bq. “The absence of war between major established democracies is as close to anything we know to a simple empirical regularity in relations between peoples.”
John Rawls, _The Law of Peoples_, pp. 52–3.
Well, obviously it depends on how much you pack into “major” and “established”, but, since both Russia and Georgia rate as 7, “fully democratic” on the “Polity index”:http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm, there’s at least some case for saying that there’s just been an exception to that lawlike generalization.[fn1]
Also under pressure in the past few days has been the claim that, since the United Nations was established, no member state has invaded another state, taken over the entireity of its territory and annexed it (successfully). The one unsuccessful attempt was Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Happily, it looks as if the Russians aren’t going to take over Georgia, but I guess they now have to be the favourites to be the first power to do this somewhere.[fn2]
1. I seem to remember reading, maybe in something by Michael Mann, that various native American peoples had democratic constitutions, and that wars waged on them by the United States were also counterexamples.
2. Hat-tip to Leif Wenar, who has a paper co-written with Branko Milanovic on the Rawls-Doyle generalization forthcoming in _The Journal of Political Philosopy_ .
{ 75 comments }
Sam 08.12.08 at 11:19 am
According to Freedom House, Russia is not democratic:
Political Rights Score: 6
Civil Liberties Score: 5
Status: Not Free
http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=22&year=2008&country=7475
Matt 08.12.08 at 11:30 am
I think this claim (which of course goes back at least to Kant’s _Perpetual Peace_ has to be taken w/ several qualifications. One thing that’s clearly not ruled out is covert war- US support for the Pinochet coup in Chile would be an example- though how far this goes against Kant’s view, at least, isn’t totally clear since we might think that one reason that the support had to be covert (as opposed to direct military aid, say) was that even the Nixon government thought the people wouldn’t stand for open support w/ direct military action. I’m not sure that’s true but it doesn’t seem obviously false to me.
I’m afraid this might bring us a flood of trolls, too, but if either Russia or Georgia are rated as “fully democratic” than that scale isn’t worth anything. I know less about Georgia but there are obviously some deficits there. But any scale that rates the last several elections in Russia “fully democratic” is worthless. The risk was not really that Russia will fully re-absorb Georgia but that it will turn it into a puppet state that can do nothing w/o explicit support from Moscow. I think that’s still the most likely scenario.
Paul Gowder 08.12.08 at 11:31 am
Let’s face facts: Polity is nonsense. Russia as fully democratic? C’mon.
Chris Bertram 08.12.08 at 11:35 am
#1, 2 Well indeed, I rather agree that this casts pretty serious doubt on the Polity index.
aaron_m 08.12.08 at 11:35 am
aaron_m 08.12.08 at 11:40 am
Ush!
One more try and apologies in advance.
Russia ‘ends Georgia operation’
Dan Butt 08.12.08 at 11:47 am
It might just be worth mentioning some of the subsequent discussion of this claim in The Law of Peoples, lest it be thought that Rawls is placing greater weight upon this claim than is actually the case. He is talking about the stability of a society of democratic peoples, and does accept (following Doyle) that “the idea of democratic peace sometimes fails”. I guess it’s an open question whether we can interpret this “simple empirical fact” as a “lawlike generalization”. The empirical claim he does make on p. 51 is that “Though liberal democratic societies have often engaged in war against nondemocratic states, since 1800 firmly established liberal societies have not fought one another.” I’d struggle to maintain that both Russia and Georgia are “firmly established liberal societies”. Anyway, he goes on say: “…given the great shortcomings of actual, allegedly constitutional democratic regimes, it is no surprise that they should often intervene in weaker countries, including those exhibiting some aspects of a democracy, or even that they should engage in war for expansionist reasons”. He then gives examples of recent such interventions – primarily, it should be noted, covert, regime-overturning interventions, which are justified in public in terms of national security, but which may in fact be carried out “by a government prompted by monopolistic and oligarchic interests”, and thus potentially motivated “by economic interests” behind the scenes.
His examples are the actions of the US in relation to Allende in Chile, Arbenz in Guatemala, Mossadegh in Iran and “some would say” the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. (p. 53) He also mentions historical conflicts between imperial powers in the 18th and 19th centuries. He notes that such polities had shortcomings in terms of their being constitutional democracies, and so concludes:
“Thus, whether Kant’s hypothesis of a foedus pacificum is met depends on how far the conditions of a family of constitutional regimes attain the ideal of such regimes with their supporting elements. If the hypothesis is correct, armed conflict between democratic peoples will tend to disappear as they approach that ideal, and they will engage in war only as allies in self-defense against outlaw states.” (p. 54)
So, to see the current conflict as a challenge to the argument of The Law of Peoples (not that I’m saying that this is what Chris is saying!) one would both have to assess the extent to which the protagonists approach the ideal of constitutional regimes (pretty dubious, imho) and assess the extent to which one counter-example can refute what is explicitly presented as a hypothesis. I’ll be very interested to see the Milanovic-Wenar paper.
Doug M. 08.12.08 at 11:49 am
Russia’s nothing approaching a democracy, and any analysis that claims otherwise is seriously flawed.
Georgia… hum. They’ve had a total of three Presidents since independence. The first was overthrown in a coup after six months; the second ran the country for a dozen years, then was also overthrown in a coup.
The third, current President… well, his administration is probably the most democratic and liberal Georgia has yet had, but that’s not setting the bar too high. It’s less than a year (November ’07) since the government sent police into the streets to beat peaceful protesters. The justice system is notoriously corrupt, and torture of prisoners is commonplace — HRW sent Saakashvili a letter on this last year. The last election was not a Soviet-style fake — there was real opposition, and most of the voting was clean-ish — but it wasn’t Sweden either; the government totally dominated the newspapers and the airwaves, and there was never any question that Saakashvili would win in the first round.
So, Georgia, kinda sorta; maybe; Russia, definitely not.
Doug M.
Jeff 08.12.08 at 12:05 pm
1. The “Rawls-Doyle” generalization? Nonsense. With a nod to Kant, Rummel is usually cited as the seminal modern effort to explore the hypothesis. Doyle’s research popularized the idea, Bruce Russett and his co-authors found robust empirical support for it. Rawls is a bit player at best.
2. The quote you cite is just a paraphrasing of the famous quote from Jack Levy (1989) that the “democratic peace” is the closest we have to an empirical law in IR. I wouldn’t trust Rawls’s mastery of the empirical IR literature, but Levy knows his stuff.
3. The data are very noisy (nobody thinks Polity is a perfect measure of democracy). The theoretical claims are probabilistic (nobody thinks war between democracies is logically impossible, just highly unlikely). This is not the first exception to the rule, or at least not the first debatable case. But that doesn’t invalidate the generalization: the incidence of war between democracies is so low that we have not yet found any satisfactory explanation that something other than their joint democracy can explain the pattern.
Brett Bellmore 08.12.08 at 12:17 pm
Yeah, the notion that Russia is meaningfully democratic is nonsense on stilts. They hold elections, that’s all. But meaningful democracy requires a free press, and an opposition that’s not afraid of being killed, both lacking in Putin’s Russia.
dsquared 08.12.08 at 12:18 pm
They also both have McDonalds’ IIRC.
Mordaunt 08.12.08 at 12:19 pm
The UK and, IIRC, the US were at war with democratic Finland during WWII. And, given that six points makes you a democracy then Israel vs. Lebanon in 2006 was a war between democracies, according to Polity.
I think #1 makes a good point. Democratic states support other democracies because it is largely in their economic and political interests to do so. When it is not they support autocracies as the instances of Chile and Guatemala make explicitly clear. If you ever have a scenario with the Shirley Williams Party For Peace And Niceness running the country with the government following policies that adversely affected US economic and geostrategic interests then you could expect to see the CIA persuading the Chief of the General Staff to step forward as the saviour of the nation or bankrolling the BNP.
richard 08.12.08 at 12:31 pm
I was going to make some snarky comment about not counting puppet governments here but I see my work has already been done. Nobody’s mentioned US/Iraq, I see: do we believe the Iraqi government is not a puppet/sham/shadow play waiting for US forces to withdraw and leave it crumpled on the floor?
Guano 08.12.08 at 12:51 pm
Another favourite foreign policy factoid (especially in the USA) is that democratic countries will tend to be friendly to the USA. Even if this is true most of time, what about the cases when it isn’t true? The belief in this factoid leaves the USA unprepared for those occasions when the majority of people in a country prefer a government that keeps its distance from the USA. The tendency is then to perceive such a government as undemocratic because it doesn’t fit into the supposed rule!
Until a few years ago the majority of democracies were in western Europe. These nations had decided to avoid conflict amongst themselves because of the experiences of two world wars. They were also democracies. It is dangerous to conclude from this that spreading democracy is going to create peace, because
– many of the new democracies are low intensity democracies of one kind or another
– we don’t know how well they can deal with the various challenges that they confront. It is quite possible that two peoples will vote to settle their differences peacefully, but it is also conceivable that two peoples dislike each other so intensely that they will vote for governments that will avoid peaceful resolution of conflicts.
richard 08.12.08 at 12:53 pm
isn’t there also a strong tendency to consider a democracy that gets involved in a war of agression to be not so democratic after all? Are we seeing flexible perceptual categories, rather than a theory with predictive power?
Dave 08.12.08 at 1:17 pm
Much of this confusion seems to result from conflating the mechanism “democracy” with the value-set “liberal, pluralistic, and inclined to seek peaceful solutions to political problems”, when in fact there is little evidence for more than an occasional coincidence between them. The “western democracies” were fortunate in confronting “undemocratic” states through the second half of the C20, as it allowed them to run this argument whenever it suited them, while also fighting a long series of wars.
Hidari 08.12.08 at 2:31 pm
I thought this link
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/demowar.htm
put this myth to rest once and for all?
Basic money shots:
‘ Right now, believers in the Democratic Peace Theory count Russia and Ukraine as two of the world many democracies at peace with each other, but if these two countries went to war with each other, the DPTists would suddenly find all the anti-democratic features of these regimes to be extremely significant. In fact, I suspect that even if the United States invaded Canada tomorrow, the DPTists would be able to find some reason to call one or both non-democratic, such as the Guantanamo Bay prison and the irregularities of the 2000 Election.’
‘Although there is no undisputed case of two democracies at war, the evidence certainly casts doubt on the thesis. In fact, the thesis is not nearly as strong as the statement that no two countries with a McDonald’s Restaurant have ever gone to war with one another, so why do you never hear distinguished international diplomats expound on the need to sell more beef patties in the world?’ (Although as Dsquared points out, this is another factoid that has probably now bit the dust).
See also http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_328.html.
Again, money shot;
‘One can easily make the case that what prevents war between democracies is not their liberal scruples but their wealth, coupled with the recognition that war would mean economic ruin. If we look down the list of wars over the last 50 years we see that in almost all cases one or both of the belligerents was poor. We now have a proliferation of poor democracies in the wake of communism’s collapse. Will they refrain from attacking one another, as their authoritarian or totalitarian predecessors did not? ‘
Fyodor 08.12.08 at 2:40 pm
The idea that Russia is democratic is blatantly absurd. I spent a month in St Petersburg in May and could not find a single person who had voted in the Presidential elections. Most people said there was no point, given the lack of opposition, others spoiled their ballots. There was also a great deal of intimidation of state workers, especially teachers, to make them vote for United Russia. There is one single free and independent media outlet: the Ekho Moskvy radio program.
pär 08.12.08 at 2:49 pm
Isnt it better to call Russia a hybrid regime?
engels 08.12.08 at 2:51 pm
Ah, but has there ever been a war between two countries with a Burger King?
Justin 08.12.08 at 3:11 pm
Presumably the native Americans are excluded based on Eddie Izzard’s “No flag, no country” principle.
Hidari 08.12.08 at 3:29 pm
‘Ah, but has there ever been a war between two countries with a Burger King?’
Given that the DPT theory, when broken down, is really a statement that ‘rich, powerful countries tend not to pick fights with other rich powerful countries’ I suppose the real test is: Has war ever broken out between two states with Harvey Nicks?
burritoboy 08.12.08 at 3:34 pm
What about:
1. Great Britain and France’s long conflict during the French Revolutionary Wars? If you’re asserting that Great Britain wasn’t a democracy (at least, within the context of the time) in 1793, then there were probably NO democracies whatsoever in the world at that time, except perhaps the US and France – who additionally also had a short and small conflict between each other during this period. (In that case, the historical experience of democracy is so very limited, the factoid is ludicrous – there were then probably no democracies even in Western Europe until the 1870s or 1860s).
2. the United States of America versus the Confederate States of America. (It’s true the CSA was a new creation, however, the constituent states of the CSA had been democratic republics for just as long as the constituent portions of the USA).
3. the nearly constant medieval wars between the republics of Florence, Genoa and Pisa
4. War of 1812 (war between UK and US)
stefan 08.12.08 at 3:35 pm
One side of a war is often determined ex post not to have been a democracy. WWI is one example of this, with Germany ex post being read out of the club of democracies, whereas educated US and British opinion previously regarded Germany as closer to American and British political culture — which also meant ‘more truly democratic’ — than France.
See Ido Oren, “The Subjectivity of the ‘Democratic’ Peace: Changing U.S. Perceptions of Imperial Germany,” International Security, Vol. 20, no. 2 (Fall 1995)
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/oren.htm
Mark 08.12.08 at 3:37 pm
In addition to some of the points above it may also be useful to consider Mansfield and Snyder’s addendum to the Democratic Peace hypothesis – essentially tat emerging democracies may in fact be more war prone than other states. For those with access to Foreign Affairs here’s one version of their argument http://www.foreignaffairs.org/19950501faessay5039/edward-mansfield-jack-snyder/democratization-and-war.html
John 08.12.08 at 4:07 pm
What about the 1947 Indo-Pakistani War? The UK and the dominions declared war on Finland in 1941, and Finland was certainly a democracy. Some of the wars of the early 20th century – like Italy’s war with Turkey from 1911 to 1912, or the Second Balkan War of 1913, could also be considered wars between democracies, depending on how you define democracies. During the revolutionary year of 1848, a briefly democratic Austria made war on the briefly democratic Italian states. Spain was a constitutional monarchy in 1898, and the prime minister during the Spanish-American War was a liberal. Although Mexico was under military government when the Mexican-American war actually broke out, a vaguely democratic government had been overthrown only a few months before, and certainly whatever government Mexico would have had in 1846 would have ended up in a war with the United States.
Of course, virtually all of these examples can be derided by saying that one of the sides was “not democratic enough” but that basically robs the thing of any explanatory power.
Matt Steinglass 08.12.08 at 4:58 pm
since both Russia and Georgia rate as 7, “fully democratic†on the Polity index, there’s at least some case for saying that there’s just been an exception to that lawlike generalization. – Chris
It’s just an exception that proves the rule! Same as all those other exceptions. They always prove the rule.
Roy Belmont 08.12.08 at 5:39 pm
The US is a democracy in which the 2006 national elections clearly expressed the will of the people. To end the occupation of Iraq.
The will of the people being the essence of democratic rule.
Israel is a democracy in which 20% of its citizens are not citizens. It’s an ethnic democracy, practically an oxymoron.
Both Israel and the US are heavily involved in Georgia, because of the oil under the Caspian Sea, not democracy.
Saakasvili isn’t running things there and hasn’t been from the get.
It’s not an isolated, or isolatable event, it’s part of a series that heads directly toward armed confrontation with Iran and Russia, the goal being domination of the last large oil reserve on the planet.
It’s not about Georgia and Russia, and it’s not about democracy.
It’s about Russia and the US and Israel, and it’s about oil and natural gas.
Dave 08.12.08 at 5:44 pm
OK, so Israel is, in its infinite cunning and malice, engineering a war with probably the only other power on the planet ruthlessly nuts enough to actually order nuclear strikes? Is there anything you don’t believe?
RCMoya 08.12.08 at 6:04 pm
I’ve always thought DPT to be nonsense. It was rammed into the back of my head by so many profs at Dartmouth, and none of them could make them stick.
In a world where democracy precisely correlates with a liberal economy, then maybe there can be something to it. Why? Because the liberal economic aspect of the equation makes it more appealing for democracies not to fight than to do so. Insofar as national interests align, I agree, democracies will not fight. It wasn’t in US interests to overthrow dictatorships in South America, because they provided economic incentives as well as geopolitical cover (i.e. don’t support the USSR, and you’ll have us on your side.)
That the United States deposed régimes left, right and centre for decades–many of them being democratic régimes–further illustrates the weakness of the argument. Have democracies gone to war? Why, of course not, if you’re only talking about Western Europe and English-speaking (tip of the hat to you too, Québec) North America. And even there the truth is more subtle: what about ‘pro-democracy’ efforts in the US to subvert communist influence in Italy and elsewhere? Or intelligence analyses aganosing over what to do if a NATO state elected a communist government. (Which poses a theoretical dilemma, I think: what happens when democratic states elect a government, and perhaps through referenda support otherwise non-democratic/illiberal agenda? Something to think about.) Insofar as elite interests between democracies have aligned, damn the democratic vote. You can see no further than to Bolivia and Venezuela (the latter a ‘partially free’ state) to see that’s the case.
I repeat: where states’ interests align, democracies will get along better; where they don’t, it’s not necessarily the case; and where interests don’t align with democratic results, all hell breaks loose.
Doug 08.12.08 at 6:10 pm
In addition to democracy, perhaps we should question the meaning of war and state? Is the war on drugs a war? What about the war on Christmas? Do states require both empirical and judical sovereignty to qualify as states? Instead of crude, social facts – perhaps we’re better off thinking in terms of interpretations and making explicit the political biases which ground competing views .
RCMoya 08.12.08 at 6:17 pm
‘Has war ever broken out between two states with Harvey Nicks?
Hidari, that is quality.
Punditus Maximus 08.12.08 at 6:38 pm
The Boer War is the classic example of a total war between two democratic countries.
Roy Belmont 08.12.08 at 6:57 pm
Dave –
I didn’t say the things you try to attribute to me, or even imply them.
“…a series that heads directly toward armed confrontation with…”
is not the equivalent of
“…in its infinite cunning and malice, engineering a war with…”.
That it’s headed there doesn’t automatically mean there’s intent.
The world was headed toward global warming back in the 1980’s. People pointed that out, and they pointed to the main actors causing it, but there was never any question of overt intent.
.Sure as hell we headed right toward it. Unintentionally, which doesn’t mean much in the long run, when it comes to catastrophe.
There may be intent behind the steady draw-up toward confrontation with Iran, with Russia as Iran’s main ally, there may be hubris, there may be an irrational conviction that it won’t go there. Or it may be more a question of arrogant selfishness and myopia
Trying to turn what I said into an anti-Semitic slur is a washed-out gambit, it’s not really that effective anymore.
Any idea how many Israeli ex-military were in Georgia at the start of festivities? What their roles were?
Are you aware that some of them were there as advisers?
The Israeli military is universally regarded as stunningly efficient and sophisticated, giving their tactical advice considerable stature.
How much of the Georgian military’s weaponry is Israeli mfg.?
Are you working with the fact that the Georgian Defense minister is an ex-Israeli?
Can you honestly say that that has no significance?
Israeli news, mainstream prominent respected news journals like Ynet and Arutz Sheva, say it has.
That’s clear in the links I dropped above.
These are not incidental aspects of what happened and they’re not matters of belief, they’re facts.
What I do believe is that it’s relatively easy now for less-informed people to see the Georgia/Ossetia conflict, like Iraq, as really about oil, and that the US is playing a significant but pretty much invisible part in it, unlike in Iraq. This is true, but incomplete, like a lot of people’s view of what happened in Iraq.
You guys aren’t even talking about the US and Caspian oil, just all this abstract safe democracy crap. Democracy has nothing to do with any of it.
Buying into misleading propaganda is forgivable considering the parlous state of things, spreading it less so.
chris y 08.12.08 at 7:04 pm
‘rich, powerful countries tend not to pick fights with other rich powerful countries’
Recently. Rich, powerful Britain and rich, powerful France spent the greater part of the long 18th century knocking lumps off each other. Other examples could be brought in for any period back to the rich powerful Romans and the rich powerful Parthians, before which nobody was that rich anyway.
This is a rule that has held true for the blink of an historical eye, even if we discount rich powerful Germany and the rich, powerful British empire last century.
Dave 08.12.08 at 7:21 pm
Dear Roy,
I quote you in extenso:
“Saakasvili isn’t running things there and hasn’t been from the get.
It’s not an isolated, or isolatable event, it’s part of a series that heads directly toward armed confrontation with Iran and Russia, the goal being domination of the last large oil reserve on the planet.
It’s not about Georgia and Russia, and it’s not about democracy.
It’s about Russia and the US and Israel, and it’s about oil and natural gas.”
So, 1, the nominal head of state is not “running things there”; 2, a “series” is moving “directly toward armed confrontation”; 3, “domination of the last large oil reserve” is the “goal”; 4, “it” is “about Russia and the US and Israel”.
How exactly is that different from saying that these external forces, on whose Israeliness you continue to focus in post 34, are engineering a war? How else, in your mind, are they to “dominate” except by the military force you yourself say they have deployed?
Dave 08.12.08 at 7:28 pm
@35: the qualifier has to be “rich, powerful countries that depend for their prosperity on trade with other sovereign nations, have no major territorial ambitions, and have electorates who are extremely sensitive to increased government expenditure on anything except themselves”. Or “fat, decadent Westerners”, as I’m sure many people elsewhere see them. Except, of course, that that describes the USA, which has been at war with, gosh, it sometimes seems like *everybody*…
Anyway, haven’t we already comprehensively proved that the alleged original “insight” was always bullshit?
Matthew Shugart 08.12.08 at 7:48 pm
As someone who actually uses Polity in some of his research, I should like to note that one who uses the data has to be aware of more than just whether a country is above or below some threshold on one of the variables in the data set.
From the codebook: “Democracy is conceived as three essential, interdependent elements.” Each of these has its own variable in the data set, from which the composite 10-point scale is derived. And then there is a separate “Autocracy” variable, as well as “Durability,” or the number of years since the most recent regime change (as defined by various other variables).
Russia scores 7 out of 10 on the democracy index, 0 on autocracy, and only 2 on durability (I think the spreadsheet I have on my computer is through 2003).
It might be just a stretch to claim that Polity rates Russia as a “full” or “established” democracy.
As for Gerogia: I have 5 for democracy, but apparently it has improved a bit recently. But also only 2 on durability.
So it might be a stretch to call Georgia a “major established democracy’ as well. Or even a minor one.
Roy Belmont 08.12.08 at 9:08 pm
Dave-
Russia and Iran and the US and Israel. Hasteful omission on my part.
The answer to your interrogative’s in the analogy of global warming.
“Engineering” a war is patently intent.
What you accuse me of having said.
Causing a war through myopia and greed isn’t necessarily intent.
What I actually said.
That’s about as clear an answer as I can give to your extensive question, which seems more an exercise in redirection and defensiveness than straightforward interest in the subject.
Pointing out here that you insulted me at the get. Whereas I’m still answering you with respect.
So again, are you aware or not that the Georgian Defense Minister is an ex-Israeli and that there were, by Israeli account, thousands of Israelis in Georgia?
Many of them as military advisers and trainers.
Or does that seem immaterial to what you’re objecting to in what I said?
If it’s not immaterial why won’t you reply to it?
noen 08.12.08 at 9:11 pm
The conflict in Georgia does illustrate the fallacy that democratic states would not go to war even if they are not exactly everyone’s idea of a democracy. Oil is going away and nations will fight over our dwindling reserves regardless of who they are. This is nothing, wait until we have the water wars.
Patrick S. O'Donnell 08.12.08 at 9:45 pm
Doesn’t this argument in our time go back to the inimitable economist Kenneth Boulding? He argued in the 1970s that “stable peace” characterized the relationship between “advanced” industrialized nations of North America, Western Europe, and the Pacific Rim. This, after Dan Butt (#7), would seem to be closer to what Rawls had in mind.
peter 08.12.08 at 10:16 pm
#33: “The Boer War is the classic example of a total war between two democratic countries.”
The main spark for the Second Boer War was the denial of equal voting rights to English-speaking residents by the Afrikaner Government of the Transvaal (which also denied all voting rights, inter alia, to blacks and women). So to call the Transvaal a democracy is either nonsense or white-supremacist propaganda.
Ivan 08.12.08 at 11:05 pm
John Rawls:
I’d say that to this statement is true only as far as one is willing to engineer the definitions of “major”, “established”, and “democracy” so as to get the desired result. Obviously, any armed conflict will include at least some nasty events – war atrocities as well as internal suppression of dissent – that can be conveniently used to deny that a nation whose regime is involved in them can be called a real “democracy”. Furthermore, states that are easily drawn into wars tend to get defeated after a while, or at least get to the point of economic collapse and political instability due to the costs of wars, which may easily cost them the “major” status, and which may also result in upheavals after which their political system can no longer be described as long-established. Thus, major offenders are likely to automatically disqualify themselves from the club of “major established democracies”, so even if the above claim is mostly true, the causation most likely runs in a different direction from the one that its proponents would like.
In any case, one must be completely blind to the history of the 20th century to claim that democracy is somehow a guarantee of peace by itself. Just look at the 1990s conflicts in former Yugoslavia in. You can accuse the regimes on all sides of these conflicts of all sorts of nasty things, but one thing you can’t deny is that they all came to power with open support of a strong majority expressed in free and fair elections with universal suffrage in 1990 and 1991. Of course, they were by no means “major” or “established” at the time, and many of their actions would make people question whether they qualify as “democratic” in the popular meaning of the term, but that’s just another example of how the above claim is true only because it excludes inconvenient examples by a carefully contrived definition.
joel hanes 08.12.08 at 11:29 pm
I seem to remember reading … that various native American peoples had democratic constitutions
Probably refers to the Haudenosaunee, or “Iroquois Nations”.
According to Wikipedia:
Ian Whitchurch 08.13.08 at 2:34 am
World War One is another obvious example, as the unpleasantness within the SPD on the matter of War Credits shows.
Rich Booher 08.13.08 at 2:45 am
“I seem to remember reading … that various native American peoples had democratic constitutions”
This would accurately refer to the Haudenosonee, as Joel above implied.
The Haudenosonee was even one model of a democratic organization studied by the founders of the United States. This has been recognized by a congressional declaration recently, and is also suggested by the large number of Native American busts and figures inside many of the major government buildings in DC.
The Haudenosaunee are still fighting in US courts to have treties guaranteeing them sovereign control of their land to be recognized. See http://www.onondaganation.org for more information about the traditional Haudenosonee form of government, as well as their present struggle for justice.
Jason K 08.13.08 at 3:25 am
#42 “The main spark for the Second Boer War was the denial of equal voting rights to English-speaking residents by the Afrikaner Government of the Transvaal (which also denied all voting rights, inter alia, to blacks and women). So to call the Transvaal a democracy is either nonsense or white-supremacist propaganda.”
Once again Democratic Peace Theory is propped up by an ever fluid definition of democracy. By this argument the U.S.A. did not become a democracy until 1965 when the voting rights act was passed.
The more you constrain the definition of a democracy, the less useful your theory becomes. When you set the bar for being democratic this high then it’s not surprising that the hand full of countries that meet the definition have not come in to conflict yet. Also since these “democracies” by your definition have only existed for a few decades out of thousands of years of recorded human history, it might be a bit premature to declare they don’t go to war with each other.
Matt McIrvin 08.13.08 at 3:33 am
I second Hidari’s recommendation of the Matt White article, which pretty much takes apart the Democratic Peace claim, mostly by pointing out that the available sample size is smaller than you think (because true international wars are rare, and democracies are only recently common) and the definitions keep conveniently shifting.
However, it does occur to me that his analysis reveals a way in which there might be some truth to the idea. White says that the vast majority of wars are civil wars (what we think of as international wars are often really civil wars with international involvement). If democracies are somewhat more stable than other types of state, that might have some preventive effect against civil wars.
Not an absolute one, obviously, since the case currently in question is arguably a civil-war-with-international-involvement in a democratic country. And one could also argue that the causality really goes the other way–if a country with a civil war going on is by definition not a stable democracy.
Doctor Slack 08.13.08 at 4:09 am
The “democracies never fight each other” meme is easy to defend. Just declare it and then proceed to move the goalposts around as to what constitutes “democracy” so that it never applies to two warring countries at any given time. Of course, this manner of defending it also makes it a lot less interesting.
Fr. 08.13.08 at 8:54 am
Comment 43:
Well, the Polity-engineered version of “democracy†is nonsensical.
Alex 08.13.08 at 8:58 am
The UK and the dominions declared war on Finland in 1941, and Finland was certainly a democracy.
Define “war”. I’m only aware of one actual engagement; the Fleet Air Arm dropped a couple of bombs on Petsamo days after the declaration. I suspect the UK and the Dominions had far bigger and nastier fish to fry, and ones that were a lot easier to get into the pan. This one is so much a trivia quiz corner case that it probably doesn’t help.
India and Pakistan have teed off on each other on a number of occasions; as well as 1947, when both were democratic, there were 1965 and 1971, during both of which Pakistan was a dictatorship, but there was also 1999, during which Pakistan was a democracy (of sorts), although the future military dictator started the war without telling the constituted authority.
ajay 08.13.08 at 9:21 am
Once again Democratic Peace Theory is propped up by an ever fluid definition of democracy. By this argument the U.S.A. did not become a democracy until 1965 when the voting rights act was passed.
Sounds fair enough to me. South Africa is generally acknowledged to have had its first democratic elections in 1994. I’d say 1968 (or 66 for Congress) is the right date for the US.
jpeeps 08.13.08 at 9:24 am
Don’t forget the Cod Wars.
Finnsense 08.13.08 at 11:32 am
“The UK and the dominions declared war on Finland in 1941, and Finland was certainly a democracy. ”
I believe we are still at war with the UK as no truce was ever signed. We did not fight you though. Indeed, having fought the Russians and then the Germans, it was probably just as well.
Rob 08.13.08 at 1:11 pm
My understanding is that the definition of war at stake in the Democratic Peace Theory is a conflict between two recognised belligerents involving 100 battle causalties, presumably over a limited time (I may be out by an order of magnitude, but it’s definitely either 100 or 1000). So I don’t the the (democratic) Allies vs. Finland counts, since there weren’t 100 battle causalties. The reason for this definition presumably is to avoid giving quasi-accidental border skirmishes where some over-enthusiastic men at the frontline kill each other without proper authorisation the status of full-blown war.
I always find it quite difficult to understand why a whole load of apparently left-wing people are deeply hostile to the thought that democracies are, amongst themselves at least, more peaceful than autocracies, especially when the debate in the relevant academic discipline seems to not be over whether it’s true that democracies don’t go to war with one another, but why they don’t. Its appropriation by the neo-cons doesn’t invalidate the claim of itself, or impugn the thought that, in lots of ways, it’s quite a cheering thing to learn about the world that democracies don’t go to war with each other.
RCMoya 08.13.08 at 1:41 pm
Simple: the historical record is far too patchy, if not outright contradictory, of DPT. Many of us are well aware of the most egregious efforts to undermine democracy by other democracies, and many others are rather ill-disposed to the idea of creating artificial and arbitrary threshholds (100 dead, or 1000? does it matter?) to make the theory–and the discipline–more ‘scientific’.
I would add, for myself, that there are plausible explanations for why the ‘established’ democracies (whatever that means) haven’t gone to war–some mentioned above, some not. And yes, in putting so much weight on this silly theory, too many academics, policy-makers and (some) voters have defended the most ridiculous, socioculturally vacuous policies.
Guano 08.13.08 at 2:32 pm
One of the problems of discussing issues that have political implications is that, sooner or later, somebody will accuse you of being hostile to somebody or something. I’m not hostile to the Democratic Peace theory, Rob: I question it. Questioning is something different from hostility. Scientists question each others’ theories all the time and in fact it is a part of the scientific process, but we don’t say that they’re hostile to each other. The Democratic Peace theory is very comforting, and therein lies its danger. It is a simplification but there is a risk that politicians will make the wrong decisions because they don’t understand th elimits to the theory.
I work in Africa in areas related to democratisation and conflict management. There are many cases where two countries are potentially in conflict with each other, for example because they are separated by a colonial era boundary that doesn’t reflect local reality. It would be comforting to think that this source of conflict would disappear when both of these countries become democracies. I doubt it because
– democracies are still weak in Africa and I doubt whether the mechanisms exist for the people to prevent the political class from going to war with a neighbouring country
– the potential causes of conflict still exist: they don’t go away when the countries involved start having elections.
I’m all in favour of democratisation, as long as we understand that it is a long-term process that involves building accountable institutions and as long as we remember that democratisation doesn’t substitute for conflict-resolution.
engels 08.13.08 at 2:48 pm
It is natural for people to become hostile to ideas that have been pressed into service as philosophical rationales for pernicious real world projects, even if such sentiments carry no weight in an academic debate. (A doubtful proposition as the fortunes of Marxism within academic political philosophy since 1989 illustrates.)
The hypothesis is not well-supported, as discussed above. If the terms are defined broadly there are many historical counterexamples. If they are defined strictly it draws all its support from the situation of US-allied liberal democracies during the Cold War and the brief period following.
Many on the left are suspicious of efforts to draw a clear and sharp boundary between the nature, behaviour and moral status of modern Western liberal democracies and the rest of the world, including our own part of the world in the not too distant part, and are well aware of the ideological purposes to which such ‘block thinking’ can easily be put. They also get irritated by the repeated, unqualified reference to country like the UK (as it is) as a ‘democracy’, as if it is not open to dispute that what ‘democracy’ means is having the opportunity (not even exercised by almost half of us) to tick a box every four years in order to pick our preferred team of post-Thatcherite technocrats.
Doug 08.13.08 at 3:06 pm
“I always find it quite difficult to understand why a whole load of apparently left-wing people are deeply hostile to the thought that democracies are, amongst themselves at least, more peaceful than autocracies, especially when the debate in the relevant academic discipline seems to not be over whether it’s true that democracies don’t go to war with one another, but why they don’t. ” (55)
As a liberal, my ‘uncomfortableness’ (rather than ‘hostility’) with DPT is not the deduction that democracy is intrinsically good in some sort of an empirical, social-fact way. Rather, it stems from the opinion that democracy’s merit can’t be extracted from its origins, its evolution, nor the institutional constraints designed to contain antimajoritarian politics. Hence, DPT does not appear to possess value apart from the discourses from which it is referenced.
I presume my problem stems from the idea that democracy is a contested concept. It cannot be described in a meaningful sense without importing normative value. Since DPT tends to avoid explicit engagement on embedded normativity – DPT discourse in isolation makes me uncomfortable.
Dave 08.13.08 at 3:09 pm
“…our preferred team of post-Thatcherite technocrats.”
Yeah, but any citizen is free to stand, and any citizen is free to vote for anyone who stands. [Except, of course, for the Haven’t-Got-A-Pot-To-Piss-In Party, who couldn’t raise the deposit.] And whoever wins, gets to be the government.
By that token, the UK is emphatically more of a democracy than anywhere that the above facts don’t apply. Just because you’d prefer a different socio/econo-cultural mood to prevail amongst the electorate doesn’t make their decisions undemocratic.
Critiques of western democracies which focus on the undesirable [to the critic] consequences of formally free elections have a nasty habit of sounding like one would prefer it if people were obliged to vote differently…
Democracy, once again, is a mechanism. Stop using it as a value-judgment, and we can all say what we mean about how we’d prefer people to think and behave.
engels 08.13.08 at 3:44 pm
Dave – How is that a response to anything I wrote, and in particular to the phrase you quoted? You just seem, as on previous occasions, to imputing all kinds of weird views to me that I haven’t advanced.
Other than that, I think I have said before that I am not interested in arguing with you. You rarely seem to do much more than assert your opinion in a dogmatic and vitriolic way, which too often imo borders on verbal abuse. There are more pleasant ways for me to spend my time.
Dave 08.13.08 at 3:57 pm
engels, like I give a shit what you think.
You said “as if it is not open to dispute that what ‘democracy’ means is having the opportunity (not even exercised by almost half of us) to tick a box every four years in order to pick our preferred team of post-Thatcherite technocrats.”
I said
“Critiques of western democracies which focus on the undesirable [to the critic] consequences of formally free elections have a nasty habit of sounding like one would prefer it if people were obliged to vote differently… Democracy, once again, is a mechanism. Stop using it as a value-judgment, and we can all say what we mean about how we’d prefer people to think and behave.”
On the planet I inhabit, that’s a direct response.
engels 08.13.08 at 4:16 pm
I don’t expect you to ‘give a shit what [I] think’. I’m just politely requesting that since you evidently don’t, you find other people to talk to.
c.l. ball 08.13.08 at 7:15 pm
Having worked with Polity data — thought not w/ Policy 4 — the dataset was never designed to measure “democracy.” It was designed to measure state authority. Being the only available dataset on domestic political authority to cover the 19th century, it was employed by democratic peace researchers along with Correlates of War (COW) to capture “democratic peace” effects. Freedom House data only goes back to the late ’70s and so was worthless for comparison with COW. For a good run-down of Polity, see Gleditsch, Kristian S. and Michael D. Ward. 1997. “Double Take: A Re-examination of Democracy and Autocracy in Modern Polities.” _Journal of Conflict Resolution_ 41 (June):361-382.
roy belmont 08.13.08 at 11:43 pm
There’s an assumption that democracy can only exist where the one-citizen one-vote template is in place.
But what “democracy” means is rule by the demos, the people. One-citizen one-vote is one way to get the people’s will in tangible form, but it can easily be the case that the will of the people can be made tangible through political leaders who are dedicated to that, who operate within and with serious regard to the will of the people.
They may assume office through the violence of revolution, without any legitimizing forms like elections etc., yet once there be even more responsive to the people’s needs and desires than elected officials elsewhere. This happens.
It’s sacrilege for the voting is everything crowd, but the primary flaw with that crowd, and it’s a flaw that’s been exploited to maximum return in the US, is once you gain control of opinion-forming mechanisms like media outlets, and have combined that with a socius that interacts almost exclusively by proxy through that same controlling media, you can dial the will of the people right into your own pocket any time you want.
Thus discounting the “will of the people” virtually in its entirety, while giving a democratic legitimacy to what is in actual fact nothing more than oligarchy and plutocracy.
So that concerning events like the recent slaughter in South Ossetia by the Georgian military, and the subsequent invasion of Georgia by Russia, the will of the people in the US can be counted on to be decisively pro-Georgian and anti-Russian. Hi Dave.
Even though if the people of the US, decent folks all in all, knew what had really happened, their sympathies would be with the South Ossetians first, the Russians second, Georgian civilians third, and the supposedly democratic Georgian government and its “advisers” dead last.
Matt McIrvin 08.14.08 at 2:07 am
I always find it quite difficult to understand why a whole load of apparently left-wing people are deeply hostile to the thought that democracies are, amongst themselves at least, more peaceful than autocracies
I endeavor to be hostile to ideas that aren’t true. I was sympathetic to this idea when I thought there was good evidence for it.
abb1 08.14.08 at 1:32 pm
There was a Soviet joke that goes something like this: there will be no war, but there will be such a struggle for peace that everything will be laid in ruins.
ogmb 08.14.08 at 2:34 pm
In Soviet Russia, peace struggles YOU!
Guy 08.14.08 at 8:46 pm
How about the United States and Britan vs. democratic Iran (coup d’etat against Mohammed Mosaddeq in the 50s) and then again the United States against democratic Chile (Salvador Allende)?
Also, Hitler was no democrat, but he did get into power through free and fair elections, and would have won free and fair elections in 1939. By this criterion Putin could also easily win free and fair elections. In fact, I find it hard to think of a war in the last 100 years that would not have been supported by the population in free and fair elections.
Sophia 08.15.08 at 12:32 pm
Guy @ 69:
Hitler certainly did not get into power through free and fair elections, rather he was appointed by President von Hindenburg as a result of backstairs intrigues. At the time, the Nazis did not have a majority in the Reichstag and in the two elections of 1932 the Nazi vote declined from 37% to 32%. Hitler’s first government was a coalition in which he held the chancellorship, but there were only two other Nazis in the cabinet. This government ruled by decree under the presidential emergency powers (Article 48), as had the previous von Schleicher and von Papen governments – democracy had been effectively dead in Germany since the fall of Chancellor Bruning in 1932. Given this, and the fact that Hitler had lost decisively in the presidential elections, it was hardly a popular mandate for Hitler and what he went on to do.
LFC 08.15.08 at 3:01 pm
Guy @ 69: DPT has to do w *interstate war* (or lack thereof) betw. democracies. Hence US helping to overthrow Allende, e.g., has no bearing on DPT. (It was reprehensible, but not relevant to the validity of dem. peace theory.)
RCMoya @ 30: “insofar as national interests align, I agree, democracies will not fight”. Question is how natl interests get defined. Democracies may define their interests to include avoiding war w other democracies, for various reasons.
abb1 08.15.08 at 3:19 pm
Democracies may define their interests to include avoiding war w other democracies, for various reasons.
They certainly might define their interests that way, but why would they? It wouldn’t make any sense whatsoever.
It would make a lot of sense, however, to define their interests as avoiding wars with those who can kick their ass. Now, those who can kick their ass are likely, in turn, to be highly developed industrial nations. These highly developed industrial nations are likely to have their populations ‘commodity fetishized’ (aka: perceiving themselves as ‘consumers’ rather than ‘workers’) enough to be allowed to participate in occasional highly managed referenda (arrangement known as ‘democracy’). So, there you go.
J Thomas 08.15.08 at 4:46 pm
The claim is trivially true. When we set the standard for democracy high enough that we don’t get them fighting wars with each other, there are damn few of them.
RCMoya 08.16.08 at 11:54 am
LFC @ 71: ‘Question is how natl interests get defined. Democracies may define their interests to include avoiding war w other democracies, for various reasons.’
See, that’s an interesting one. I was watching the BBC’s Newsnight last night, and they had this interesting first bit of a report suggesting state-owned Russian firms had systematically sold off US gov’t bonds in response to the US intervention in Georgia. The reporter went on about how this was the first time a nation put its geopolitical interests ahead of its economic interests.
But that isn’t true, now, is it? Plenty of states throughout history have sacrificed enormous amounts of treasure for geopolitical interests. I can point to two specific, though controversial, instances. Firstly, the UK during the Second World War. When Hitler offered the UK a peace settlement after the fall of France the British cabinet had a real debate about whether to accept it or not (though no one knew it at the time.) Many did realise that the economic costs of continuing in the war would be monumental–and they were right. By the end of the war the UK had expended 25% of its economic might to continue the war. In the long term one can’t really make the argument that the UK economy was better off for the sacrifice either, as the UK entered a 30-year period of sclerotic economic growth. I’m not the first to make this theoretical, of course, but it does go to show that some interests do override economic interests as well.
Secondly, again the UK, post-WWII decided to expend an enormous amount of money–read, hard currency: dollars–just to maintain the empire East of Suez, whilst rejecting the beginnings of economic coöperation with the continent. As Anthony Eden once famously put it: ‘This is something which we know, in our bones, we cannot do.’ Why, you ask? Because, after some airy-fairy comments about ‘family’ connections with other countries, he argued that Britain would become just another country in Europe with millions of people on an island everyone else ignored. That doesn’t seem like a recipe for economic>political interests. And again, in the context of 30 years of slow growth–despite not being one of the conquered nations–the UK chose to put strictly economic interests on the back burner.
Does this go a long way to undermining DPT? Hardly. But it is only one slight example of nations, even democratic ones, very often putting geopolitical issues over economic ones.
RCMoya 08.16.08 at 12:24 pm
NB on my last comment: that was a totally tangential point I was making with very little to do with the start-up question. I was watching the Olympics (football: Brazil v Cameroon) and decided I wanted to mention that Newsnight point whilst ignoring the point LFC made. No disrespect at all for that, it was unintentional!
But quickly, I’d mention some stuff. One, abb1 is right (despite the cynical tone of the post, lol)– I see no reason why there should be a national interest in putting warfare against ALL democracies off the table. In any case, the historical record has plenty of examples of democracies fighting dirty wars against democracies. (Chile, Iran, even Italy–the ‘strategy of tension’ being variously connected to CIA efforts to undermine the Italian left–and elsewhere in NATO Europe–the latter two having to do with support for false flag/stay behind operations operated by NATO.) Insofar as nations have or do not have similar (but not conflicting) interests with another country, they most obviously won’t fight.
The most I could see on this point would be for someone to say (a) insofar as democracy inherently codifies certain interests that are similar in all democracies [and this already seems an untenable proposition to me] then the number of issues provoking warfare are reduced; and (b) maybe certain cultural similarities ON TOP of the existence of a democracy will do the trick. Again, neither one seems a convincing argument anyway.
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