guaranteed in autocracies; there is always the risk the military
could subvert civilian leadership and a war which results in defeat
could swiftly result in a coup. Even military dictators run the risk of
internal dissent within the armed forces. Autocratic leaders in general
also risk unleashing political and social turmoil that could destroy
them if go to war. Conversely, bellicose democratic leaders can rely on
the acknowledgement of the legitimacy of the democratic process, as
pacifist actors in democracies will need to respect the legitimacy of a
democratically elected government. If pro-war groups can capture the
organs of the state in a democracy legitimately, then anti-war groups
will have little means of opposing them outside of extra-constitutional
means, which would likely backfire and cause the anti-war groups to lose
legitimacy.
A 2017 study found that public opinion in China showed the same
reluctance in going to war as publics in democratic states, which
suggests that publics in democratic states are not generally more
opposed to war than publics in authoritarian states.
Limited consequences
The peacefulness may have various limitations and qualifiers and may not actually mean very much in the real world.
Democratic peace researchers do in general not count as wars
conflicts which do not kill a thousand on the battlefield; thus they
exclude for example the bloodless Cod Wars. However, research has also found a peacefulness between democracies when looking at lesser conflicts.
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 Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union. The United Kingdom abolished slavery in British territory in 1833, immediately after the Reform Act 1832
had significantly enlarged the franchise. (Of course, the abolition of
the slave trade had been enacted in 1807; and many DPT supporters would
deny that the UK was a liberal democracy in 1833 when examining
interstate wars.)
Hermann and Kegley, Jr. argue that interventions between
democracies are more likely to happen than projected by an expected
model.
They further argue that democracies are more likely to intervene in
other liberal states than against countries that are non-democracies.
Finally, they argue that these interventions between democracies have
been increasing over time and that the world can expect more of these
interventions in the future. The methodology used has been criticized and more recent studies have found opposing results.
Rummel argues that the continuing increase in democracy worldwide will soon lead to an end to wars and democide, possibly around or even before the middle of this century. The fall of Communism
and the increase in the number of democratic states were accompanied by
a sudden and dramatic decline in total warfare, interstate wars, ethnic wars, revolutionary wars, and the number of refugees and displaced persons. One report claims that the two main causes of this decline in warfare are the end of the Cold War itself and decolonization; but also claims that the three Kantian factors have contributed materially.
Historical periods
Economic
historians Joel Mokyr and Hans-Joachim Voth argue that democratic
states may have been more vulnerable to conquest because the rulers in
those states were too heavily constrained. Absolutist rulers in other
states could however operate more effectively.
Covert operations
Critics
of the democratic peace theory have pointed to covert operations and
military interventions between democracies, and argued that these
interventions indicate that democracies do not necessarily trust and
respect each other.
Alexander B. Downes and Lary Lauren Lilley argue that covert operations
conducted by democratic states has different implications depending on
which version of democratic peace theory. They argue that covert
operations are inconsistent with variants of democratic peace theory
that emphasize norms and checks-and-balances, but that covert operations
may be more consistent with versions of democratic peace theory that
rely on selectorate theory's notion of large versus small winning coalitions.
A 2015 study by Michael Poznansky reconciles findings that
democracies engage in covert interventions against one another by
arguing that democracies do so when they expect another state's
democratic character to break down or decay.
Information manipulation
Chaim
Kaufmann argues that the lead-up to the Iraq War demonstrates that
constraints on war in democracies may hinge on whether democratic
governments can control and manipulate information, and suppress
intelligence findings that run counter to administration rhetoric, as
well as whether there is a strong opposition party and powerful media.
Academic relevance and derived studies
Democratic
peace theory is a well established research field with more than a
hundred authors having published articles about it. Several peer-reviewed studies mention in their introduction that most researchers accept the theory as an empirical fact.
According to a 2021 study by Kosuke Imai and James Lo, "overturning the
negative association between democracy and conflict would require a
confounder that is forty-seven times more prevalent in democratic dyads
than in other dyads. To put this number in context, the relationship
between democracy and peace is at least five times as robust as that
between smoking and lung cancer. To explain away the democratic peace,
therefore, scholars would have to find far more powerful confounders
than those already identified in the literature."
Imre Lakatos
suggested that what he called a "progressive research program" is
better than a "degenerative" one when it can explain the same phenomena
as the "degenerative" one, but is also characterized by growth of its
research field and the discovery of important novel facts. In contrast,
the supporters of the "degenerative" program do not make important new
empirical discoveries, but instead mostly apply adjustments to their
theory in order to defend it from competitors. Some researchers argue
that democratic peace theory is now the "progressive" program in
international relations. According to these authors, the theory can
explain the empirical phenomena previously explained by the earlier
dominant research program, realism in international relations;
in addition, the initial statement that democracies do not, or rarely,
wage war on one another, has been followed by a rapidly growing
literature on novel empirical regularities.
Other examples are several studies finding that democracies are
more likely to ally with one another than with other states, forming
alliances which are likely to last longer than alliances involving
nondemocracies; several studies showing that democracies conduct diplomacy differently and in a more conciliatory way compared to nondemocracies; one study finding that democracies with proportional representation are in general more peaceful regardless of the nature of the other party involved in a relationship;
and another study reporting that proportional representation system and
decentralized territorial autonomy is positively associated with
lasting peace in postconflict societies.
Coup by provoking a war
Many
democracies become non-democratic by war, as being aggressed or as
aggressor (quickly after a coup), sometimes the coup leader worked to
provoke that war.
Carl Schmitt wrote on how to overrule a Constitution: "Sovereign is he who decides on the exception."
Schmitt, again on the need for internal (and foreign) enemies because
they are useful to persuade the people not to trust anyone more than the
Leader: "As long as the state is a political entity this requirement
for internal peace compels it in critical situations to decide also upon
the domestic enemy. Every state provides, therefore, some kind of
formula for the declaration of an internal enemy." Whatever opposition
will be pictured and intended as the actual foreign enemy's puppet.
Other explanations
Political similarity
One
general criticism motivating research of different explanations is that
actually the theory cannot claim that "democracy causes peace", because
the evidence for democracies being, in general, more peaceful is very
slight or non existent; it only can support the claim that "joint
democracy causes peace". According to Rosato, this casts doubts on
whether democracy is actually the cause because, if so, a monadic effect
would be expected.
Perhaps the simplest explanation to such perceived anomaly (but
not the one the Realist Rosato prefers, see the section on Realist
explanations below) is that democracies are not peaceful to each other
because they are democratic, but rather because they are similar.
This line of thought started with several independent observations of
an "Autocratic Peace" effect, a reduced probability of war (obviously no
author claims its absence) between states which are both
non-democratic, or both highly so.
This has led to the hypothesis that democratic peace emerges as a
particular case when analyzing a subset of states which are, in fact,
similar.
Or, that similarity in general does not solely affect the probability
of war, but only coherence of strong political regimes such as full
democracies and stark autocracies.
Autocratic peace and the explanation based on political
similarity is a relatively recent development, and opinions about its
value are varied. Henderson builds a model considering political
similarity, geographic distance and economic interdependence as its main
variables, and concludes that democratic peace is a statistical
artifact which disappears when the above variables are taken into
account.
Werner finds a conflict reducing effect from political similarity in
general, but with democratic dyads being particularly peaceful, and
noting some differences in behavior between democratic and autocratic
dyads with respect to alliances and power evaluation.
Beck, King, and Zeng use neural networks to show two distinct low
probability zones, corresponding to high democracy and high autocracy.
Petersen uses a different statistical model and finds that autocratic
peace is not statistically significant, and that the effect attributed
to similarity is mostly driven by the pacifying effect of joint
democracy.
Ray similarly disputes the weight of the argument on logical grounds,
claiming that statistical analysis on "political similarity" uses a main
variable which is an extension of "joint democracy" by linguistic
redefinition, and so it is expected that the war reducing effects are
carried on in the new analysis.
Bennett builds a direct statistical model based on a triadic
classification of states into "democratic", "autocratic" and "mixed". He
finds that autocratic dyads have a 35% reduced chance of going into any
type of armed conflict with respect to a reference mixed dyad.
Democratic dyads have a 55% reduced chance. This effect gets stronger
when looking at more severe conflicts; for wars (more than 1000 battle
deaths), he estimates democratic dyads to have an 82% lower risk than
autocratic dyads. He concludes that autocratic peace exists, but
democratic peace is clearly stronger. However, he finds no relevant
pacifying effect of political similarity, except at the extremes of the
scale.
To summarize a rather complex picture, there are no less than four possible stances on the value of this criticism:
Political similarity, plus some complementary variables,
explains everything. Democratic peace is a statistical artifact.
Henderson subscribes to this view.
Political similarity has a pacifying effect, but democracy makes it stronger. Werner would probably subscribe to this view.
Political similarity in general has little or no effect, except at
the extremes of the democracy-autocracy scale: a democratic peace and an
autocratic peace exist separately, with the first one being stronger,
and may have different explanations. Bennett holds this view, and
Kinsella mentions this as a possibility
Political similarity has little or no effect and there is no
evidence for autocratic peace. Petersen and Ray are among defendants of
this view.
Economic factors
World GDP/capita
1–2003 AD. The increase in the number of democratic nations has
occurred at the same time as the increase in economic wealth.
The capitalist peace, or capitalist peace theory, posits that
according to a given criteria for economic development (capitalism),
developed economies have not engaged in war with each other, and rarely
enter into low-level disputes. These theories have been proposed as an
explanation for the democratic peace by accounting for both democracy
and the peace among democratic nations. The exact nature of the
causality depends upon both the proposed variable and the measure of the
indicator for the concept used.
A majority of researchers on the determinants of democracy agree
that economic development is a primary factor which allows the formation
of a stable and healthy democracy. Thus, some researchers have argued that economic development also plays a factor in the establishment of peace.
Mousseau argues that a culture of contracting in advanced
market-oriented economies may cause both democracy and peace. These
studies indicate that democracy, alone, is an unlikely cause of the
democratic peace. A low level of market-oriented economic development
may hinder development of liberal institutions and values. Hegre and Souva confirmed these expectations.
Mousseau finds that democracy is a significant factor only when both
democracies have levels of economic development well above the global
median. In fact, the poorest 21% of the democracies studied, and the
poorest 4–5% of current democracies, are significantly more likely than other kinds of countries to fight each other.
Mousseau, Hegre, and Oneal confirm that if at least one of the
democracies involved has a very low level of economic development,
democracy is ineffective in preventing war; however, they find that when
also controlling for trade, 91% of all the democratic pairs had high
enough development for the pacifying effect of democracy to be important
during the 1885–1992 period and all in 1992.
The difference in results of these two studies may be due to sampling:
Mousseau's 2005 study observed only neighboring states where poor
countries actually can fight each other. In fact, fully 89% of
militarized conflicts between less developed countries from 1920 and
2000 were among directly contiguous neighbors.
He argues that it is not likely that the results can be explained by
trade: Because developed states have large economies, they do not have
high levels of trade interdependence. In fact, the correlation of developed democracy with trade interdependence is a scant 0.06 (Pearson's r – considered substantively no correlation by statisticians.)
Both World Wars
were fought between countries which can be considered economically
developed. Mousseau argues that both Germany and Japan – like the USSR
during the Cold War and Saudi Arabia today – had state-managed economies
and thus lacked his market norms.
Hegre finds that democracy is correlated with civil peace only for
developed countries, and for countries with high levels of literacy.
Conversely, the risk of civil war decreases with development only for
democratic countries.
Gartzke argues that economic freedom
(a quite different concept from Mousseau's market norms) or financial
dependence explains the developed democratic peace, and these countries
may be weak on these dimensions too. Rummel criticizes Gartzke's methodology and argues that his results are invalid.
Allan Dafoe, John R. Oneal, and Bruce Russett have challenged Gartzke and Mousseau's research.
Several studies find that democracy, more trade causing greater economic interdependence, and membership in more intergovernmental organizations
reduce the risk of war. This is often called the Kantian peace theory
since it is similar to Kant's earlier theory about a perpetual peace; it
is often also called "liberal peace" theory, especially when one
focuses on the effects of trade and democracy. (The theory that free trade can cause peace is quite old and referred to as Cobdenism.)
Many researchers agree that these variables positively affect each
other but each has a separate pacifying effect. For example, in
countries exchanging a substantial amount of trade, economic interest
groups may exist that oppose a reciprocal disruptive war, but in
democracy such groups may have more power, and the political leaders be
more likely to accept their requests.
Weede argues that the pacifying effect of free trade and economic
interdependence may be more important than that of democracy, because
the former affects peace both directly and indirectly, by producing
economic development and ultimately, democracy.
Weede also lists some other authors supporting this view. However, some
recent studies find no effect from trade but only from democracy.
None of the authors listed argues that free trade alone causes
peace. Even so, the issue of whether free trade or democracy is more
important in maintaining peace may have potentially significant
practical consequences, for example on evaluating the effectiveness of
applying economic sanctions and restrictions to autocratic countries.
It was Michael Doyle who reintroduced Kant's three articles into
democratic peace theory. He argued that a pacific union of liberal
states has been growing for the past two centuries. He denies that a
pair of states will be peaceful simply because they are both liberal
democracies; if that were enough, liberal states would not be aggressive
towards weak non-liberal states (as the history of American relations
with Mexico shows they are). Rather, liberal democracy is a necessary
condition for international organization and hospitality (which are
Kant's other two articles)—and all three are sufficient to produce
peace.
Other Kantians have not repeated Doyle's argument that all three in the
triad must be present, instead stating that all three reduce the risk
of war.
Immanuel Wallerstein
has argued that it is the global capitalist system that creates shared
interests among the dominant parties, thus inhibiting potentially
harmful belligerence.
Toni Negri and Michael Hardt
take a similar stance, arguing that the intertwined network of
interests in the global capitalism leads to the decline of individual nation states, and the rise of a global Empire
which has no outside, and no external enemies. As a result, they write,
"The era of imperialist, interimperialist, and anti-imperialist wars is
over. (...) we have entered the era of minor and internal conflicts.
Every imperial war is a civil war, a police action".
Other explanations
Many
studies supporting the theory have controlled for many possible
alternative causes of the peace. Examples of factors controlled for are
geographic distance, geographic contiguity, power status, alliance ties,
militarization, economic wealth and economic growth, power ratio, and
political stability. These studies have often found very different
results depending on methodology and included variables, which has
caused criticism. DPT does not state democracy is the only thing
affecting the risk of military conflict. Many of the mentioned studies
have found that other factors are also important.
Several studies have also controlled for the possibility of
reverse causality from peace to democracy. For example, one study
supports the theory of simultaneous causation, finding that dyads
involved in wars are likely to experience a decrease in joint democracy,
which in turn increases the probability of further war. So they argue
that disputes between democratizing or democratic states should be
resolved externally at a very early stage, in order to stabilize the
system.
Another study finds that peace does not spread democracy, but spreading
democracy is likely to spread peace. A different kind of reverse
causation lies in the suggestion that impending war could destroy or
decrease democracy, because the preparation for war might include
political restrictions, which may be the cause for the findings of
democratic peace.
However, this hypothesis has been statistically tested in a study whose
authors find, depending on the definition of the pre-war period, no
such effect or a very slight one. So, they find this explanation
unlikely. This explanation would predict a monadic effect, although weaker than the dyadic one.
Weart argues that the peacefulness appears and disappears rapidly
when democracy appears and disappears. This in his view makes it
unlikely that variables that change more slowly are the explanation. Weart, however, has been criticized for not offering any quantitative analysis supporting his claims.
Wars tend very strongly to be between neighboring states.
Gleditsch showed that the average distance between democracies is about
8000 miles, the same as the average distance between all states. He
believes that the effect of distance in preventing war, modified by the
democratic peace, explains the incidence of war as fully as it can be
explained.
A 2020 study in International Organization found that it
was not democracy per se that reduces the prospects for conflict, but
whether women's suffrage was ensured. The study argued, "women's more
pacific preferences generate a dyadic democratic peace (i.e., between
democracies), as well as a monadic peace."
Realist explanations
Supporters of realism in international relations
in general argue that not democracy or its absence, but considerations
and evaluations of power, cause peace or war. Specifically, many realist
critics claim that the effect ascribed to democratic, or liberal,
peace, is in fact due to alliance ties between democratic states which
in turn are caused, one way or another, by realist factors.
For example, Farber and Gowa find evidence for peace between
democracies to be statistically significant only in the period from 1945
on, and consider such peace an artifact of the Cold War, when the threat from the communist states forced democracies to ally with one another. Mearsheimer offers a similar analysis of the Anglo-American peace before 1945, caused by the German threat.
Spiro finds several instances of wars between democracies, arguing that
evidence in favor of the theory might be not so vast as other authors
report, and claims that the remaining evidence consists of peace between
allied states with shared objectives. He acknowledges that democratic
states might have a somewhat greater tendency to ally with one another,
and regards this as the only real effect of democratic peace.
Rosato argues that most of the significant evidence for democratic
peace has been observed after World War II; and that it has happened
within a broad alliance, which can be identified with NATO and its
satellite nations, imposed and maintained by American dominance as part
of Pax Americana.
One of the main points in Rosato's argument is that, although never
engaged in open war with another liberal democracy during the Cold War,
the United States intervened openly or covertly in the political affairs
of democratic states several times, for example in the Chilean coup of 1973, the Operation Ajax (1953 coup in Iran) and Operation PBSuccess
(1954 coup in Guatemala); in Rosato's view, these interventions show
the United States' determination to maintain an "imperial peace".
The most direct counter arguments to such criticisms have been
studies finding peace between democracies to be significant even when
controlling for "common interests" as reflected in alliance ties.
Regarding specific issues, Ray objects that explanations based on the
Cold War should predict that the Communist bloc would be at peace within
itself also, but exceptions include the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, the Cambodian-Vietnamese War, and the Sino-Vietnamese War.
Ray also argues that the external threat did not prevent conflicts in
the Western bloc when at least one of the involved states was a
nondemocracy, such as the Turkish Invasion of Cyprus (against Greek Junta supported Cypriot Greeks), the Falklands War, and the Football War.
Also, one study notes that the explanation "goes increasingly stale as
the post-Cold War world accumulates an increasing number of peaceful
dyad-years between democracies". Rosato's argument about American dominance has also been criticized for not giving supporting statistical evidence.
Some realist authors also criticize in detail the explanations
first by supporters of democratic peace, pointing to supposed
inconsistencies or weaknesses.
Rosato criticizes most explanations to how democracy might cause
peace. Arguments based on normative constraints, he argues, are not
consistent with the fact that democracies do go to war no less than
other states, thus violating norms preventing war; for the same reason
he refutes arguments based on the importance of public opinion.
Regarding explanations based on greater accountability of leaders, he
finds that historically autocratic leaders have been removed or punished
more often than democratic leaders when they get involved in costly
wars. Finally, he also criticizes the arguments that democracies treat
each other with trust and respect even during crises; and that democracy
might be slow to mobilize its composite and diverse groups and
opinions, hindering the start of a war, drawing support from other
authors.[7] Another realist, Layne, analyzes the crises and brinkmanship
that took place between non-allied democratic great powers, during the
relatively brief period when such existed. He finds no evidence either
of institutional or cultural constraints against war; indeed, there was
popular sentiment in favor of war on both sides. Instead, in all cases,
one side concluded that it could not afford to risk that war at that
time, and made the necessary concessions.
Rosato's objections have been criticized for claimed logical and
methodological errors, and for being contradicted by existing
statistical research.
Russett replies to Layne by re-examining some of the crises studied in
his article, and reaching different conclusions; Russett argues that
perceptions of democracy prevented escalation, or played a major role in
doing so.
Also, a recent study finds that, while in general the outcome of
international disputes is highly influenced by the contenders' relative
military strength, this is not true if both contenders are democratic
states; in this case the authors find the outcome of the crisis to be
independent of the military capabilities of contenders, which is
contrary to realist expectations.
Finally, both the realist criticisms here described ignore new possible
explanations, like the game-theoretic one discussed below.
Nuclear deterrent
A
different kind of realist criticism stresses the role of nuclear
weapons in maintaining peace. In realist terms, this means that, in the
case of disputes between nuclear powers, respective evaluation of power
might be irrelevant because of Mutual assured destruction preventing both sides from foreseeing what could be reasonably called a "victory". The 1999 Kargil War between India and Pakistan has been cited as a counterexample to this argument, though this was a small, regional conflict and the threat of WMDs being used contributed to its de-escalation.
Some supporters of the democratic peace do not deny that realist factors are also important.
Research supporting the theory has also shown that factors such as
alliance ties and major power status influence interstate conflict
behavior.
In the United States, presidents from both major parties have expressed support for the theory. In his 1994 State of the Union address, then-President Bill Clinton, a member of the Democratic Party,
said: "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". In a 2004 press conference, then-President George W. Bush, a member of the Republican Party,
said: "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."
In a 1999 speech, Chris Patten, the then-European Commissioner
for External Relations, said: "Inevitable because the EU was formed
partly to protect liberal values, so it is hardly surprising that we
should think it appropriate to speak out. But it is also sensible for
strategic reasons. Free societies tend not to fight one another or to be
bad neighbours". The A Secure Europe in a Better World, European Security Strategy states: "The best protection for our security is a world of well-governed democratic states." Tony Blair has also claimed the theory is correct.
As justification for initiating war
Some
fear that the democratic peace theory may be used to justify wars
against nondemocracies in order to bring lasting peace, in a democratic crusade. Woodrow Wilson in 1917 asked Congress to declare war against Imperial Germany, citing Germany's sinking of American ships due to unrestricted submarine warfare and the Zimmermann telegram,
but also stating that "A steadfast concert for peace can never be
maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations" and "The world
must be made safe for democracy." R. J. Rummel was a notable proponent of war for the purpose of spreading democracy, based on this theory.
Some point out that the democratic peace theory has been used to justify the 2003 Iraq War, others argue that this justification was used only after the war had already started.
Furthermore, Weede has argued that the justification is extremely weak,
because forcibly democratizing a country completely surrounded by
non-democracies, most of which are full autocracies, as Iraq was, is at
least as likely to increase the risk of war as it is to decrease it
(some studies show that dyads formed by one democracy and one autocracy
are the most warlike, and several find that the risk of war is greatly
increased in democratizing countries surrounded by nondemocracies).
According to Weede, if the United States and its allies wanted to adopt
a rationale strategy of forced democratization based on democratic
peace, which he still does not recommend, it would be best to start
intervening in countries which border with at least one or two stable
democracies, and expand gradually. Also, research shows that attempts to
create democracies by using external force has often failed. Gleditsch,
Christiansen, and Hegre argue that forced democratization by
interventionism may initially have partial success, but often create an
unstable democratizing country, which can have dangerous consequences in
the long run. Those attempts which had a permanent and stable success, like democratization in Austria, West Germany and Japan after World War II,
mostly involved countries which had an advanced economic and social
structure already, and implied a drastic change of the whole political
culture. Supporting internal democratic movements and using diplomacy
may be far more successful and less costly. Thus, the theory and related
research, if they were correctly understood, may actually be an
argument against a democratic crusade.
Michael Haas
has written perhaps the most trenchant critique of a hidden normative
agenda. Among the points raised: Due to sampling manipulation, the
research creates the impression that democracies can justifiably fight
nondemocracies, snuff out budding democracies, or even impose democracy.
And due to sloppy definitions, there is no concern that democracies
continue undemocratic practices yet remain in the sample as if pristine
democracies.
This criticism is confirmed by David Keen who finds that almost all historical attempts to impose democracy by violent means have failed.
Other factors related to democracies being more peaceful
According to Azar Gat's War in Human Civilization,
there are several related and independent factors that contribute to
democratic societies being more peaceful than other forms of
governments:
Wealth and comfort: Increased prosperity in democratic societies
has been associated with peace because civilians are less willing to
endure hardship of war and military service due to a more luxurious life
at home than in pre-modern times. Increased wealth has worked to
decrease war through comfort.
Metropolitan service society: The majority of army recruits come
from the countryside or factory workers. Many believe that these types
of people are suited for war. But as technology progressed the army
turned more towards advanced services in information that rely more on
computerized data which urbanized people are recruited more for this
service.
Sexual revolution: The availability of sex due to the pill and women
joining the labor market could be another factor that has led to less
enthusiasm for men to go to war. Young men are more reluctant leave
behind the pleasures of life for the rigors and chastity of the army.
Fewer young males: There is greater life expectancy which leads to
fewer young males. Young males are the most aggressive and the ones that
join the army the most. With fewer younger males in developed societies
could help explain more pacificity
Fewer Children per Family (lower fertility rate):
During pre modern times it was always hard for families to lose a child
but in modern times it has become more difficult due to more families
having only one or two children. It has become even harder for parents
to risk the loss of a child in war. However, Gat recognizes that this
argument is a difficult one because during pre modern times the life
expectancy was not high for children and bigger families were necessary.
Women's franchise: Women are less overtly aggressive than men.
Therefore, women are less inclined to serious violence and do not
support it as much as men do. In liberal democracies women have been
able to influence the government by getting elected. Electing more women
could have an effect on whether liberal democracies take a more
aggressive approach on certain issues.
Nuclear weapons: Nuclear weapons could be the reason for not having a
great power war. Many believe that a nuclear war would result in mutually assured destruction
(MAD) which means that both countries involved in a nuclear war have
the ability to strike the other until both sides are wiped out. This
results in countries not wanting to strike the other for fear of being
wiped out.
Related theories
European peace
There is significant debate over whether the lack of any major European general wars since 1945, is due to cooperation and integration of liberal-democratic European states themselves (as in the European Union or Franco-German cooperation),
an enforced peace due to intervention of the Soviet Union and the
United States until 1989 and the United States alone thereafter, or a combination of both.
The debate over this theory was thrust in the public eye, when the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the European Union, for its role in creating peace in Europe.
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