Why Democratic States Do Not Fight Each Other

Charles Lipson in “Reliable Partners: How Democracies Have Made a Separate Peace,” argues that Democratic Peace Theory offers an explanation as to why democracies, in particular, have avoided the war front. In his delineation, he cites the ideals of bargaining, mutual benefit, reluctance to bear the cost of war, and the restraint placed upon elected official as to why democracies, unlike non-democracies, have avoided conflict for as long as they have (Lipson 10). His argument, alike to other Democratic peace theorists, consist of the idea that all areas should be a democracy, as these benefits exist amongst democracies due to their shared values.

A typical case of study is the Cold War. From my understanding, the Cold War describes the relationship between America and the Soviet Union between 1945 and 1980. During this period, neither sides ever fought each other directly, but indirectly they influenced other countries through their ideologies (i.e. America’s democracy and Russia’s communism) to war. For example, America supplied weapons to South Vietnam (anti-communist) to war with North Vietnam (pro-communist), who were also supported and supplied weapons by China/Russia. Also with Afghanistan, Americans helped them after the Soviet Union invaded in 1979 by supplying them with weapons to war, without physically involving themselves. This portrays that, in the absence of a supreme power to regulate law in International relations, the system will not be able to provide any public good, in this case, PEACE among states. However, to some extent they do. To achieve this peace, both realists and liberals have outlined various factors that facilitate this provision among States. For liberals, peace among states can be achieved through economic cooperation, democratic peace

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

The other kind of nonideal theory deals with unfavorable conditions, that is, with the conditions of societies whose historical, social and economic circumstances make their achieving a well-ordered regime, whether liberal or decent, difficult if not impossible. These societies are called burdened societies.” Rawls says that liberal societies should only go to war when they believe their safety and security is threatened. “When a liberal society engages in war in self-defense, it does so to protect and preserve the basic freedoms of its citizens and its constitutionally democratic political institutions.”

Wars are usually fought for getting resources or based on ideologies or religion. Democratic institutions may sway public opinion, but this still may not result in future wars. Domestic order is in opposition to international anarchy and highlights the challenges facing international institutions. We need to identify different domestic interests that value the cost of war differently. The government itself can be an actor that can have interests in threatening or starting a war. Democratic peace tries to explain that having a democratic world will result in less war, but that is not true. Wars against democracies can be predicted by chance. An example of this would be the American Civil War when democracies fought one

The intent of this review is to evaluate the concept of "Just Post Bellum" that the article 's author, Gary J. Bass, developed through an empirical theoretical research about the doctrine of Just War. The way the author adapts the evidence found in the speeches of former presidents such as George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter makes us think he tends to justify somewhat recent interventions the United States made in the Middle East when he says: "Both presidents explained that for a free state a just war, must show not only that went to war for good reasons, but also that their conduct war was consistent with that purpose: to help make the most stable region and safe, and leaving affected populations less subject to violence and oppression." However, Gary J. Bass also provides constructive criticism and compiles theoretical concepts of importance of various classical and contemporary authors from the realistic-idealistic point of view of several events that promote an understanding of clear concepts of Just War and their relevance in the context of a globalized world. The author refutes the conventional perception that "Political leaders often invoke postwar evolution as bringing democracy or stability as part of justifying or condemning a war," (P. 384), when in reality other standards of postwar evolution exist.

Bell engages two divergent arguments surrounding democracy, war, and peace -- the ‘democratic war thesis’ and the ‘empire peace thesis’. The two ushered in rich debates, with the former critiquing the franchise of democracy, labeling it as war-prone, meanwhile, the latter working alongside global imperialism.

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

The greatest contribution I hope to make in this paper is a deeper understanding of how democracies choose and fight wars. Due to time constraints, this paper is only addressing one case study that deals with two wars. As in any case study the results are limited to that particular case. However, the research creates more in depth examination over the arguments by Stam and Reiter and, in a more general sense, attempts to analyze propositions made by democratic theorist.

Democracy is believed to have a pacifying power. With electoral processes, the rule of law and freedom from state oppression it makes sense that the populations has enough avenues to express grievances without resorting to full scale civil violence. Democracy beyond mutual democratic pacifism would thus have an impact on internal civil relations positively but this is not the case. There have been an increased number of cases of civil and ethnic violence in government systems that we might consider to be in stages of democratization. Evidence would seem to suggest that there are greater levels of violent civil conflict in these sort of regimes as opposed to full blown dictatorships or democracies. I

Every state starts off with democratic instability. However, what each state all have in common are the chances of success and the potential of becoming a stable democracy. To be a stable democracy, the government must be able to compromise with their constituents’ demands for a democracy and supply such democratic institutions. A democracy is dependent on receiving their support from copious amounts of people, but these people come along with their definitive interests in various aspects such as land reform, labor, religion, etc. Each one of these aspects listed are capable of bringing people together as an organized collective that could result in pro and anti democratic coalitions. These pro and anti democratic coalitions are then strengthened and have great potential of becoming an institution as a political party, movement, or even an interest group. These institutional formations can result in divergence of either democratic stability or instability. With divergence, comes great opposition. The opposing positions of the pro and anti democratic coalitions both have an extremely polar attitude that could increase the chances of an occurrence of a civil war (Magagna, 2018).

Democracy has been in a leading position in the world since it began to gain popularity during the beginning of the 20th century (Fukuyama, 2006). Because it expanded through coercive means, it has meant that democracy continues to extend across the world. When communism began to decline, the West was able to extend democracy into several places both openly and discretely in order to encourage favorable political systems. The nature of the expansion of democracy has been criticized in terms of its legitimacy and viability in developing strong and sustainable governments and benefits to the people of the target states. Most scholars say that intervention cannot lead to a stable democracy, Pickering and Peceny for instance provide a bleak picture by portraying that in the 50 years from 1946-1996, 84% of states going through democratization were not through intervention. Enterline and Greig (2008), argue that 30% of attempts made

Democratic Peace Theory The concept of the Democratic Peace Theory is based on the idea that whether states are likely to go to war or choose peace depends on the type of political system they have.

In just over 100 years, the world has seen two major global wars along with a cold war. While some argue that the cold war was actually a long period of peaceful relations rather than a period classified as wartime (Gaddis), it is still imperative to see the relationship between the leadership a nation is under, and its engagement in any of these past global wars. Under the explanations provided by several philosophers such as Schumpeter, Lake, and, democracies should be extremely less likely to go to war. If these theories were completely true, however, this would fail to explain the anomalies in this theory. Due to the high number of democracies that do, in fact, engage in global wars, there must also be another factor besides democracy that accounts for the likeliness of war. In addition, the Democratic regimes who do engage in war also have a greater tendency of winning, a phenomena that can be explained by the power of democracies. While the leadership style does have an effect on the likeliness of war, with democracies being extremely less likely, it appears that the presence of either a multipolar or a bipolar global system has a higher influence on a country’s chances for war. Although Democracies do tend to be more peaceful in general due to economic influences, the presence of a bipolar global system rather than a

Based on the post-Cold War neo-Kantian democratic peace theory, which made democracy the major source of sustaining peace, liberal peacebuilding seems to preach a universal rhetoric that assumes that the greater the number of democratic states, the lower the incidence of inter and intra state wars. Thus, basing itself on the three pillars of peace (democratisation, marketisation, and the rule of law) as examined by Michael W. Doyle (2005), liberal peacebuilding promotes a vision of the world in