Democracy : The Cause For International Peace Or For Global War?

The Democratic peace thesis, whose basic concepts were studied by Kant in the 1700s, is the theory that suggests that democracies have been pacific in their relations with one other and are unlikely to go to war with another democracy. “Democracies rarely fight each other (an empirical statement) because (b) they have other means of resolving conflicts between them and therefore do not need to fight each other (a prudential statement),and (c) they perceive that democracies should not fight each other (a normative statement about principles of right behavior), which reinforces the empirical state¬ment. By this reasoning the more democracies there are in the world, the fewer potential adversaries we and other democracies will have and the wider the zone of peace.” russet

Democracy is considered as a peaceful entity and the world without war. American President Woodrow Wilson, for example, believes that “democracy is inherently peace desiring and consequently contributes to the world peace, replacing war-like political regime (Gat, 2006)”. Democracy is a system of government, consisted of four key elements. Firstly, it is a means of choosing the leaders of the citizens and replacing the government through an election. It is also called a representative democracy as people vote for their representatives to deal with problems and issues in their societies as well as in their states to improve the lives of citizens. Secondly, people actively participate in the public in a democracy. Democracy depends on the participation of the citizens, and it must be peaceful and open-minded of the various views of other groups and individuals. Thirdly, every individual has the rights, which the state cannot take away from him or her in a democracy. In other words, the human rights of all citizens are protected by the democracy. Finally, democracy is a system of rule by laws of people, not by individuals, and it maintains an order of the government and limits their power as well as protecting the rights of citizens. Every person is equal under the law (Barkawi and Laffey, 2001). Further, Democracy is widely supported by liberal thinkers such as John Locke and Immanuel Kant, and liberalism is the leading theory, which supports democracy and identifies the

The Democratic War Thesis argues a direct connection between democracy and inter-state conflict. This argument, is however, split between a strong and weak variant, with the former claiming that by nature, democracies are prone to war, while the latter notes democratic norms and structures that offer avenues for conflict, as to facilitate war (653). Bell points out that as the U.S. public called for war against Spain, “The people, it turned

Hegemonic stability theory can be defined as an international leader established from the last global war (a hegemon) that provides the international public goods of security and rule enforcement, allowing cooperation to take place. The lack of a hegemon, or a severely weakened, leads to a return of anarchic conditions and states suffer from fear in a security dilemma. Power transition can also explain preponderance theory. “A dissatisfied challenger rises in capabilities, the international system moves from stability-promoting structural clarity to crises-prone structural ambiguity” (Packer

"Liberal states have been attacked and threatened by non-liberal states that do not exercise any special restraint in their dealings with the liberal states. Authoritarian rulers both stimulate and respond to an international political environment in which conflicts of prestige, interest, and pure fear of what other states might do all lead states toward war," [Doyle 1986, 296].

The idea that democracies do not fight each other can be traced back to the writings of Immanuel Kant over two hundred years ago in essay ‘On Perpetual Peace’, however, only in the early 1980s and with the writings of Michael Doyle was the idea consolidated. According to Doyle and other advocates of the democratic peace theory, liberal democratic states have been able to maintain peaceful relations amongst themselves, but are prone to wage war against non-democratic regimes. In order to prove this theory, vast databases have been constructed of historical dyadic relationships between states as well as detailed breakdowns of incidents of inter-state war. The conclusions reached are best shown in the work of Bruce Russett who has argued that

1. The United States has a high priority on subsidizing farmers. By giving farmers subsidies, the United States can ensure self sustainability. The Farmers also have a huge lobby that helps protect the farming industry. The United States was giving cotton farmers subsidies that were seen by many other countries as giving U.S. cotton farmers an advantage over other cotton farmers internationally.

Democracy was not the global result of World War I. The preceding argument is one many would make based on the fact that World War II occurred, demonstrating that democracy on a global stage could not have been possible. Otherwise, World War II would not have taken place. However, as one examines Woodrow Wilson’s “14 points” speech and assesses the world vision that Wilson put into his talking points, one begins to take a different approach, where the essential wheels were in motion following World War I, but began to sputter as the Axis powers gained momentum in the Second World War. Stability throughout Europe, with the hope of bringing democracy to the global environment was Wilson’s plan, where his mindset was to establish what had already been evident throughout the United States; his vision saw the world sharing this view. Democracy and self-determination were put into place in the United States and globally following the First World War as the majority continued to seek these values despite the barriers presented.

The Democratic Peace has become one of the most compelling theories in political science. The notice supports the claim that there is an absence of war between democracies. Many individuals have tested the reason for the lack of war is due to the role of public opinion. Democratic leaders are under an obligation to citizens of a democratic nation. Dating back to the days of Immanuel Kant, the subject of war has debated amongst scholars and writers alike. Those who are against any sort of physical activity that is warlike reinforce the main argument of the human and financial burdens of war. This then supports the idea that, overall, democracies behave peacefully. Although, this so-called peaceful behavior is not strongly correlated with other

While it is well known that democratic states are just as likely to go to war as their non-democratic counterparts and that no two major democracies have been involved in war, no one has been able to offer an explanation for why democracies are better suited for peace. Dixon attempts to offer his own narrowed explanation due to previous arguments being rendered invalid.

The multipolar system was less stable than the bipolar, and resulted in two world wars. The bipolar era meant more stable international politics due to the dominance of the USA and the Soviet Union. The transition to today’s unipolar power structure has brought major changes to world politics, with the USA emerging as the sole superpower. The total number of armed conflicts has decreased, despite the increase in number of terror attacks. However, it can be argued that the world could again become militarily multipolar, with China and Russia as possible challengers to U.S. hegemonic dominance. (Eirik B. Lundestad and Tor G.

Which, led to the debate of dyadic vs. monadic, and almost all evidence pointed to two states who share commonalities such as government structure and culture (dyadic) are more peaceful than, one state because of their system is less likely to have conflict (monadic). This did place a hole in the idea that democracies are more peaceful, but supported their claim for a need in cooperation. As well as economic interdependence, which further decreased the likelihood of war because by doing so would actually hurt your own self interest and since the actors are rational it would not be a rational choice for them to make such

they discuss the idea of having a global democracy amongst all states. The expanded range of politics setting beyond each states domestic boundaries would mark global politics. They want to set up a set of global rules so that they can provide a common welfare for all states especially in under-developed states. These set of rules would be set up to make sure that all of the rules are fare and just for all the people living in the state including the minorities. The system of global democracy will not be used at

“A theory of international politics… can describe the range of likely outcomes of the actions and interactions of states within a given system and show how the range of expectations varies as systems change. It can tell us what pressures are exerted and what possibilities are posed by systems of different structure, but it cannot tell

To date, though, notably few studies have investigated whether democratic publics are more hesitant to attack democracies than autocracies.Moreover, the small body of actual work has not computed for variables that could confound the relationship bounded by shared democracy and public support for war, nor has it explored the mechanisms by which the regime nature of the adversary affects the public mood. Despite decades of inquisition on the democratic peace, we still lack convincing documentation about whether and how public opinion contributes to the absence of war among democracies. The leaders who make the ultimate decisions about war and peace in democracies have powerful impetus to respect the opinions of citizens. Public opinion matters for several reasons. First, leaders who disappoint or antagonize their constituents risk being removed from office. While early research believe that public opinion on foreign policy was incoherent (Almond 1960) and that politics “stopped at the water’s edge” (Wildavsky 1966), this interpretation has been supplanted by many other studies showing that mass opinion is logical and influential. Leaders know that citizens care about foreign policy, which foreign policy regularly plays a role in electoral campaigns, and that foreign policy mistakes can hurt leaders at the ballot box (Aldrich 1989; Gronke 2003; Gelpi 2007).