preview

The Theory Of Democratic Peace

Better Essays

The Theory of Democratic Peace has been a topic of much debate over the years. Why is this? There are many opinions on this theory and many questions are raised when speaking about it. The argument that I pose is, is there such a thing as democratic peace? In order to address my argument and in order to critically analyse Democratic Peace Theory, this piece of academic writing will look at a variety of causes that some theorists’ state are behind the Democratic Peace Theory and will look at the different branches of the theory. Firstly it will look at what ideology the theory can be drawn from and how the two can link together to prove that democratic peace can exist. Secondly it will look at if the theory has helped the spreading of …show more content…

Essentially, this theory makes the assumption that if there is a war between two countries, it will be between one that is democratic and one that is not. There has been some evidence that no two democratic countries have ever been to war, if we are talking about ‘war’ in the sense of military action (Griffiths et al., 2008). For example, ‘353 pairs of states engaged in wars between 1816-1991 and none was between two democracies: 155 pairs involved a democracy and a non-democratic country, and 198 involved two non-democratic states fighting each other’ (Griffiths et al., 2008). A reason for why democratic peace theorists stress that democratic states fight with only non-democratic states is due to the reason that, ‘they may be dangerous because they seek other ends, such as conquest or plunder’ (Owen 1994). When did the theory originate? ‘Democratic Peace Theory, as it came to be known, emerged as a robust research programme in the post-Cold War years’ (Daddow, 2013). According to Rosato (2003), the theory ‘is probably the most powerful liberal contribution to the debate on the causes of war and peace’ (p.585)

Now let’s talk about the ideology that the theory can be drawn from and let’s see how the ideology and the theory can be linked together to help prove that some sort of democratic peace can and does exist. Liberalism, an ideology that focuses mainly on the individual, but has other key features such

Get Access