Hobson, Ch.: Introduction. - S. 147-150 Smith, T.: Democratic Peace theory: from promising theory to dangerous practice. - S. 151-157 Owen, J. M.: Liberal tradition, not social science. - S. 158-163 Geis, A.: Of bright sides and dark sides: Democratic Peace beyond triumphalism. - S. 164-170 Hobson, Ch.: The sorcerer's apprentice. - S. 171-177 Ish-Shalom, P.: Don't look back in anger. - S. 178-184
Originating from the work of Immanuel Kant, Democratic Peace Theory proposes that democracies rarely, if ever, fight war against other democracies. While inquiries to the existence of such phenomena through sophisticated statistical approach remain important, it is equally important to further develop the understanding in the causal explanations behind it. There are two dominant strands of explanations for Democratic Peace, one locates the causes on the structure of democratic government, and the other locates them on the prevailing norms/cultures within a democratic society. The structural explanations claim that it is the institutions within democratic governments, such as the presence of regular election, checks and balances (from parliament), and transparency that hinder their leaders to initiate wars against other democracies. The norm/cultural explanations argue that democracies develop liberal ideology, norms of bounded competition, and reciprocity, which guide them in conducting peaceful foreign relations with other democracies. Despite the compelling logics brought by these two types of explanations, there remains a gap between their theoretical assumptions and practical realities of inter-state relations. Furthermore, some of these explanations need to be further specified in order to allow for more operational investigations to them.
Introduces a roundtable discussion from the 2010 International Studies Association Convention in New Orleans. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.]
Democratic Peace Theory has been one of the most hotly debated topics ever since the 1980s. From Kant to the present day, the meaning of Democratic Peace Theory has changed, while the theory nowadays claims in principle that democratic states wage war against each other less often owing to their institutions' and citizens' abilities to urge their governments to establish a peaceful foreign policy. At this point, the critical theory offers an alternative explanation for the behaviors of democratic countries. This study was designed as a theoretical discussion utilising the analysis of primary and secondary sources in the field, both in printed and electronic materials. Employing the viewpoint of the critical theory, this paper argues that Democratic Peace is the disguise of hegemonic relations and the product of the historical block. This study revealed that democracies are not pacifist actors in the international realm. As articulated by the critical approach, the study also puts forth that the concept of Democratic eace facilitates the expansionist ambitions of hegemonic powers in the international system by utilizing various humanitarian interventions and serves as a means to maintain imperialist peace. Empirical evidence from the military intervention in Libya further reinforces this argument. Thus, this study asserts the idea to be cautious against the propositions of the Democratic Peace Theory because any activities done in the name of spreading democracy may involve a hidden agenda and disrupt the internal stability of non-democratic countries.
Multiple theories posit the existence of a dyadic democratic peace. The authors extend the logic of three theories of the democratic peace — informational, normative, and preferences — and find that they make different predictions with respect to the onset and escalation of disputes across the range of similar regime dyads. First, regarding dispute onset, the preferences argument, but not the normative and informational arguments, expects autocratic dyads of similar type to have less conflict onset than mixed dyads. Second, the normative argument expects democratic, but not non-democratic, dyads to be less likely to escalate their disputes, while the informational argument expects democracy to have little impact, after conflict onset has been taken into account. The preferences argument expects all dyads of similar regime type to be less likely to escalate their disputes. Critical tests of these expectations are conducted by estimating a censored choice model of conflict onset and escalation, using multiple measures of interstate conflict. The authors find little support for a broader regime-similarity peace, and their findings on democratic dispute escalation favor the informational argument over the normative argument.
This article draws on new data and analyses to investigate whether the contractualist peace supersedes the democratic peace. A series of studies have shown that contractualist economy accounts for the democratic peace, but defenders of the democratic peace claim that these studies contain measurement errors, that democracy correlates with peace at least in interaction with contractualist economy, and that the causation is reversed from democracy to contractualist economy and peace. Results are consistent across all tests: there is no support for democracy as a cause of peace. The democratic peace is a statistical artifact explained by contractualist economy.
