The Democratic Peace Theory and Its Critics

The democratic peace theory (DPT) has become common knowledge today. Id like to point out the very basics of the DPT and then focus, since I suspect that its strong sides are well known already, on its biggest problems and challenges. The democratic peace theory states that democracies do not fight each other. They may fight nondemocracies, but not each other. The proponents of the DPT think that history tells us that this is true. In only very few cases have democracies threatened force to each other, and in only a couple some say in none have they fought a war. There are four main explanations for the democratic peace. First, some scholars claim that democracies inherit norms of peaceful conflict resolution that they also display in their external relations. Second, it might be that democratic institutions such as competitive elections and powerful legislatures prohibit executives from going to war. Third, some argue that democracies trade heavily with each other and that thus war would be only costs, but no gains. Fourth, one may argue that democracies are mostly liberal societies, and that liberalism produces all of the above effects (see Gowa 1999 for a review of these arguments). Now, no theory is without its critics:

A first group of critics claims that the DPT is dependent on definitions and that students of the democratic peace adjust definitions of war and democracy to produce the desired results. Two examples: First, the Spanish-American War in 1898 might be an instance of a war between two democracies. Now some scholars claim that Spain was a democracy, others that it was not. Depending on the definition used, both groups offer convincing arguments. Second, some authors claim that the American Civil War 1861-1865 was an internal dispute and that it thus can not be taken in account with regard to the DPT; the DPT only speaks about interstate wars. But if democracy has any causal effect, shouldnt it have worked also in that dispute? Does it make a difference if a case does fit into some definition of interstate war or should we simply have a look at its explanatory value? Other cases of interest are Finland during the Second World War, the Franco-Prussian War 1870 and the question if Wilhelmine Germany was a democracy or not. These definitional issues have profound consequences for the value of the democratic peace theory and therefore substantially challenge it. A second group of critics claims that the democratic peace is statistically insignificant. What are the odds anyway that two states fight each other? Wars are rare and the exception in any case. If we want to examine the DPT, so their argument goes, it is more fruitful to look at instances where two democracies had a crisis but did not go to war. It is in these instance that we should find the causalities brought forward by the DPT. Christopher Layne has found out that those crises between democracies that did not turn into war have been resolved peacefully because of other variables than those expected by the DPT. In the Fashoda-Crisis in 1898, for instance, France and Great Britain did not go to war because Great Britains forces simply were overwhelming. The theoretically most relevant critique of the DPT comes from structural realists. Waltz, most prominently, claims that the causes of war are found in both the structure and the

internal organisation of states, but that the former are more important than the latter. In this reasoning, the democratic peace theory can be nothing but wrong or, if the democratic peace theory is right, structural realism is wrong. This leaves us with an additional, interesting insight surrounding the topic. In my personal reading I discovered that the literature on the development of the european state system is impressively insightful with regard to the DPT. Many authors on the european state system attribute the internal organisation of states to structural aspects. Relying on this literature, Layne notes that democracies have been established where the systemic level of threat was low and that thus both democracy and peace would be caused by structure. Similarly, Huntley thinks that the democratic peace has structural roots. In general, thus, this literature asks if there might be a common cause of democracy and peace. Such thoughts might be heavily expandable. I think it is here that we should proceed our analysis. Literature - Gowa, Joanne. 1999. Ballots and Bullets: The Elusive Democratic Peace. Princeton: Princeton University Press. - Huntley, Wade L. 1996. Kants Third Image: Systemic Sources of the Liberal Peace, International Studies Quarterly 40. - Layne, Christopher. 1994. Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace, International Security 19(2). - Waltz, Kenneth N. 2000. Structural Realism After the End of the Cold War, International Security 25(1).