democratic peace theory conclusion

The Democratic Peace Theory

It has been argued that the absence of war between democratic states ‘comes as close as anything we have to an empirical law in international relations.’ [1] Although statistically the probability of war between any two states is considerably low, the absence of war among liberal democracies across a wide range of different historical, economic, and political factors suggests that there is a strong predisposition against the use of military violence between democratic states. [2] This democratic peace proposition not only challenges the validity of other political systems (i.e., fascism, communism, authoritarianism, totalitarianism), but also the prevailing realist account of international relations, which emphasises balance-of-power calculations and common strategic interests in order to explain the peace and stability that characterises relations between liberal democracies. [3] This essay argues, however, that the structural and normative arguments of the democratic peace theory together offer a far more logical and convincing explanation for this seeming anomaly. Furthermore, in line with Immanuel Kant’s theory of perpetual peace, I argue that the global spread of democracy will result in greater international peace if this occurs in parallel with the strengthening of economic interdependence and international organisations. The difficulty lies in the significant risk of instability inherent in the process of democratisation and the uncertainty that remains in an ‘incomplete Kantian world’ where the Hobbesian state of anarchy has not yet entirely disappeared from the international system.

Structural Explanation

Of the two main variants of the democratic peace theory, the structural account argues that it is the institutions of representative government, which hold elected officials and decision-makers accountable to a wide electorate, that make war a largely unattractive option for both the government and its citizens. [4] Because the costs and risks of war directly affect large segments of the population, it is expected that the average voter will throw the incumbent leader/party out of office if they initiate a losing or unnecessary war, thus, providing a clear institutional incentive for democratic leaders to anticipate such an electoral response before deciding to go to war. [5] This view does not assume that all citizens and elected representatives are liberal-minded, but simply that democratic structures that give citizens leverage over government decisions will make it less likely that a democratic leader will be able to initiate a war with another liberal democracy. [6] Thus, even with an illiberal leader in place, institutions such as free speech, political pluralism, and competitive elections will make it difficult for these leaders to convince or persuade the public to go to war. [7]

Normative Explanation

Proponents of the normative/cultural perspective, by contrast, argue that shared democratic and liberal values best explain the peace that exists between democratic states. [8] According to this view, democratic political culture encourages peaceful means of conflict resolution which are extended beyond the domestic political process to other democratic states because leaders in both countries hold a reasonable expectation that their counterparts will also be able to work out their differences peacefully. [9] Political ideology, therefore, determines how democracies distinguish allies from adversaries: democracies that represent and act in their citizens’ interests are treated with respect and consideration, whereas nondemocracies that use violence and oppression against their own people are regarded with mistrust and suspicion. [10] The importance of perception means that even if a particular state has ‘enlightened citizens and liberal-democratic institutions,’ unless other democratic states regard it as a genuine liberal democracy then the democratic peace proposition will not hold. [11] This argument can, therefore, explain a number of contentious cases: Americans did not consider England democratic in 1812 because England was a monarchy (War of 1812) and liberals in the Union did not consider the Confederacy a liberal democracy because of their use of slavery (American Civil War). [12]

Although some scholars regard the institutional and normative explanations as mutually exclusive, a much more intuitive and persuasive defence of the democratic peace theory emerges from combining these two viewpoints. Thus, the particular democratic practices that make war with other liberal democracies unlikely – free and fair elections, the rule of law, free press, a competitive party system – are driven by both ‘converging expectations about what conventional behaviour is likely to be’ (institutions) and ‘standards for what behaviour ought to be’ (norms). [13] These two explanations are complimentary and mutually reinforcing: cultural norms influences the creation and evolution of political institutions, and institutions help generate a more peaceful moral culture over time. [14]

Criticism of the Theory

A great deal of criticism of the democratic peace theory is focused on methodology. It is argued that the subjectivity of the specifics definitions adopted in such highly empirical studies is likely to significantly affect the results, making it difficult to validate the theory with certainty. [15] But this is largely undermined by a large number of studies that show democracies are highly unlikely to fight each other irrespective of the definition of democracy, the type of cases considered, or the dispute/war threshold. [16] Furthermore, there has already been a significant increase in the number of democratic-democratic dyads from less than 2% of all political dyads in the 19 th century, to 13% from 1900-1945, and 11% over the 1946-89 period without any major conflict. [17]

More substantial criticism comes from scholars whom, while not questioning the empirical findings, put forth contending arguments to explain the causal relationship between democracy and peace. Realists argue that it is not common polities but rather common interests that can best explain the low incidence of wars between democracies. [18] Beginning with the Cold War, they point out that democratic states have been far more likely to formally align themselves with other democracies than in the century before, suggesting that common strategic interests are a more important factor than domestic political processes. [19] Thus, the particular structure of the international political system is the key factor determining how states will act. [20] But the realist critique has been largely disproven by studies that have persuasively found that democracy, rather than alliance, prevents conflict and war; nonaligned democracies are less likely to fight each other than aligned nondemocracies; and two nondemocratic states that share common interests are more likely to fight each other than two democracies that do not share common interests. [21]

Monadic Explanation

Of course, the point on which critics of the democratic peace theory are largely correct is that liberal democracies are not significantly less likely to go to war with other nondemocratic states. The available evidence largely disproves the monadic proposition that democratic states are less prone to use force regardless of the regime type of the opposing state. [22] This is likely due to the fact that democratic states still function in an ‘incompletely Kantian world’ where democracies have only recently gone from being a minority to the slight majority within the post-Cold War period. [23] Power politics, therefore, is still a necessary reality for most democratic states, particularly given the high levels of conflict between mixed dyads. [24] Nonetheless, there are a number of important advantages for democracies: they are more likely to enter low-level conflicts than full-scale wars; more willing to refrain from escalating disputes into an actual war; [25] and less likely to initiate the use of violence against another state. [26]

More importantly perhaps, democracies that do initiate war are more likely to win than nondemocratic states. [27] Because public support for war in democracies decreases considerably over time, there is a strong incentive for democratic leaders and decision-makers to not only choose to initiate only wars that they can win, but ones they can win quickly. [28] Although there are a number of notable exceptions, such as the U.S.-led wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam, this does suggest that the global spread of democracy would bring additional benefits beyond simply reducing the possibility of war between democratic states. This would include a greater number of low-level conflicts in proportion to full-scale wars, an increase in the number of states less likely to either initiate war or escalate non-violent confrontations into war, and a greater number of short, successful wars as opposed to long and protracted wars. Thus, even though an increase in the number of democratic states may not reduce the overall number of democratic-nondemocratic conflicts, this should not detract from these largely positive qualitative changes one would expect to occur.

Dyadic Explanation

A much more substantial argument comes from the dyadic proposition of the democratic peace theory: the observation that democracies create a separate and joint peace among other democratic states. [29] With an autocratic-democratic dyad, if the autocracy is replaced with a democracy it is argued that the likelihood of conflict will drop by 33 percent. [30] Moreover, beyond conflict and war, the evidence suggests that interstate rivalries among democracy dyads are also exceedingly rare and that a change in regime (from nondemocracy to democracy) will not only reduce the propensity for conflict or rivalry between any two states, but will actually accelerate this trend more rapidly over time. [31] It similarly follows then that coalitions of democratic states will also be better able to maintain mutual commitments and obligations because the institutional constraints of liberal democracy make it difficult to reverse any mutual commitments made through autonomous and accountable political institutions. [32] This predictability is not only absent for nondemocracies due to the lack of transparency and openness of their political systems, but actually negatively impacts their ability to win wars: the number of democratic partners increases the probability of winning a war by 62% whereas the number of nondemocratic partners decreases this likelihood by 44%. [33] What this suggests is that democracies should work to strengthen their formal alliances not only for normative or ideological reasons but for the expected efficiency gains this would provide and as a practical way of avoiding the collective action problems that frequently plague nondemocratic or mixed regime coalitions.

More positively, that there has not been any war between democracies despite a rapid growth in the number of democratic dyads within the international system (and thus an increase in the probability of conflict between democracies), [34] points to a significant trend: the incidence of conflict should gradually decline over time if more countries become democratic. [35] This is important not only because liberal democracies must still retain military force as a means to prevent or defend themselves from aggression in the current international system, but because democracies are more likely to receive challenges and threats to their security while this peace still remains ‘separate.’ [36]

Democratisation

There are two notable reasons, however, why the global spread of democracy may actually undermine prospects for international peace and they both have to do with the difficulties associated with the process of democratisation. First, a number of studies have shown that democratic transitions which occur when a country’s political institutions are particularly weak (often at the outset of the transition from autocracy to democracy), or when the elites within that country are threatened by the democratisation process itself (by having to respond to a wide and divergent range of newly-formulated interests), have a greater likelihood that this process will trigger aggressive nationalist sentiment and/or the outbreak of civil or inter-state war. [37] If political institutions are weak at the early stages of a transition, the rising demand for mass participation can provide an incentive for elites to adopt nationalist, ethno-religious, or populist policies, yet, crucially, before these elites can be held sufficiently accountable to the wider electorate. [38] A number of examples can be cited ranging from Napoleon III’s France, Wilhelmine Germany, and Taisho Japan to more recent cases such as Serbia under Slobodan Milosevic (the Yugoslav Wars), Peru and Ecuador in the late 1980s/early 1990s (Cenepa War 1995), Ethiopia’s 1998-2000 border war with Eritrea following the collapse of the Dergue dictatorship, and the 1999 India-Pakistan war after limited moves towards democratisation in both Pakistan and Kashmir. [39] This also extends to the observation that the vast majority of civil wars over the past century have occurred within transitional or mixed regimes, as opposed to either democratic or authoritarian regimes, which are more able to effectively contain repression by democratic or violent means, respectively. [40] Taking this into account, therefore, it is far more likely that a country will be able to successfully consolidate its transition if democratisation occurs according to a particular historical sequence: the emergence of a national identity, followed by the institutionalisation of the central government, and then mass electoral and political participation. [41]

The second problem relates to the first: most countries undergoing a transition to democracy will not necessarily be in a position to follow this particular sequence, yet even if they are it is not guaranteed that liberal democratic states will be able or willing to help. It is, therefore, important to be aware of the obvious limits of external military intervention. Even if liberal states adopt a cautious cost-benefit analysis in which they only intervene or assist states when they are certain that there is substantial and legitimate internal support present and when they have the consent of international bodies such as the UN (i.e., in Korea, Libya, Afghanistan), the act of helping overthrow an authoritarian regime may undermine those very liberal norms and values underpinning the democratic peace. [42] That the costs associated with such interventions are often quite considerable and can be difficult to justify domestically also means that even if there is a clear moral argument for helping authoritarian states democratise, political and economic considerations may still prevail. Similarly, although it is often states undergoing democratic transitions that initiate wars, their military weaknesses and political and social instability can also make them attractive targets for attack. [43] This was the case for East Timor following its independence vote in 1999 and Iran after its 1979 revolution when they were invaded by Indonesian and Iraqi forces respectively. [44] Thus, even though there is a very clear normative benefit to increasing the number of democracies within the international system, there is a real risk of instability and conflict if the transition does not establish the institutional preconditions for effective and accountable governance prior to mass political participation and elections, and if it takes place within an unstable regional/international environment. [45]

Wider Implications

Similarly, how liberal states conduct their foreign policy on an individual basis and collectively at the international level will largely determine whether the Kantian system can be successfully expanded. It is often argued by realists that the democratic decision-making process itself deprives policymakers of the necessary ‘coherence, long-range planning, flexibility and secrecy’ required to conduct an effective foreign policy. [46] According to this view, public opinion exerts an autonomous influence on the actions of political leaders that can distract democratic states from focusing on the most important imperatives: power and security. [47] But, as mentioned earlier, the very political institutions and patterns of behaviour that characterise liberal democracies also allow these states to best defend themselves and adopt a more cautious and effective approach to the use of force, thereby achieving the ‘best, securest, and safest outcomes for the most people.’ [48] Therefore, this not only challenges the key assumptions underlying realism – that normative goals preclude a clear and accurate analysis of international affairs – but the idea that relative military capabilities and the distribution of power among great powers alone should dictate foreign policy strategy. [49] Rather, democracies can best guarantee their own security by empowering their citizens and strengthening institutional checks and balances because these very factors have been shown to uphold the democratic peace and facilitate a more prudent foreign policy. [50]

At the international level, the recent increase in the number of democratic states provides a unique opportunity to reconstruct the norms and values underpinning the international system to more accurately reflect the peaceful interactions of democracies. [51] This would ideally mean strengthening the two other aspects of the Kantian system: international organisations and economic interdependence. Although the democratic peace represents the possibility of ‘uncoerced peace without central authority,’ [52] it is also the case that this liberal order has been best served when there has been a liberal state (i.e., the United States after World War II) that is both able and prepared to sustain the economic and political foundations of the wider liberal society beyond its own borders. [53] Strengthening a dense network of inter-governmental organisations (IGOs) that extend this responsibility to a larger number of democratic states and encourages greater cooperation among members through greater consultation and coordination, such as the WTO, IMF, World Bank, UN, and International Criminal Court, would arguably provide a stronger foundation for extending this perpetual peace outwards. [54] This also builds on studies that have shown the constraining effect of IGOs is greatest for politically relevant dyads – ‘contiguous pairs of states and pairs that include at least one major power’ – which also happen to account for the majority of interstate disputes and conflict. [55] Focusing efforts to more proactively include the largest nondemocracies (China, Vietnam, Russia, Iran) into this liberal international order, and to strengthen those elements of constitutional liberalism (rule of law, institutional checks on power, individual freedoms) lacking in illiberal democracies (Belarus, Bangladesh, Rwanda, Romania, Malaysia etc.) would arguably help consolidate the democratic peace most effectively. [56]

This is also the case for economic cooperation and interdependence. The observation that the likelihood of conflict between any two states with high levels of bilateral trade will be 33% lower than if those states only had an average level of economic interdependence suggests that democratic states will greatly benefit from upholding a liberal international economic system free of protectionism and mercantilist policies. [57] Because maintaining free and open trade relations rests on the assumption that market-based forces, rather than violence or coercion, will determine future economic transactions, the accompanying sense of mutual dependence will often act as a restraint on the use of military force. [58] Any accompanying increase in the quantity or quality of interstate communication is also likely to make it easier for democracies to understand the intentions and preferences of nondemocracies as well as their willingness to adhere to mutual agreements and commitments. [59]

The institutional and normative aspects of the democratic peace proposition, thus, provide a very clear, logical reason why the global spread of democracy will result in greater international peace: democratic political institutions make it difficult for governments to initiate war without the consent of the electorate, and the accompanying cultural norms mean democracies will favour a peaceful means of conflict resolution with one another. Of course, this would not necessarily reduce the overall incidence of war as the monadic proposition that democracies are less likely to use conflict regardless of regime type does not hold. But this would still produce a positive qualitative change: democracies are less likely to initiate wars, escalate nonviolent disputes into full-scale war, or engage in long and protracted military conflicts. More importantly, an increase in the number of democracies would extend the liberal peace to a greater number of countries, and increase the probability of winning war – arguably providing a strong normative and practical rationale for liberal states to conduct a more Wilsonian foreign policy. Recognising the inherent difficulties implicit with the democratisation process, however, greater effort should be made to encourage the consolidation of political institutions prior to mass political/electoral participation in transitional states. Strengthening international organisations that embody liberal norms and values, and encouraging economic interdependence with nondemocracies would also help mediate the strategic uncertainty and misperceptions that exist where the Kantian peace meets the Hobbesian state of anarchy.

Choi, Ajin. “The Power of Democratic Competition.” International Security 28, no. 1 (Summer 2003): 142-53.

Davenport, Christian, and David A. Armstrong II. “Democracy and the Violation of Human Rights: A Statistical Analysis from 1976 to 1996.” American Journal of Political Science 48, no. 3 (July 2004): 538-54.

Doyle, Michael W. “Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs, Part 1.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 12, no. 3 (Summer 1983): 205-35.

______. “Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs, Part 2.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 12, no. 4 (Autumn 1983): 323-53.

______. “Liberalism and World Politics.” The American Political Science Review 80, no. 4 (December 1986): 1151-69.

Elman, Miriam Fendius. “The Need for a Qualitative Test of the Democratic Peace Theory.” In Paths to Peace: Is Democracy the Answer? , edited by Miriam Fendius Elman, 1-57. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1997.

Farber, Henry S., and Joanne Gowa. “Polities and Peace.” International Security 20, no. 2 (Fall 1995): 123-46.

Gelpi, Christopher F., and Michael Griesdorf. “Winners or Losers? Democracies in International Crisis, 1918–94.” American Political Science Review 95, no. 3 (September 2001): 633-47.

Hensel, Paul R., Gary Goertz, and Paul F. Diehl. “The Democratic Peace and Rivalries.” The Journal of Politics 62, no. 4 (November 2000): 1173-88.

Jervis, Robert. “Theories of War in an Era of Leading-Power Peace.” The American Political Science Review 96, no. 1 (March 2002): 1-14.

Layne, Christopher. “Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace.” International Security 19, no. 2 (Autumn 1994): 5-49.

Levy, Jack S. “Domestic Politics and War.” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18, no. 4 (Spring 1988): 653-73.

Mansfield, Edward D., and Jack Snyder. Electing To Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go To War . Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2005.

Maoz, Zeev. “The Controversy over the Democratic Peace: Rearguard Action or Cracks in the Wall?” International Security 22, no. 1 (Summer 1997): 162-98.

Mearsheimer, John J. “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War.” International Security 15, no. 1 (Summer 1990): 5-56.

Owen, John M. “How Liberalism Produces Democratic Peace.” International Security 19, no. 2 (Autumn 1994): 87-125.

Ray, James Lee. “Wars Between Democracies: Rare, or Nonexistent?” International Interactions 18, no. 3 (1993): 251-76.

______. Democracy and International Conflict: An Evaluation of the Democratic Peace Proposition . Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1995.

Reiter, Dan, and Allan C. Stam. Democracies at War . Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002.

Russett, Bruce. “Can A Democratic Peace Be Built?” International Interactions 18, no. 3 (1993): 277-82.

______. Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World . Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993.

______. “Democracy, War and Expansion through Historical Lenses.” European Journal of International Relations 15, no. 9 (2009): 9-36.

Russett, Bruce, and John R. Oneal. Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations . New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001.

Spiro, David E. “The Insignificance of the Liberal Peace.” International Security 19, no. 2 (Autumn 1994): 50-86.

Zakaria, Fareed. “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy.” Foreign Affairs 76, no. 6 (November/December 1997): 22-43.

[1] Jack S. Levy, “Domestic Politics and War,” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18, no. 4 (Spring 1988): 661-62.

[2] Michael W. Doyle, “Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs, Part 1,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 12, no. 3 (Summer 1983): 213-15, 17; Christopher F. Gelpi and Michael Griesdorf, “Winners or Losers? Democracies in International Crisis, 1918–94,” American Political Science Review 95, no. 3 (September 2001): 633-34; Bruce Russett, “Democracy, War and Expansion through Historical Lenses,” European Journal of International Relations 15, no. 9 (2009): 11-12.

[3] Michael W. Doyle, “Liberalism and World Politics,” The American Political Science Review 80, no. 4 (December 1986): 1156-57.

[4] Russett, “Democracy, War and Expansion through Historical Lenses,” 21-22; Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993), 38-40.

[5] Russett, “Democracy, War and Expansion through Historical Lenses,” 21-22.

[6] John M. Owen, “How Liberalism Produces Democratic Peace,” International Security 19, no. 2 (Autumn 1994): 123-24; Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder, Electing To Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go To War (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2005), 23-27.

[7] Owen, “How Liberalism Produces Democratic Peace,” 123-24.

[8] Miriam Fendius Elman, “The Need for a Qualitative Test of the Democratic Peace Theory,” in Paths to Peace: Is Democracy the Answer? , ed. Miriam Fendius Elman (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1997), 11-12.

[10] Owen, “How Liberalism Produces Democratic Peace,” 89-90.

[11] Ibid.: 96-97.

[13] Mansfield and Snyder, Electing To Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go To War , 29-30.

[14] Bruce Russett and John R. Oneal, Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001), 53; James Lee Ray, Democracy and International Conflict: An Evaluation of the Democratic Peace Proposition (Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1995), 33-37.

[15] David E. Spiro, “The Insignificance of the Liberal Peace,” International Security 19, no. 2 (Autumn 1994): 55, 62; James Lee Ray, “Wars Between Democracies: Rare, or Nonexistent?,” International Interactions 18, no. 3 (1993): 252-54.

[16] Zeev Maoz, “The Controversy over the Democratic Peace: Rearguard Action or Cracks in the Wall?,” International Security 22, no. 1 (Summer 1997): 175-77; Ray, “Wars Between Democracies: Rare, or Nonexistent?,” 269-70.

[17] Maoz, “The Controversy over the Democratic Peace: Rearguard Action or Cracks in the Wall?,” 190.

[18] Henry S. Farber and Joanne Gowa, “Polities and Peace,” International Security 20, no. 2 (Fall 1995): 145-46.

[20] Christopher Layne, “Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace,” International Security 19, no. 2 (Autumn 1994): 10-12; John J. Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War,” International Security 15, no. 1 (Summer 1990): 12-13.

[21] Maoz, “The Controversy over the Democratic Peace: Rearguard Action or Cracks in the Wall?,” 175-77; Gelpi and Griesdorf, “Winners or Losers? Democracies in International Crisis, 1918–94,” 45-46.

[22] Elman, “The Need for a Qualitative Test of the Democratic Peace Theory,” 14-18; Layne, “Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace,” 12-13.

[23] Russett, “Democracy, War and Expansion through Historical Lenses,” 13-14.

[25] Democratic states are, however, more willing to enter into non-violent confrontations even if they generally refrain from escalating these disputes into war.

[26] Russett, “Democracy, War and Expansion through Historical Lenses,” 14.

[27] Dan Reiter and Allan C. Stam, Democracies at War (Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002), 10-11.

[28] Ibid., 178-79.

[29] Elman, “The Need for a Qualitative Test of the Democratic Peace Theory,” 10-14.

[30] Russett and Oneal, Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations , 114-16.

[31] Paul R. Hensel, Gary Goertz, and Paul F. Diehl, “The Democratic Peace and Rivalries,” The Journal of Politics 62, no. 4 (November 2000): 1187.

[32] Ajin Choi, “The Power of Democratic Competition,” International Security 28, no. 1 (Summer 2003): 144-45.

[33] Ibid.: 146-49. Ajin Choi elaborates that, ‘According to the results of the marginal impact analysis presented in Table 1, the number of democratic partners variable increases the probability of winning a war by 62 percentage points as this variable moves from its minimum to maximum value and all other variables are set at their mean or modal values. The number of nondemocratic partners variable, on the other hand, decreases the probability of winning by 44 percentage points under the same conditions.’

[34] Maoz, “The Controversy over the Democratic Peace: Rearguard Action or Cracks in the Wall?,” 190.

[35] Russett and Oneal, Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations , 114-16, 22-24.

[36] Gelpi and Griesdorf, “Winners or Losers? Democracies in International Crisis, 1918–94,” 645-46; Russett and Oneal, Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations , 302. It is argued that the perceived reluctance of liberal democracies to use force may actually lead to a greater number of military challenges in spite of their military capabilities because the openness of their political system paradoxically only makes their bargaining tactics credible to opponents when they appear willing to use force.

[37] Christian Davenport and David A. Armstrong II, “Democracy and the Violation of Human Rights: A Statistical Analysis from 1976 to 1996,” American Journal of Political Science 48, no. 3 (July 2004): 551-53; Mansfield and Snyder, Electing To Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go To War , 265-66.

[38] Mansfield and Snyder, Electing To Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go To War , 39-40.

[39] Fareed Zakaria, “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy,” Foreign Affairs 76, no. 6 (November/December 1997): 36-38; Mansfield and Snyder, Electing To Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go To War , 4-6.

[40] Russett and Oneal, Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations , 70-71.

[41] Mansfield and Snyder, Electing To Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go To War , 16-19.

[42] Bruce Russett, “Can A Democratic Peace Be Built?,” International Interactions 18, no. 3 (1993): 279-80.

[43] Mansfield and Snyder, Electing To Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go To War , 33-34.

[44] Ibid., 4-6, 13-14.

[45] Russett and Oneal, Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations , 116-22; Mansfield and Snyder, Electing To Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go To War , 273-74.

[46] Levy, “Domestic Politics and War,” 659-61.

[47] Reiter and Stam, Democracies at War , 195-97.

[49] Layne, “Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace,” 49; Reiter and Stam, Democracies at War , 195-97.

[50] Reiter and Stam, Democracies at War , 202-05; Choi, “The Power of Democratic Competition,” 153.

[51] Russett, “Can A Democratic Peace Be Built?,” 280-81; Ray, Democracy and International Conflict: An Evaluation of the Democratic Peace Proposition , 204-06.

[52] Robert Jervis, “Theories of War in an Era of Leading-Power Peace,” The American Political Science Review 96, no. 1 (March 2002): 11.

[53] Doyle, “Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs, Part 1,” 232-33.

[54] Russett and Oneal, Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations , 280-81; Doyle, “Liberalism and World Politics,” 1157-58.

[55] Russett and Oneal, Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations , 280-81.

[56] Zakaria, “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy,” 25-26.

[57] Michael W. Doyle, “Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs, Part 2,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 12, no. 4 (Autumn 1983): 347-48; Russett and Oneal, Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations , 277-80.

[58] Doyle, “Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs, Part 1,” 231.

[59] Choi, “The Power of Democratic Competition,” 144-45.

Written by: Kevin Placek Written at: University of Melbourne Written for: Dr. David Mickler Date written: November 2011

Please Consider Donating

Before you download your free e-book, please consider donating to support open access publishing.

E-IR is an independent non-profit publisher run by an all volunteer team. Your donations allow us to invest in new open access titles and pay our bandwidth bills to ensure we keep our existing titles free to view. Any amount, in any currency, is appreciated. Many thanks!

Donations are voluntary and not required to download the e-book - your link to download is below.

What Is the Democratic Peace Theory? Definition and Examples

SAUL LOEB / Getty Images

U.S. Foreign Policy
The U. S. Government
U.S. Liberal Politics
U.S. Conservative Politics
Women's Issues
Civil Liberties
The Middle East
Race Relations
Immigration
Crime & Punishment
Canadian Government
Understanding Types of Government
B.S., Texas A&M University

The Democratic Peace Theory states that countries with liberal democratic forms of government are less likely to go to war with one another than those with other forms of government. Proponents of the theory draw on the writings of German philosopher Immanuel Kant and, more recently, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson , who in his 1917 World War I message to Congress stated that “The world must be made safe for democracy.” Critics argue that the simple quality of being democratic in nature may not be the main reason for the historic tendency of peace between democracies.

Key Takeaways

The Democratic Peace Theory holds that democratic countries are less likely to go to war with one another than non-democratic countries.
The theory evolved from the writings of German philosopher Immanuel Kant and the adoption of the 1832 Monroe Doctrine by the United States.
The theory is based on the fact that declaring war in democratic countries requires citizen support and legislative approval.
Critics of the theory argue that merely being democratic may not be the primary reason for peace between democracies.

Democratic Peace Theory Definition

Dependent on the ideologies of liberalism , such as civil liberties and political freedom, the Democratic Peace Theory holds that democracies are hesitant to go to war with other democratic countries. Proponents cite several reasons for the tendency of democratic states to maintain peace, including:

The citizens of democracies usually have some say over legislative decisions to declare war.
In democracies, the voting public holds their elected leaders responsible for human and financial war losses.
When held publicly accountable, government leaders are likely to create diplomatic institutions for resolving international tensions.
Democracies rarely view countries with similar policies and form of government as hostile.
Usually possessing more wealth that other states, democracies avoid war to preserve their resources.

The Democratic Peace Theory was first articulated by German philosopher Immanuel Kant in his 1795 essay entitled “ Perpetual Peace .” In this work, Kant argues that nations with constitutional republic governments are less likely to go to war because doing so requires the consent of the people—who would actually be fighting the war. While the kings and queens of monarchies can unilaterally declare war with little regard for their subjects’ safety, governments chosen by the people take the decision more seriously.

The United States first promoted the concepts of the Democratic Peace Theory in 1832 by adopting the Monroe Doctrine . In this historic piece of international policy, the U.S. affirmed that it would not tolerate any attempt by European monarchies to colonize any democratic nation in North or South America.

The democratic peace theory does not claim that democratic countries are generally more peaceful than nondemocratic countries. However, the theory’s claim that democratic countries rarely fight each other is widely regarded as true by international relations experts and further supported by history.

Kant’s “Perpetual Peace” essay remained largely unnoticed until the mid-1980s when the American international-relations scholar Michael Doyle cited it in arguing that the “zone of peace” envisioned by Kant had gradually become reality. After the Cold War, which pitted democratic states against communist states, the democratic peace theory became one of the most studied topics of research in international relations. This research has shown that while wars between non-democracies, or between democracies and non-democracies have been common, wars between democracies have been extremely rare.

Interest in the democratic peace theory has not been limited to the halls of academia. During the 1990s, U.S. President Bill Clinton featured it in many aspects of his administration’s foreign policy of spreading democracy throughout the world. Clinton’s foreign policy asserted that if the formerly autocratic nations of Eastern Europe and the collapsed Soviet Union converted to democracy, the United States and its allies in Europe would no longer need to restrain those countries militarily because democracies do not attack each other.

The democratic peace theory similarly influenced U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. U.S. policymakers believed that a zone of democracy equaled a zone of peace and security that supported President George W. Bush’s strategy of using military force to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s ruthless dictatorship in Iraq. Bush’s administration hoped that the democratization of Iraq would eventually result in the spread of democracy throughout the Middle East.

Democracies and War in the 1900s

Perhaps the strongest evidence supporting the Democratic Peace Theory is the fact that there were no wars between democracies during the 20th century.

As the century began, the recently ended Spanish-American War had seen the United States defeat the monarchy of Spain in a struggle for control of the Spanish colony of Cuba.

In World War I , the U.S. allied with the democratic European empires to defeat the authoritarian and fascist empires of Germany, Austro-Hungary, Turkey, and their allies. This led to World War II and eventually the Cold War of the 1970s, during which the U.S. led a coalition of democratic nations in resisting the spread of authoritarian Soviet communism .

Most recently, in the Gulf War (1990-91), the Iraq War (2003-2011), and the ongoing war in Afghanistan , the United States, along with various democratic nations fought to counter international terrorism by radical jihadist factions of authoritarian Islamist governments. Indeed, after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks , the George W. Bush administration based its use military force to topple Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship in Iraq on the belief that it would bring democracy—thus peace—to the Middle East.

While the claim that democracies rarely fight each other has been widely accepted, there is less agreement on why this so-called democratic peace exists.

Some critics have argued that it was actually the Industrial Revolution that led to peace during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The resulting prosperity and economic stability made all of the newly modernized countries—democratic and nondemocratic—much less belligerent toward each other than in preindustrial times. Several factors arising from modernization may have generated a greater aversion to war among industrialized nations than democracy alone. Such factors included higher standards of living, less poverty, full employment, more leisure time, and the spread of consumerism. Modernized countries simply no longer felt the need to dominate each other in order to survive.

Democratic Peace Theory has also been criticized for failing to prove a cause-and-effect relationship between wars and types of government and the ease with which definitions of “democracy” and “war” can be manipulated to prove a non-existent trend. While its authors included very small, even bloodless wars between new and questionable democracies, one 2002 study contends that as many wars have been fought between democracies as might be statistically expected between non-democracies.

Other critics argue that throughout history, it has been the evolution of power, more than democracy or its absence that has determined peace or war. Specifically, they suggest that the effect called “liberal democratic peace” is really due to “realist” factors including military and economic alliances between democratic governments.

Sources and Further Reference

Owen, J. M. “ How Liberalism Produces Democratic Peace .” International Security (1994).
Schwartz, Thomas and Skinner, Kiron K. (2002) “ The Myth of the Democratic Peace .” Foreign Policy Research Institute.
Gat, Azar (2006). “ The Democratic Peace Theory Reframed: The Impact of Modernity .” Cambridge University Press.
Pollard, Sidney (1981). “ Peaceful Conquest: The Industrialization of Europe, 1760–1970 .” Oxford University Press.
Republic vs. Democracy: What Is the Difference?
The Differences Between Socialism and Communism
Democracy Promotion as Foreign Policy
U.S. Policy in the Middle East: 1945 to 2008
American Manifest Destiny and Modern Foreign Policy
What Is Democracy? Definition and Examples
Understanding the Bush Doctrine
Impacts of the Iraq War on the Middle East
What Is Interventionism? Definition and Examples
What Is a Military Dictatorship? Definition and Examples
Is Iraq a Democracy?
What Is Autocracy? Definition and Examples
Who Were the Democratic Presidents of the United States?
Sunni Versus Shiite Conflict Explained
National Security Definition and Examples
Why Did the United States Go to War with Iraq?

Subject List
Take a Tour
For Authors
Subscriber Services
Publications
African American Studies
African Studies
American Literature
Anthropology
Architecture Planning and Preservation
Art History
Atlantic History
Biblical Studies
British and Irish Literature
Childhood Studies
Chinese Studies
Cinema and Media Studies
Communication
Criminology
Environmental Science
Evolutionary Biology
International Law
International Relations
Islamic Studies
Jewish Studies
Latin American Studies
Latino Studies
Linguistics
Literary and Critical Theory
Medieval Studies
Military History

Political Science

Public Health
Renaissance and Reformation
Social Work
Urban Studies
Victorian Literature
Browse All Subjects

How to Subscribe

Free Trials

In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Democratic Peace Theory

Introduction, general overviews.

Early Empirical Work
Casualties and Public Support for War
Audience Costs
Variation among Democratic Political Institutions
Variation among Authoritarian Political Institutions
Democracy and War Outcomes
Democracy, Alliance, and Wars
Democracies, Conscription, and War
Normative Accounts
Systemic Outlooks and the Effect of Peace on Democracy
Constructivist Accounts
Democratization
Methodological Debates
Common Interests
Critiques of the Normative Account
Critiques of Democracy and War Outcomes
Secrecy and Covert Action
Qualitative Empirical Scholarship
Formal Theory

Other Subject Areas

Forthcoming articles expand or collapse the "forthcoming articles" section.

Cross-National Surveys of Public Opinion
Politics of School Reform
Ratification of the Constitution
Find more forthcoming articles...
Export Citations
Share This Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

Democratic Peace Theory by Dan Reiter LAST REVIEWED: 25 October 2012 LAST MODIFIED: 25 October 2012 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756223-0014

Democratic peace is the proposition that democracies are more peaceful in their foreign relations. This idea dates back centuries, at least to Immanuel Kant and other 18th-century Enlightenment thinkers. In recent decades it has constituted a major research agenda, competing with and arguably supplanting other research agendas such as neo-realism. The democratic peace proposition has many possible empirical and theoretical forms. On the empirical side, some propose that democracies are more peaceful in their relations with all other states in the system (“monadic” democratic peace); some propose that democracies are more peaceful only in their relations with other democracies (“dyadic” democratic peace); others argue that the more democracies there are in a region or the international system, the more peaceful the region or international system will be (“systemic” democratic peace); and still others doubt the existence of any significant relationship between democracy and peace. Notably, most although not all empirical research on the democratic peace has employed quantitative methods of analysis. On the theoretical side, there are many different accounts of the relationship between democracy and peace, with most focusing on domestic political institutions, domestic political norms, and constructed identities. The democratic peace proposition is connected to many other propositions linking domestic politics and international relations, including that democracies are more likely to cooperate with each other, that democracies are more likely to win the wars they fight, that escalating military casualties degrade public support for war, that leaders initiate conflict to secure their domestic hold on power (the diversionary hypothesis), that democracies fight shorter wars, that different kinds of democracies experience different kinds of conflict behavior, that different kinds of authoritarian systems experience different kinds of conflict behavior, and others. The democratic peace also overlaps with related ideas such as the liberal peace and the commercial peace.

The democratic peace proposition has been lurking in Western thought for millennia, as Weart 1998 shows, but Kant 1991 provides its first modern formulation. The idea that global democracy would provide a solid foundation for global peace was restated in 1917 by Woodrow Wilson as a justification for American entry into World War I and then as part of his vision for a new world order. Modern political science first observed the dyadic democratic peace—that democracies tend not to fight each other—in the 1970s. The observation enjoyed greater attention in the 1980s in particular in two pathbreaking 1983 essays by Michael Doyle, reprinted in Doyle 2011 . It received fuller theoretical and empirical attention in the 1990s. Fukuyama 1992 , a famous argument that humanity had reached “the end of history,” incorporates the democratic peace proposition. Other scholars sought to develop the theory and push forward more advanced research designs in works such as Russett 1993 ; Ray 1995 ; and Rousseau, et al. 1996 . In the 2000s, proponents of the democratic peace responded to their critics and embedded the democratic peace in a broader Kantian peace ( Russett and Oneal 2001 ).

Doyle, Michael W. Liberal Peace: Selected Essays . New York: Routledge, 2011.

Contains a number of Doyle’s important essays, especially from the 1980s, that lay out the philosophical and theoretical basis of the democratic peace.

Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man . New York: Free Press, 1992.

Presents a Hegelian argument that humanity has at last achieved its penultimate form of political and economic organization, liberal democracy. The definitive intellectual statement that Western values triumphed in the Cold War.

Huth, Paul K., and Todd L. Allee. The Democratic Peace and Territorial Conflict in the Twentieth Century . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Application of the democratic peace to territorial conflict in the 20th century. Presents a massive new data set on territorial conflicts.

Kant, Immanuel. Kant’s Political Writings . 2d ed. Edited by Hans S. Reiss. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Central essay is on the “perpetual peace,” which presents Kant’s vision as to how republics can maintain world peace. Originally published in 1796.

Ray, James Lee. Democracy and International Conflict: An Evaluation of the Democratic Peace Proposition . Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995.

Provides an extensive literature review on democratic peace literature up to the early 1990s as well as case studies of the Fashoda Crisis and Spanish-American War.

Rousseau, David L., Christopher Gelpi, Dan Reiter, and Paul K. Huth. “Assessing the Dyadic Nature of the Democratic Peace, 1918–1988.” American Political Science Review 90.3 (1996): 512–533.

DOI: 10.2307/2082606

Important, early empirical test of the democratic peace, presenting important research design advances.Available online by subscription.

Russett, Bruce. Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post–Cold War World . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993.

The first book-length treatment of the democratic peace. Lays out the normative and institutional explanations of the democratic peace and presents a variety of different forms of rigorous evidence demonstrating the dyadic democratic peace, including sophisticated analysis of post-1945 conflict behavior.

Russett, Bruce, and John R. Oneal. Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations . New York: Norton, 2001.

Embedded the democratic peace in a larger theoretical framework, the Kantian Peace, in which democracy, trade, international organization, and peace all mutually reinforce each other. Presented more sophisticated empirical tests, addressing many 1990s theoretical and empirical critiques. Also see Democratization .

Weart, Spencer R. Never at War: Why Democracies Will Never Fight One Another . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998.

Summarizes several years of work on democratic peace theory. Presents a narrative rather than statistical empirical tests. One main contribution is the analysis of democratic peace in pre-Napoleonic times, including ancient Greece and medieval Italy. Discusses the phenomena of democratic aggression and imperialism.

Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login .

Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here .

About Political Science »
Meet the Editorial Board »
Oceania, Gender, Indigenous and Ethnic Political Represent...
Advanced Democracies, Electoral System Reform in
Advanced Democracies, Public Opinion and Public Policy in
Advertising and Election Campaigns in the United States
Africa, Comparative Politics of
Africa, Ethnic, Linguistic, Religious, and Regional Minori...
Africa, Public Opinion in
Africa, Women’s Political Representation in
African Development, Politics of
American Indian Politics
Ancient Chinese Political Thought
Arab Spring, The
Arab-Israel Conflict, The
Arendt, Hannah
Argentine Government and Politics
Aristotle's Political Thought
Arms Race Modeling
Asia, Environmental Politics in
Asia, Water Politics in
Asian American Mobilization and Political Identities
Australia and New Zealand, Comparative Politics of
Authoritarian Regimes, Lawyers in
Authoritarianism in Russia
Authoritarianism in the Public
Authoritarianism in Turkey
Bicameralism in Stable Democracies
Big Data in Political Science Research
Biopolitics and State Regulation of Human Life
Birthright Citizenship
Brazilian Foreign Policy
Brazilian Political Development
Brexit, British Politics, and European Integration
Business-State Relations in Europe
Campaign Finance in the Era of Super-PACS
Canadian Foreign Policy
Canadian Government and Politics
Candidate Emergence and Recruitment
Caribbean, Elections and Democracy in the
Celebrities in US Politics
Channels of Electoral Representation in Advanced Industria...
China, Political Economy of
China's One-Child Policy
China-Taiwan Relations
Chinese Communist Party
Chinese Economic Policy
Chinese Nationalism
Civil Society in South Asia
Civil War in Sub-Saharan Africa
Civil-Military Relations in Asia
Class in American Politics
Climate Change and Politics
Collective Memory
Colombian Politics and Government
Comparative Capitalism Theory
Comparative Industrial Relations in Europe
Comparative Political Economy of Resource Extraction
Comparative Politics of Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bis...
Comparative Politics of Chile and Uruguay
Comparative Politics of Federalism
Comparative Politics of the Middle East and North Africa
Computational Social Science
Congress, Defense, and Foreign Policy
Congressional Reassertion of Authority
Conservative Litigation Strategies and Groups in US Judici...
Constitutional Politics in Asia
Constitutionalism
Corruption in China
Cosmopolitan Political Thought
Crisis of European Integration in Historical Perspective, ...
Critical Elections, Partisan Realignment, and Long-Term El...
Critical Theory and the Frankfurt School
Cuban Political Development
Cycles of Protest
Democracies, Political Clientelism in
Democracy and Authoritarianism, Empirical Indicators of
Democracy and Authoritarianism in Sub-Saharan Africa
Democracy and Dictatorship in Central Asia
Democracy and Minority Language Recognition
Democracy in Latin America
Democratic Consolidation
Democratic Peace Theory
Democratic Theory
Democratization in Africa
Democratization in Mexico
Democratization in the Muslim World
Development of Survey Research
Diasporas and Politics
Direct Democracy in the United States
Dual Citizenship
East Africa, Politics of
East and Southeast Asia, Political Party Systems in
East and Southeast Asia, Women and Politics in
East Asia, Civil Society and Social Movements in
Economic Voting
Effects of the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks on American Public O...
Egalitarianism
Election Forecasting
Election Laws in Democracies
Election Observation and the Detection of Fraud
Electoral and Party System Development in Sub-Saharan Afri...
Electoral Assistance
Electoral Change in Latin America
Electoral Institutions and Women’s Representation
Electoral Reform and Voting in the United States
Electoral Volatility in the New Democracies of Latin Ameri...
Electronic Voting Systems
Emotion and Racial Attitudes in Contemporary American Poli...
Environmental Governance
Environmental Politics among Advanced Industrial Democraci...
Ethnic Diasporas and US Foreign Policy
Ethnic Politics
Eurasia, Comparative Politics of
European Parliament, The
European Social Democracy
European Union, Politics of the
Extension of Voting Rights to Emigrants
Failed and Weak States in Theory and Practice
Far-Right Parties in Europe
Federalism in the United States
Feminist Political Thought
Field Experiments
Filibuster, The
Framing Effects in Political Communication
Gender and Electoral Politics in the United States
Gender and International Relations
Gender and Political Violence
Gender and Politics in South Asia
Gender, Behavior, and Representation
Gender Gap in US Public Opinion
Gender Stereotypes in Politics
Genetic Underpinnings of Political Attitudes and Behaviors
German Politics and Government
Global Inequality
Globalization and the Welfare State
Globalization, Health Crises, and Health Care
Governance in Africa
Governmental Responses to Political Corruption
Gridlock and Divided Government in the U.S.
Health-Care Politics in the United States
Historiography of Twentieth-Century American Conservatism,...
Hobbes’s Political Thought
Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of
Hume’s Political Thought
Hybrid Regimes
Ideal Point Estimation
Identity and Political Behavior
Ideological Reasoning in Politics
Illiberal Democracies and Democratic Backsliding
Immigrant Incorporation in Canada
Immigrant Incorporation in Western Europe
Immigration and European Politics
Immigration and International Relations
Immigration Politics and Policy in the United States
Impact of Campaign Contributions on Congressional Behavior...
Impact of C-SPAN on US Democracy
Implicit Attitudes in Public Opinion
Income Dynamics and Politics in North America and Europe
Income Inequality and Advanced Democracies
Income Inequality in the United States, The Politics of
Independent Voters, The Study of
Indian Democracy
Indigenous Politics and Representation in Latin America
Indigenous Rights and Governance in Canada, Australia, and...
Indonesia, Politics of
Informal Practices of Accountability in Urban Africa
Institutional Change in Advanced Democracies
Institutional Factors Affecting Women’s Political Engageme...
Intellectual Property in International Relations
Interest Groups and Inequality in the United States
Interest Groups in American Politics
Interethnic Contact and Impact on Attitudes
International Criminal Justice
International NGOs
International Political Economy of Illegal Drugs
Internet and Politics, The
Intersectionality in Political Science
Interstate Border Dispute Management in the Indo-Pacific
Iran, Political Development of
Israeli Politics
Italian Politics and Government
Judicial Supremacy and National Judicial Review
Judiciaries and Politics in East Asia
Kant's Political Thought
Labor Migration: Dynamics and Politics
Labor Politics in East Asia
Land Reform in Latin America
Latin America, Democratic Transitions in
Latin America, Electoral Reform in
Latin America, Environmental Policy and Politics in
Latin America, Guerrilla Insurgencies in
Latin America, Social Movements in
Legal Mobilization
LGBT Politics in the United States
Liberal Pluralism
Libertarianism
Local Governments in the United States
Machiavelli’s Political Thought
Malaysian Politics and Government
Marx's Political Thought
Mass Incarceration and US Politics
Mechanisms of Representation
Media Effects in Politics
Media Politics in South Asia
Mexican Political Development
Mexican Politics and Government
Military Government in Latin America, 1959–1990
Minority Governments
Minority Political Engagement and Representation in the Un...
Mixed-Member Electoral Systems
Modern Dynastic Rule
Modern Elections and Voting Behavior in Europe
Motivated Reasoning
Narrative Analysis
National Interbranch Politics in the United States
Nationalism
NATO, Politics of
Negative Campaigning
Neoclassical Realism
New Institutionalism Revisited, The
Nigerian Politics and Government
North America, Comparative Politics of
Oil, Politics of
Online Public Opinion Polling
Organized Criminal Syndicates and Governance in Mexico and...
Origins and Impact of Proportional Representation, The
Outcomes of Social Movements and Protest Activities
Partisan and Nonpartisan Theories of Organization in the U...
Partisan Polarization in the US Congress
Partisan Polarization in the US Electorate
Party Networks
Party System Institutionalization in Democracies
Peace Operations
Personality and Politics
Personalization of Politics
Philippine Politics and Government
Plato’s Political Thought
Policy Feedback
Policy Responsiveness to Public Opinion
Political Ambition
Political Economy of Financial Regulation in Advanced Ind...
Political Economy of India
Political Economy of Taxation, The
Political Geography in American Politics
Political Humor and Its Effects
Political Institutions and the Policymaking Process in Lat...
Political Obligation
Political Participation and Representation, Black
Political Parties and Electoral Politics of Japan
Political Roles and Activities of Former Presidents and Pr...
Political Thought, Hegel's
Political Thought of the American Founders, The
Politics and Government, BeNeLux
Politics and Policy in Contemporary Argentina
Politics, Gender Quotas in
Politics of Anti-Americanism
Politics of Class Formation
Politics of Disaster Prevention and Management
Politics of Ethnic Identity in China
Politics of Financial Crises
Politics of Foreign Direct Investment in South Asia
Politics of Higher Education in the U.S.
Politics of Internal Conquest in the United States and Can...
Politics of Japan
Politics of Natural Disasters, The
Politics of North Korea
Politics of Science and Technology
Politics of South Africa
Politics of Southern Africa
Politics of the American South
Politics of the Philippines: From Rizal to Duterte
Politics of the US-Mexico Border
Populism in Latin America
Positive and Negative Partisanship
Postcolonial Political Theory
Postcolonialism and International Relations
Post-Communist Democratization
Preferential Trade Agreements, Politics of
Presidential Candidate Selection in Comparative Perspectiv...
Presidential Persuasion and Public Opinion
Presidential Primaries and Caucuses
Private Governance
Protest Participation
Public Opinion in Affluent Democracies
Public Opinion in Europe toward the European Union
Public Opinion in New Democracies and Developing Nations
Public Opinion on Immigration
Public Opinion toward the Environment and Climate Change i...
Public Presidency, US Elections, and the Permanent Campaig...
Qualitative Methods, The Renewal of
Race in American Political Thought
Racial and Ethnic Descriptive Representation in the United...
Recruitment and Selection for Elected Office
Redistricting and Electoral Competition in American Politi...
Referendums and Direct Democracy
Regime Transitions and Variation in Post-Communist Europe
Regional Integration
Regional Integration in Latin America
Regulating Food Production
Religion and Politics in Latin America
Religion in American Political Thought
Religion in Contemporary Political Thought
Religion, Politics, and Civic Engagement in the United Sta...
Republicanism
Rousseau’s Political Thought
Rule of Law
Russia and the West
Science and Democracy
Science and Social Movements
Secession and Secessionist Movements
Semi-Presidential Systems
Social Networks, Mass Publics, and Democratic Politics
Social Policy and Immigrant Integration
South Asian Political Thought
South Korea, Politics of
Southeast Asia, International Relations in
Southeast Asian Politics
Spanish Politics and Government
Spectacle, The
Sport and Politics
State Building in Sub-Saharan Africa
State Formation
State, The Nature of the
State-Society Relations in South Asia
Stereotypes in Political Reasoning
Supreme Court and Public Opinion
Supreme Court of the United States, The
Systemic Theories of International Politics
Taiwan, Politics of
Tea Party, The
Thailand, Politics of
The Crisis of European Integration in Historical Perspecti...
The New Right in American Political Thought
The Politics of Parenthood: Attitudes, Behavior, Policy, a...
The Politics of Waste and Social Inequalities in Indian Ci...
Third-Party Politics in the United States
Tocqueville’s Political Thought
Transboundary Pollution
Transitional Justice
Transnational Private Regulation
Trust in Latin American Governing Institutions
Turkey, Political Development of
US Politics, Neoliberalism in
US Presidency, The
US Presidential Campaigns and Their Impact
Venezuela, The Path Toward Authoritarianism in
Voter Support for Women Candidates
Voter Turnout
Voter Turnout Field Experiments
Voting Technology and Election Administration in the Unite...
War, Factors Influencing Popular Support for
Welfare State Development
Welfare State Development in Latin America
Welfare State Development in Western Europe
West Africa, Politics of
White Identity Politics
Women and Conflict Studies
Women’s Inclusion in Executive Cabinets
Women’s Legal and Constitutional Rights
Women’s Political Activism and Civic Engagement in Latin A...
Women’s Representation in Governmental Office in Latin Ame...
Women’s Representation in the Middle East and North Africa
Workers’ Politics in China
Youth and Generational Differences in US Politics
Privacy Policy
Cookie Policy
Legal Notice
Accessibility

[66.249.64.20|185.66.14.133]
185.66.14.133

Conclusion: Ironic Democratic Peace Theory

Cite this chapter.

Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen 2

55 Accesses

It was time for the West to make peace when Western leaders were convinced that the war had made a former enemy into a civil society. The West came into being during the First World War as an alliance of democratic governments allied by virtue of their belief that the war could result in a lasting peace only if ‘the world was made safe for democracy’. This shows that peace is not a fact; peace is a policy. Western peacemaking has been a distinct type of policy defined by an ontology of civil society and a number of different epistemological approaches to how to keep the peace. Because the West defined peace in terms of the ‘domestic peace and regular policy’ which it believed were a mark of its civil societies, the West could not accept that peace was possible with non-civil societies. One could of course end wars with non-liberal states, but such a peace could never last. It would be a comma on history’s list of war, just a pause until war broke out again. The values of civil society held different ambitions for peace. Immanuel Kant described these ambitions in his plans for a pacific federation guaranteeing a cosmopolitan international order. Following this Kantian script the West wanted definitive peacemaking that would make war not only impossible but also unthinkable as a means of policy between states.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Available as PDF
Read on any device
Instant download
Own it forever
Compact, lightweight edition
Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
Free shipping worldwide - see info
Durable hardcover edition

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen, Denmark

Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen ( Senior Research Fellow )

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Copyright information

About this chapter

Rasmussen, M.V. (2003). Conclusion: Ironic Democratic Peace Theory. In: The West, Civil Society and the Construction of Peace. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230512863_6

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230512863_6

Publisher Name : Palgrave Macmillan, London

Print ISBN : 978-1-349-51319-2

Online ISBN : 978-0-230-51286-3

eBook Packages : Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies Collection Political Science and International Studies (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Find a journal
Track your research

Search Menu
Sign in through your institution
Advance articles
ISQ Data Archive
Author Guidelines
Submission Site
Open Access
About International Studies Quarterly
About the International Studies Association
Editorial Team
Editorial Board
Advertising and Corporate Services
Journals Career Network
Self-Archiving Policy
Dispatch Dates
Journals on Oxford Academic
Books on Oxford Academic

Article Contents

Introduction, the wisdom of crowds in democracies versus autocracies, methodology and results, external validity, supplementary information.

< Previous

The Democratic Peace and the Wisdom of Crowds

Authors’ note: For their helpful comments and feedback on this project, we would like to thank Scott Wolforth, David Lake, Dan Neilson, Rachel Stein, Jessica Stanton, James Fowler, Robert Trager, Iyad Rahwan, Michal Tomz, Jessica Weeks, Rebecca Morton, the Human Nature Group at the University of California, San Diego, the Scalable Cooperation Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, the University of Virginia International Relations Workshop, the University of California, Los Angeles International Relations Workshop, and the Security Hub at the Orfalea Center at University of California, Santa Barbara. We also thank Daniel Nexon and the editorial team at International Studies Quarterly , along with three peer reviewers for their comments, edits, and helpful suggestions.

Article contents
Figures & tables
Supplementary Data

Brad L LeVeck, Neil Narang, The Democratic Peace and the Wisdom of Crowds, International Studies Quarterly , Volume 61, Issue 4, December 2017, Pages 867–880, https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqx040

Permissions Icon Permissions

This article proposes a new theory for the democratic peace that highlights a previously unexplored advantage enjoyed by democracies in crises. We argue that because democracies typically include a larger number of decision-makers in the foreign policy process, they will produce fewer decision-making errors in situations of crisis bargaining. Thus, bargaining among larger groups of diverse decision-makers will fail less often. In order to test our hypothesis, we use data from experiments in which subjects engage in ultimatum bargaining games. We compare the performance of individuals, small groups and foreign policy experts against the performance of larger groups of decision-makers. We find strong support for the idea that collective decision-making among larger groups of decision-makers decreases the likelihood of bargaining failure.

Few phenomena in the field of international relations receive the same level of academic attention as the finding that democracies tend to resolve their conflicts with one another through means short of war. This well-established pattern—the democratic peace—has two parts: first, and most famously, the existence of few, if any, clear cases of war between established democracies ( Chan 1984 ; Kant [1795] 1969 ; Maoz and Abdolali 1989 ; Weede 1984 , 1992 ); second, and somewhat more controversially, evidence that democracies are no less war-prone overall than other kinds of states ( Bremer1992 , 1993 ; Dixon 1993 ; 1994 ; Lake 1992 ; Small and Singer 1976 ). In other words, democracies rarely—if ever—fight each other, but because they fight as many war—on average—as other states, it follows that they frequently find themselves in wars against nondemocratic states.

These findings are of such potential importance to policymakers that scholars have, over the last several decades, subjected them to numerous empirical checks. Overall, these tests support the existence of a democratic peace ( Gartzke 1998 , 2000 ; Kacowicz 1995 ; Lemke and Reed 1996 ; Maoz and Abdolali 1989 ; Maoz and Russett 1993 ; Oneal and Russett 1999 , 2001 ; Rousseau et al. 1996 ; Russett 1993 ; Russett, Oneal, and Davis 1998 ; Small and Singer 1976 ; Thompson and Tucker 1997 ; Dafoe 2011 ). 1 As Levy notes, “the absence of war between democratic states comes as close as anything we have to an empirical law in international relations” (1989, 270).

Perhaps not surprisingly, theories of the democratic peace continue to proliferate alongside empirical tests, in part because of the difficulty in accounting for the apparent dyadic nature of the observation. What is it about their institutions that facilitate peaceful relations among democratic states? Drawing on a now well-established literature on the advantages of group decision-making, we propose a new theory for the democratic peace. We highlight a previously underexplored advantage that democracies may have in crisis bargaining. Specifically, we argue that democratic states have diverse collections of independently deciding individuals. This will likely lead democracies to produce fewer decision-making errors than states that place more foreign policy decision processes in the hands of smaller and more homogenous groups of individuals—whether individual leaders or even foreign policy experts.

We test these expectations via a simple experimental design that isolates one key difference between democratic and autocratic decision-making: democracies typically have a larger group of decision-makers involved in the foreign policy process. Closely matching our experimental conditions with both the assumptions of the bargaining model of war and the “wisdom of the crowds” literature, we find strong support for the idea that collective decision-making decreases the likelihood of bargaining failure. Across experimental conditions, larger groups of decision-makers consistently outperform individuals in situations of ultimatum bargaining, whether they are matched against a smaller group of individuals (i.e., in a mixed dyad) or other, similarly large groups. The findings imply that existing theories of the democratic peace that appeal to shared normative values, accountability, or transparency may be correct, but also incomplete, as simply aggregating decision-makers’ bargaining choices through a voting institution replicates two key features of the democratic peace finding in a controlled experimental setup; democratic dyads avoid costly bargaining failure more than autocratic or mixed dyads, and democracies do no worse than other regime types in terms of bargaining outcomes.

The Wisdom of Crowds

In the opening anecdote of his popular book The Wisdom of the Crowds , Surowiecki (2005 ) illustrates a classic example of how crowds may be wise. At a 1906 county fair in Plymouth, England, British scientist Francis Galton came across a weight-judging competition in which members of a gathering crowd lined up to place wagers on the weight of a fat ox. The best guess won the prize. Seven hundred and eighty-seven diverse individuals (including expert butchers and farmers and nonexpert clerks) tried their luck at guessing the ox’s weight in an attempt to win prizes. When the contest was over, Galton borrowed the tickets from the organization and analyzed the guesses, hoping to show that the average voter was capable of very little. Adding the contestants’ estimates together and calculating the mean, Galton used this number to represent the collective wisdom of the Plymouth crowd, acting as if the crowd voted as a single person. Given the mixture of the crowd, which included relatively “smart” guesses from experts with relatively “dumb” guesses from nonexperts, Galton undoubtedly expected the guesses would be way off. The crowd guessed the ox would weigh 1,197 pounds. The actual weight of the ox was 1,198 pounds. In Surowiecki’s words, “the crowd’s judgment was essentially perfect” (2005, xiii).

What Galton discovered in averaging the guesses of the Plymouth crowd was a phenomenon now reproduced in multiple real-world and experimental settings—that under certain conditions, groups of independent decision-makers can be remarkably smart, even smarter than the smartest members within that group. While it was certainly true that the “dumbest” members of the Plymouth crowd performed considerably worse than the so-called “experts” as Galton predicted (each individual in the group was off by an average of nearly fifty-five pounds, with a standard deviation of roughly sixty-two pounds), their guesses appeared wrong in very different ways. Some individuals dramatically overestimated the weight of the ox and others dramatically underestimated its weight. In averaging a diverse set of individual guesses, the errors canceled out and thus produced a collectively wise decision. In other words, even if most people within a group are not particularly well informed or rational (lacking the ability and desire to make sophisticated cost-benefit calculations), when those imperfect judgments are aggregated together, our collective intelligence is oftentimes superior to the smartest of decision-makers ( Tetlock 2005 ).

The importance of this finding for studying the behavior of political and social groups was not lost on Galton. In particular, the analogy to a democracy where people of radically different abilities and interests each get one vote suggested itself immediately. In Galton’s words, “[t]he average competitor was probably as well fitted for making a just estimate of the dressed weight of the ox, as an average voter is of judging the merits of most political issues on which he votes” (Surowiecki 2005, xii). Despite his own belief that power in society should belong to a select few with the best qualities for breeding, Galton later conceded that, “the result seems more creditable to the trustworthiness of a democratic judgment than might be expected” (Surowiecki 2005, xiii).

Average accuracy in this equation refers to the average magnitude of each individual’s error. Diversity refers to how different individual guesses are on average. What the first term in this simple equation makes clear is that crowds must know something about the issue at hand. If individuals know nothing about an issue and are wildly wrong, then the crowd will still tend toward incorrect decisions as well. After all, rockets are designed by groups of engineers, not laypeople. On the other hand, if a number of individuals do know something about the problem at hand, but are prone to making different types of errors, then aggregating their views can help make an accurate decision because different errors will cancel one another out. As we discuss below, it is plausible that democratic decision-makers are both accurate and diverse enough to give democracies an advantage in foreign policy decision-making.

In addition to these general rules, scholars in the psychology literature have also identified a number of specific conditions under which groups are unlikely to perform better ( Cason and Mui 1997 ; Bone Hey and Suckling 1999 ; Rockenbach Sadrieh and Barabara 2001 ; Cox and Hayne 2006 ; Puncochar and Fox 2004 ; Kerr, MacCoun, and Kramer 1996 ). 2 For example, worse decision-making may emerge when designated leaders promote conformity and self-censorship, which can lead to group-think ( Sniezek 1992 ; Kleindorfer Kunreuther and Schoemaker 1993 ; Mullen et al. 1994 ), Similarly, problems can arise when groups polarize the attitudinal judgments of their members ( Davis 1992 ; Kerr, MacCoun, and Kramer 1996 ; Cason and Mui 1997 ). Importantly, however, many of these conditions do not apply in our experimental setup, and there are also good reasons to believe that democratic decision-making is less vulnerable to many of these harmful conditions. We describe these reasons in detail below.

If a diverse group of independently deciding individuals can be collectively wise—and this may be behind some of democracies’ ability to formulate superior policy decisions—it is surprising that more attention has not been paid to this particular democratic advantage in foreign policy decision-making. 3 Perhaps democracies, by aggregating predictions from a diverse population of intelligent agents, may outperform a team comprised of even the best-performing agents. That is, it might be the case that democracies have an advantage in foreign policy decision-making when compared against alternative institutional forms like autocracies that aggregate information from a smaller, less diverse set of “expert” individuals.

Even though foreign policy decision-making in democracies is oftentimes dominated by a relatively small group of educated elites ( Saunders 2011 ; Hafner-Burton, Hughes, and Victor 2013 ; Hafner-Burton, LeVeck, and Victor 2017 ), there are still compelling reasons to believe that democracies draw on a larger, more diverse set of views on average when making decisions about war bargaining. First, by holding periodic elections, citizens can express their views on which leader or mix of representatives is best suited to conduct international affairs. Indeed, existing evidence suggests that citizens, while hardly experts in foreign policy, do hold broadly informed opinions on such matters, see clear differences between the candidates on issues of foreign policy, and vote partially on the basis of these factors ( Aldrich 1999 ). Citizens may therefore elect representatives who take a particular approach to foreign policy, such as whether a state should take a more hawkish or dovish approach to matters of interstate conflict ( DeNardo 1995 ). At the same time, they may leave the details of how to best implement a given approach to elected representatives and the bureaucrats they oversee ( Lupia and McCubbins 1994 , 2003 ). The diverse approaches of different elected officials (many of whom have some input into the foreign policy decision-making process) may act like the diverse heuristics and interpretations found in recent models of collective wisdom ( Hong and Page 2004 , 2009 ). Second, citizens in democracies can more efficiently express approval or disapproval for their leader’s policies through public polls. Again, these polls may aggregate citizens’ diverse views on the wisdom of a particular approach to foreign policy. Third, democracies tend to have freer markets with exchanges that can react almost instantly to inform leaders about the expected outcome of a particular policy choice ( Gartzke 2007 ; Wolfers and Zitzewitz 2009 ). These market signals can act like weighted votes from market investors. Finally, democracies tend to establish different domestic institutions with diverse approaches or perspectives on foreign policy. For instance, in the United States, the Departments of State and Defense have different intelligence sources, decision-making structures, and personnel. 4 Yet, both institutions may have input on how to deal with a particular adversary.

Together, these information aggregation mechanisms allow for more diverse groups of independently deciding individuals to process information separately and express their own independent assessment on foreign policy matters. Thus, existing studies support the comparative-static claim that democratic decision-making is—on average—relatively more pluralistic than autocratic decision-making due to these mechanisms of accountability. This is true even though the decision to go to war in a democracy like the United States may ultimately rest with only a small group of leaders gathered in a “situation room.” Furthermore—even when aggregating similar beliefs across similar numbers of individuals—participants in autocracies often lack the incentive to tell leaders the truth ( Reiter and Stam 2002 ). And although elites may often influence or manipulate the preferences of citizens in democracies (challenging the assumption of independence) ( Zaller 1992 ; Lenz 2012 ), existing studies suggest that democratic decision-making is influenced by a more diverse set of opinions on average relative to autocratic states. 5

Even at the level of elite decision-making—outside the direct influence of everyday citizens—there is little controversy in the academic literature that democracies tend to have a larger group of decision-makers involved in the foreign policy process. At the broadest level, the Polity IV index measure—on which the democratic peace phenomenon is based—is primarily driven by the variable XCONST ( Gleditsch and Ward 1997 ), which, in a large part, codes the number of actors across institutions that constrain policy-making by the executive. The variable therefore reflects the fact that democratic policy-making is typically influenced by a larger number of independent actors. Similarly, the The Political Constraint Index (POLCONIII) ( Henisz 2000 ) used in some robustness checks of the democratic peace ( Tsebelis and Choi 2009 ) measures the raw number of institutional veto players and their relative independence in terms of preferences and ideological viewpoints. 6 As we review further in the supplementary appendix, there is also evidence that these veto players have some influence over foreign policy, not just domestic policy.

There is also plenty of qualitative evidence to support the assumption that democracies contain a larger, more diverse group of individual decision-makers on average. For example, in categorizing foreign policy decision-making across states over time, Hermann and Hermann (1989) show that autocratic regimes are almost perfectly correlated with “Predominant Leader” or “Single Group” decision units that “will be relatively insensitive to discrepant advice and data” (365), while foreign policy-making in democratic regimes is correlated with “Multiple Autonomous Actors.” 7

Even in the United States, where the executive branch is thought to enjoy a great deal of autonomy—particularly over decisions to go to war—there nevertheless exists a robust and well-documented interagency process as a mechanism for collective decision-making. At multiple levels, the US interagency process draws together a diverse collection of independently deciding actors from across multiple agencies with distinct—sometimes parochial, often times conflicting—interests and beliefs based on independent characterizations of the international system ( Raach and Kass 1995 ; Marcella 2004 ; Gorman and Krongard 2005 ). 8

Detailed historical accounts illustrate how this interagency process can aggregate a large and diverse number of views. In his seminal article “Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” Allison (1969 , 63) provides what is perhaps the most well-known example of how US foreign policy outputs are “the consequences of innumerable and oftentimes conflicting smaller actions by individuals at various levels of bureaucratic organizations in service of a variety of only partially compatible conceptions of national goals, organizational goals, and political objectives.” Specifically, Allison shows that Kennedy struggled to weigh different, and sometimes conflicting, recommendations from his closest advisors drawn from different agencies with different perspectives. The moves appeared “resultant of collegial bargaining” (Allison 1969, 691) from a “conglomerate of semifeudal, loosely allied organizations, each with a substantial life of its own” (Allison 1969, 698). As Allison notes, “the nature of problems of foreign policy permits fundamental disagreement among reasonable men concerning what ought to be done. Analyses yield conflicting recommendations. Separate responsibilities laid on the shoulder of individual personalities encourage differences in perceptions and priorities … More often, however, different groups pulling in different directions yield a resultant distinct from what anyone intended” (Allison 1969, 707). In the US government, these actors include “chiefs”: the president; secretaries of state, defense, and treasury; director of the CIA; joint chiefs of staff; and, since 1991, the special assistant for national security affairs” (709).

Allison’s account of the decision to implement a blockade of Cuba during the crisis provides an excellent illustration of how inputs from numerous, diverse viewpoints—even from within the executive branch, where members often have a shared ideology ( Saunders 2011 )—can have a significant impact on crisis bargaining. As described by Allison, Senators Keating, Goldwater, Capehart, Thurmon, and others initially attacked Kennedy for his “do nothing approach,” while McGeorge Bundy, the president’s assistant for National Security Affairs, asserted that there was no present evidence that the Cuban and Soviet Government would attempt to install a major offensive capability (Allison 1969, 712). Meanwhile, Colonel Wright and others at DIA believed that the Soviet Union was placing missiles in Cuba. This information fell on the diverse crowd of advisers differently (Allison 1969, 713). Kennedy’s principal advisors, including Secretary of Defense McNamara, McGeroge Bundy, Theodore Sorenson, and the president’s brother Robert Kennedy, considered two tracks: do nothing and taking diplomatic action (Allison 1969, 714). However, the joint chiefs of staff advocated for a military invasion of Cuba ( Allison 1969 , 714). According to Allison, “the process by which the blockade emerged is a story of the most subtle and intricate probing, pulling, and hauling [and] leading, guiding, and spurring.” Initially, Allison notes, “the President and most of his advisers wanted the clean, surgical air strike” (Allison 1969, 714). Remarkably, however, despite the presence of a sizeable minority preferring an air strike, the president ultimately opted for a blockade after considering the advice of McNamara and Robert Kennedy (Allison 1969, 714). Reflecting on the influence of the diverse opinions of his advisors, the president’s brother claimed that “the fourteen people involved were very significant” (Allison 1969, 714).

In stark contrast to the Kennedy administration’s handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the overwhelming consensus among diplomatic historians on the Cuban Missile Crisis is that Kennedy’s counterpart in the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, drew from a much smaller group of advisors than Kennedy. Furthermore, Khrushchev systematically ignored the advisers that he did consult with during the crisis, if they even felt safe to express their true beliefs at all ( Fursenko and Naftali 1998 , 2007 ; Taubman 2003 ; Dobbs 2008 ). Beyond the case of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Hermann and Hermann (1989) use four case studies to demonstrate how autocratic regimes made the decision to initiate or escalate war after periods of failed negotiations due to their relative insensitivity to discrepant advice and data. In a more recent example, Saddam Hussein repeatedly ignored the advice of his military advisers and scientists (many of whom appeared afraid to express dissent in the first place), many of whom correctly estimated that the rate of Iraq’s nuclear program ran a high risk of triggering war ( Horowitz and Narang 2014 ; Braut-Hegghammer 2016 ). This further illustrates how autocracies may be worse at incorporating knowledge dispersed among multiple actors, even when those actors hold key advisory roles in government.

The Wisdom of Crowds and the Democratic Peace

The possibility that a more diverse collection of independently deciding individuals characteristic of democratic states might be superior to nondemocracies in predictive tasks has important implications for the democratic peace finding. Existing theories of the democratic peace tend to argue that democratic institutions facilitate peaceful relations among states in two ways: first, democratic institutions can help align the interests of leaders with their citizens, and, second, democratic institutions may improve the quality of information conveyed by states during crisis bargaining. 9

The first of these explanations begins with the idea that democratic institutions tend to hold leaders accountable for the costs of war. 10 War can be an extremely costly and risky process for citizens. They pay the psychological and material costs of fighting in the form of lives lost and higher taxes. However, political leaders—who ultimately make the decision to wage war—rarely suffer these costs themselves. If leaders expect to enjoy the benefits of victory with little to no exposure to the costs of waging war, they will prove more inclined to fight a risky war rather than negotiate a compromise.

According to this view, representative forms of governments better align the interests of the ruler with the ruled by periodically holding leaders accountable to their citizenry ( Doyle 1997 , 24–25; Russett 1993 , 38–39). Because democratic institutions make leaders more sensitive to the costs of war, they thereby decrease the probability that leaders will fight for personal gain ( Maoz and Russett 1993 ; Russett 1996). If war is costlier for democratic leaders, they should be less willing to risk war on average compared to leaders of nondemocratic states—who can afford to gamble with others’ lives and resources. This heightened sensitivity to the costs of war may also explain why democracies fight with nondemocracies more often. If democratic leaders are less willing to pay the cost of war, autocratic states should challenge democracies more frequently and demand greater concessions during diplomatic negotiations, thereby increasing the risk of war.

A second popular explanation focuses on how democratic institutions may influence crisis bargaining between states. Building off the bargaining model of war ( Fearon 1995 ), this argument rests on the idea that war results from bargaining failure due to credible commitment problems or the effects of private information on negotiations. It wagers that something about democratic institutions must solve these problems. Thus, democracies are more likely to find mutually beneficial bargains that avoid the costs of war. In particular, proponents of this argument suggest that democracies may be better able to resolve the informational problem that arises when sides have private information about their costs of war relative to the issues at stake. For example, democratic decision-making processes are often more open and transparent, especially in cases where different representatives argue or negotiate over foreign policy in public forums ( Schultz 1998 , 2001 ). This greater transparency of democratic decision-making allows opposing states to better assess the true capabilities and resolve of democratic states ( Schultz 1998 ). 11

While both of these arguments suggest plausible mechanisms that might account for the democratic peace, neither one addresses the possibility that democracy may produce superior foreign policy decision-making processes. The first argument simply suggests that leaders representing democracies are pacific because democratic institutions more directly expose them to the costs of war. This should bias democracies toward peace in general, but does little to explain why—if democratic institutions heighten leaders’ sensitivity to the costs of war, which, in turn, causes nondemocracies to exploit their pacific tendency to make greater demands—democracies do not perform worse, on average, than other kinds of states in crisis bargaining situations ( Bueno de Mesquita et al. 1999 ). That is, no evidence implies that nondemocratic states generally extract greater concessions from democratic states over time because the latter are more inclined to back down.

The second argument incorporates our understanding of crisis bargaining. It acknowledges that all parties—regardless of regime type—have an incentive to avoid war. But it also wagers that democracies are better able to convey their own capabilities and resolve to opponents. It therefore implies that democracies are less likely to be challenged in the first place when possible adversaries perceive them to have high levels of resolve. But this argument may be incomplete. It treats the role of the democratic decision-making process as strictly passive—as allowing an opponent to better assess a democratic state’s reservation price. But it ascribes no distinct advantages to democratic foreign policy decision-making itself.

Our argument is substantially different. In contrast to previous theories of the democratic peace, we propose an alternative mechanism through which democracies may be able to resolve the informational problems that lead to bargaining failure. For the reasons outlined above, we posit that democracies are better able to aggregate and interpret noisy signals gathered during a crisis in a way that cancels out decision-making errors.

Consider the simplest model of crisis bargaining as outlined by Fearon (1995) . In this setup, two states ( S 1 and S 2 ) have divergent preferences over the division of some issue space represented by the interval X = [0,1], where each state’s utility is normalized to a zero to one utility space. S 1 prefers issue resolutions closer to one, while S 2 prefers resolutions closer to zero. Supposing states fight a war, S 1 prevails with probability p ∈ [0,1] and gets to choose its favorite outcome closer to 1. S 1 ’s expected utility is p u 1 (1) + (1 − p )u 1 (0) − c 1 , or p − c 1 . S 2 ’s expected utility for war is 1 + p − c 2 . The parameters c 1 and c 2 represent the costs for fighting a war to each side along with the value of winning and losing on the issues at stake. Importantly, the costs of fighting open up a range of bargained solutions between each state’s reservation price, p − c 1 and p + c 2 , that both sides should strictly prefer to paying the costs of war ( Narang 2017 , Narang and Mehta 2017 , Mehta and Narang 2017 ). Structured this way, the puzzle becomes about why sides ever fail to identify a negotiated settlement within this range ex ante, knowing that war is always inefficient ex post.

Fearon suggests that coherent rationalist explanations for war will fall into one of two categories; sides can fail to reach a bargain because (1) they have private information with incentives to misrepresent or (2) because sides are unable to credibly commit themselves to follow through on the terms of the agreement. According to the first explanation, sides have asymmetric information about their own capabilities, p , and resolve, c , and they have an incentive to overrepresent (or underrepresent) their ability on these dimensions to their opponent in order to secure a better settlement. As a result, while the costs of fighting open up a range of negotiated settlements both sides prefer to war, the incentive to bluff may lead sides to delay settlement in favor of fighting in order to accrue enough information to formulate reliable beliefs about their opponent’s strength ( Slantchev 2003 ; Narang 2014 , 2015 ).

In situations of incomplete information, war (bargaining failure) can occur in Fearon’s model if State 1 overestimates State 2’s cost of going to war, and therefore makes an offer that is too small for State 2 to accept. On the other side of the decision, war can also occur if State 2 underestimates its own costs of war and chooses to only accept offers that State 1 would not reasonably propose. In each of these cases, decision errors can happen because decision-makers have uncertainty about key parameters, and they can only estimate these parameters with some error. However, it is possible that the error made by one decision-maker within a state may be different from that of another. For example, while one decision-maker might overestimate the other state’s cost of going to war, another decision-maker could err in the opposite direction. If such views are aggregated, the errors could cancel out.

In the next section, we describe a version of the classic ultimatum game, and we use this model as the basis for an experimental research design in which we test the proposition that regimes with more decision-makers experience fewer instances of costly bargaining failure (analogous to war) and achieve outcomes that are at least as good as the outcomes achieved by regimes with fewer decision-makers.

Using observational data to identify the effect of information aggregation mechanisms on war bargaining outcomes is difficult for a number of reasons. First, asymmetric information presents the same problem for the analyst that it does for states in the international system: a state’s reservation price for war is private information that is rarely revealed. This makes it difficult to know how close one state’s offers are to another state’s reservation price for costly conflict. This is especially true for the majority of crisis bargaining scenarios, because offers rarely trigger war. Even in the rare cases where crisis bargaining devolves into war, it is impossible to know with any certainty just how much one state’s offer fell short of another state’s threshold for avoiding conflict.

Second, in an uncontrolled environment, it is difficult to ascertain what information individual decision-makers had access to and exactly how that information was filtered through executive decision-making processes. Future work needs to trace the precise process by which signals about opponents are aggregated and how these aggregated signals influence state decision-makers. But this approach is not ideal for clearly answering the more primary question of whether aggregation can influence bargaining in the manner predicted by existing theories. Such questions are better answered in an environment where the researcher can carefully control what information actors have access to, and how that information is aggregated.

An Experiment

In other words, if the proposer’s offer exceeds or equals the responder’s demand, then the pie is split according to the proposer’s offer. If the offer falls short of the demand then the offer is rejected and both parties receive zero mu.

If proposers’ and responders’ utility is strictly increasing in the amount of money they personally receive—and they both have mutual knowledge of this fact—then the unique subgame perfect Nash equilibrium for the ultimatum game is for proposers to offer zero and for responders to accept zero because they are indifferent between accepting and rejecting. If this theoretical expectation holds, this might make the ultimatum game a poor analogy to the bargaining model of war because only the proposer is strictly worse off when an offer of zero is made and rejected. However, the existence of this strategy profile does not present a major problem for testing our theory. This is because, as a practical matter, individuals in the ultimatum game almost never propose zero or set zero as their minimum acceptable offer across real world settings ( Camerer 2003 ). Thus, empirically, these potential offers—while theoretically possible—have no practical effect on our results below. 13

The infrequency of proposals that offer zero in the ultimatum game is likely due to the fact that responders exhibit aspects of real world bargaining that are crucial for our particular question: they have positive but variable minimum acceptable offers ( Camerer 2003 ; Henrich et al. 2001 ). This is because subjects derive utility from other things besides monetary payoffs—like satisfying norms of fairness or feelings of spite. So while the responder cannot possibly gain a higher payoff by demanding more, this is only true in terms of monetary payoffs. In terms of players’ utility for monetary splits, things are often different. This means that responders can rationally demand more than zero, and proposers can anticipate this by offering some positive amount to avoid bargaining failure. Numerous experiments have shown that responders’ varied thresholds for rejecting an offer do not purely reflect a mistake, but rather some actual differences in players’ utility for different monetary splits ( Camerer 2003 ; Andreoni and Blanchard 2006 ).

Crucially, heterogeneity in demands creates uncertainty for proposers regarding what offers will and will not trigger costly bargaining failure. In this regard, the experiment is analogous to many models of war bargaining under asymmetric information, such as Fearon (1995) or Powell (1999) , where the proposer makes a single take-it-or-leave-it offer under uncertainty about an opponent’s costs of war (i.e., opponent type). Such decision-making errors are analogous to a leader underestimating its opponent’s willingness to fight. Rejection in our game is analogous to a costly outside option, such as war, which both players wish to avoid in favor of some mutually acceptable bargain.

While the ultimatum game is a workhorse of laboratory studies on bargaining, our innovation is to systematically manipulate the number of decision-makers on each side and see how this affects the rate of costly bargaining failure. Other articles have looked at what happens when subjects’ views on how to play the ultimatum game are aggregated by deliberation ( Bornstein and Yaniv 1998 ) and voting ( Elbittar, Gomberg, and Sour 2011 ). However, no study to date has examined what happens to the rate of bargaining success when the number of decision-makers on each side is systematically varied. Our experiment does this with respect to voting, which is a common way for aggregating decisions.

Even though previous studies of individual bargaining in the ultimatum game suggest that decision-makers avoid bargaining failure a large fraction of the time ( Camerer 2003 ), it is far from guaranteed that aggregating subjects’ views will further increase the proportion of successful bargains in a population. For one, subjects may have informed views about how to bargain with other individuals, but may be relatively uninformed when it comes to bargaining with groups of different sizes. Second, the size of a group itself may diminish individual decision-makers’ incentives to make wise decisions ( Downs 1957 ). Making a wise vote takes mental effort, but that effort can be potentially rendered moot by other voters’ decisions ( Downs 1957 ; Popkin 1991 ). Furthermore, simply knowing that you are part of a group may make one more aggressive toward other out groups, such as the group you are bargaining with ( Tajfel and Turner 1979 ); this aggression might plausibly lead to increased bargaining failure. Whether these potential pitfalls of collective decision-making can be overcome by its advantages is an empirical question, which we test. H1: Our hypothesis is that decisions aggregated from larger groups of proposers and responders will lead to fewer instances of bargaining failure and higher earnings compared to smaller groups and individuals.

To test this, we modified an experiment by Rand et al. (2013) , where we asked proposers and responders to play a single round of the ultimatum game described above. 14 In the original experiment, each proposer submitted a single offer while each responder submitted a single demand simultaneously. Experimenters then paired demands and offers at random and paid subjects accordingly. Thus, each proposer had an incentive to make a proposal that would yield the highest expected earnings when played against a random (anonymous) responder. The expected success of each proposer’s offer in the experiment can be calculated based on how often the population of responders would reject it and how many monetary units each proposal would have earned on average.

In our modification to this experiment, we compare the success of offers and demands made by small groups of three individuals to the success of offers and demands made by much larger groups of nine individuals. These smaller groups of size three in the experiment are analogous to autocracies, which tend to have a smaller number of decision-makers included in the policy-making process. Larger groups of size nine are taken as analogous to more democratic polities, where more individuals are typically involved in the policy-making process. We use a group size of three for autocracies because it is the smallest size that has a well-defined majority. Henceforth, we refer to small groups as autocracy and large groups as democracy . Of course, all the caveats with this stylized operationalization still apply (see External Validity section below). We use a group size of nine because it represents one of the largest treatment “dosages” we could implement while still having enough observations to test our directional hypothesis (that larger groups of decision-makers decrease the rate of bargaining failure). However, in Supplementary Appendix Figure 1, we test whether our results are particularly sensitive to using nine players (as opposed to smaller groups of five or seven). We find evidence that our results are robust to these differences.

We determined a group’s proposal to the other side in the following manner: each individual in a group simultaneously and anonymously submitted a vote for what their group should offer to the other side. We then took the median offer submitted in the group to represent the group’s actual proposal. For example, say that in a group of three, individuals voted to offer seventeen, eighteen, and twenty-four. The group’s actual offer would be eighteen. While this procedure certainly does not capture the intricacies of foreign policy decision-making in a democracy or any other state, it is akin to a decision rule where the median voter’s preference is decisive, and thus it approximates a number of real-world collective decision-making bodies, such as voting in elections ( Downs 1957 ) or Congress ( Krehbiel 1998 ). Specifically, aggregation processes like this one can be understood as similar to citizens voting for politicians with a particular level of hawkishness or dovishness, representation across bureaucracies in interagency meetings ( Allison 1969 ; Janis 1972 ), or congressional votes over war authorization/war funding during crisis bargaining. While there are many significant differences across each of these aggregation mechanisms, they all collect a large number of diverse viewpoints and aggregate them into a single number or outcome that can influence or determine foreign policy.

Of course, the downside of our stylized procedure is that it abstracts away from the intricacies of any one of these mechanisms. However, the upside is that it captures our key independent variable in a way that is tractable and relatively easy to interpret. We further discuss concerns over the external validity of this mechanism in a subsequent section below.

It is also worth noting that, in the absence of deliberation, groupness in our experiment emerges from informing individuals about whether or not they played in a group before making their votes. Thus, individuals cast their vote in expectation of it becoming aggregated. Therefore, our treatment induced any behavioral changes that would arise from subjects knowingly voting as part of a group to influence the final proposal. And despite the presence of deliberation in the real world (and the attendant risk of attenuating the wisdom of the crowds), our discussion above illustrates that the risk of group-think from deliberation is much more severe in autocracies, where “predominant leader” or “single group” decision units are “relatively insensitive to discrepant advice and data” ( Hermann and Hermann 1989 , 366). Therefore, while our voting mechanism does not fully capture some of the dynamics that might emerge from deliberation, it does preserve the fact that democratic deliberation typically involves a larger number of more independent inputs.

We posted this experiment online and recruited 1,409 subjects through the internet labor market Amazon Mechanical Turk. 15 We paid subjects $0.50 as a show-up fee simply for participating in the experiment. We randomly assigned subjects as players on Side A or Side B . We told players that Side A’s task was to propose to Side B how much of $0.40 should go to each member of Side B and how much should go to each member of Side A. For example, each member of Side B might get $0.10, implying that each member of Side A would get $0.30. 16 Side B would decide what minimum amount satisfied an acceptable offer. If Side A’s offer to Side B met or exceeded Side B’s minimum acceptable offer, then we paid both players the bonuses according to the proposed division. Otherwise, no member of either side earned a bonus.

We defined the total size of the pie in terms of what each member received, so that the individual stakes of the decision remained constant across conditions. In other words, changing the group size across conditions did not change the absolute amount of a fixed prize that each individual in a group could receive. While we made this decision primarily to improve the experiment’s internal validity (by isolating the effect of aggregation rather than an individual’s stake in the decision), it does have a real world analogue. Whereas the benefits of any bargain are typically more diffuse in large populations when the stakes are strictly material, there are many conflicts where one polity might impose a different way of life on citizens in another country ( Lake 1992 ). In these situations, citizens and other decision-makers might place the same value on their own way of life regardless of how many other citizens exist in the country.

A small group of three proposers making a take-it-or-leave-it offer to a small group of three responders (autocracy/autocracy);

A small group of three proposers making a take-it-or-leave-it offer to a large group of nine responders (autocracy/democracy);

A large group of nine proposers making a take-it-or-leave-it offer to a small group of three responders (democracy/autocracy);

A large group of nine proposers making a take-it-or-leave-it offer to another large group of nine responders (democracy/democracy)

We informed subjects that the voting mechanism for group decision-making would simply be the highest offer that gained a majority support, as described above. A summary of the conditions is shown below in Table 1 .

Four ultimatum bargaining experimental conditions

For each of our experimental conditions, we estimated how well each side would do on average, both in terms of avoiding bargaining failure and in terms of how much individuals earned, by randomly drawing 1,000 samples (with replacement) of k group members from the N subjects who participated in that experimental condition. For instance, in the democracy/democracy condition, we randomly drew a set of nine proposers out of all the subjects in the pool assigned to this condition and another set of nine responders assigned to this condition. We would then measure whether bargaining succeeded or failed by whether proposers collectively made an offer greater than or equal to what the responders collectively demanded. To obtain standard errors for this estimator, we used the nonparametric bootstrap, running our procedure over 3,000 samples of the data.

We began by confirming that we could replicate past studies of one-on-one bargaining between individuals in the ultimatum game using the 232 subjects in our baseline condition. Similar to past studies, our results show that individuals avoid bargaining failure approximately 75 percent of the time ( Camerer 2003 ). Specifically, individuals in this baseline condition of our experiment avoided bargaining failure 76.5 percent of the time (95 percent confidence interval [CI] [0.70 to 0.83]).

Next we examined each of our main experimental conditions. Figure 1 shows the estimated mean outcome in each condition, with bootstrapped standard errors from 3,000 subsamples of the data. Moving from left to right along the X-axis are the four experimental conditions. Condition 1 is labeled autocracy/autocracy, condition 2 is labeled autocracy/democracy, condition 3 is labeled democracy/autocracy, and condition 4 is labeled democracy/democracy.

Bargaining failure and earnings across treatments

In Panel A of Figure 1 , the Y-axis represents the percentage of times bargaining succeeded, or—in our analogy—the percentage of time subjects avoided the costly reversion outcome of war. In Panel B , the Y-axis represents the average earnings of proposers in each condition. We investigated players’ earnings to distinguish our hypothesis that groups in situations of ultimatum bargaining are collectively wise (by making more efficient proposals that more closely predict the reservation price of their opponent) from the alternative possibility that groups exhibit a lower rejection rate simply because they bargain in a more risk-averse and inefficient way (with groups consistently offering more generous proposals in order to secure a peaceful settlement at any cost).

Beginning with the autocracy/autocracy condition at the far left of Panel A, our results show that small groups of three do no better with respect to the percentage of times bargaining succeeds compared to the baseline condition described above, in which individuals faced individuals and bargaining succeeded roughly 75 percent of the time, (76.1, 95 percent CI [0.70 to 0.83]). Consistent with the wisdom-of-the-crowds hypothesis, however, we find that mixed dyads, in which even one side represents a large group of nine, perform significantly better in situations of ultimatum bargaining compared to dyads with two small groups. Autocracy/democracy dyads avoid conflict 87.3 percent of the time (95 percent CI [0.79 to 0.96]), and democracy/autocracy dyads avoid conflict 90.4 percent of the time (95 percent CI [0.85 to 0.96]). Also consistent with our theory, democratic dyads perform the best, avoiding bargaining failure 96.7 percent of the time (95 percent CI [0.93 to 1.00]). In other words, ultimatum bargaining between democracies rarely if ever fails.

In Panel B, we investigate earnings across the four conditions for the reasons outlined above. These findings mirror the result in Panel A, with mixed dyads earning significantly more than autocratic dyads and democratic dyads earning more than even mixed dyads on average. Democratic dyads earned on average 19.4 cents compared to autocratic dyads in which individuals earn 15.9 cents on average. This suggests that proposals of large groups are better calibrated to the demands of responders, which appears consistent with the hypothesis that democracies are “wiser” and also appears consistent with the finding in observational studies that democracies do not perform worse on average in crisis bargaining situations ( Bueno de Mesquita et al. 1999 ). These higher earnings do not emerge because larger groups, on average, make substantially more generous offers. Instead, higher earnings emerge because aggregation averages out overly aggressive offers from individuals that would normally trigger bargaining failure, and also offers that would be far too generous. 17

Why Is the Result Not Strictly Dyadic?

The results above clearly replicate the important dyadic aspect of the democratic peace finding: democracies almost never fight each other. However, it is not obvious from Figure 1 whether our results replicate the more controversial finding that democracies are no less war prone overall, which implies that mixed dyads should be more war prone than even autocratic dyads ( Gleditsch and Hegre 1997 ). 18 In the supplementary appendix , we discuss two potential reasons why decision aggregation may appear to have a monotonic effect in our experiment, but a dyadic effect in the real world. First, mixed dyads may have an overall higher rate of dispute initiation that fully offsets the benefits of aggregation within a crisis. Second, factors not present in our experiment could lead the different types in mixed dyads to have systematically biased views about how to bargain with another type, and this could cause aggregation to actually produce worse bargaining outcomes in mixed dyads.

Additional Tests

A second aspect of the wisdom-of-the-crowds hypothesis posits that crowds of individuals can even outperform expert individuals in predictive tasks ( Tetlock 2005 ). Above, we discussed the possibility that democracies, by aggregating predictions from a larger number of decision-makers, may outperform even relatively skilled experts in bargaining scenarios that mimic key aspects of war bargaining. To investigate this, we compared the performance of democratic dyads in our experiment to three types of individuals. The first type is inexperienced individuals . These are individuals from our baseline condition who, in a post-experiment survey, reported that they had never played a game similar to our ultimatum game scenario. 19 The second type of individuals that we compared to democratic dyads represented experienced individuals , who reported that they had played a similar game in the past (50 percent of the subjects in our baseline condition). The third type of individuals represented international policy elites . This sample included 102 international foreign policy elites recruited to play an ultimatum game in a previous study by LeVeck et al. (2014) . These elites had significant real-world experience in actual international bargaining.

Figure 2 compares the results of each type of individual against the performance of democratic dyads along the same two dimensions. Panel A shows the percentage of time bargaining succeeded, and Panel B shows the average earnings of proposers in each condition. 20 Beginning in Panel A, the results show that experienced individuals and international policy elites avoid bargaining failure more than inexperienced individuals. However, this difference failed to reach statistical significance at conventional levels. At the same time, the results in Panel B show that both groups of expert individuals earn significantly more than inexperienced individuals. Meanwhile, the results in both panels strongly confirm the wisdom-of-the-crowds hypothesis. Democratic dyads comprised of both experienced and inexperienced individuals dramatically outperform even experts on both measures. These results are consistent with the findings of Tetlock (2005) .

Group vs. expert performance

Finally, we investigated a third aspect to determine which factors are actually driving the observed behavior in our experiment. We do this because our aggregation mechanism may actually aggregate two distinct factors: behavioral norms and knowledge about what the other side’s minimum acceptable offer will be ( Camerer 2003 ). Because our theory focuses on the second element, beliefs, we isolated that component to see if our main hypothesis holds. Supplementary Appendix Figures A2 and A3 shows an even stronger dyadic effect when we isolate the influence of beliefs—meaning larger groups perform particularly well at guessing the threshold when bargaining with larger groups.

A common concern with the use of laboratory experiments in political science has to do with the use of undergraduates as a convenience sample. The concern is that undergraduates are neither representative of elite decision-makers nor the general population from which they are drawn. As Renshon (2015) notes, such concerns are neither new nor unique to political science, as psychologists have long worried about the field’s reliance on college students in drawing conclusions that may not be externally valid. Renshon reviews a series of productive responses to these concerns, including attempts to replicate findings across different populations, with mixed results. In some studies, professionals/experts behaved similarly to nonprofessionals/nonexperts ( Glaser, Langer and Weber 2005 ), while in other cases the results substantially differed ( Tyszka and Zielonka 2002 ; Mintz, Redd and Vedlitz 2006 ). For example, Hafner-Burton et al. (2014) and LeVeck et al. (2014) found interesting differences between elites and student subjects across a variety of strategic games, including the ultimatum game.

In many ways, we address this potential threat better than even the nascent experimental literature on crisis bargaining. In our experiment, we compare the behavior of individuals and groups in situations of ultimatum bargaining drawn from two different samples: subjects drawn from a more general population on Amazon Turk and a sample of political elites. We find important differences and surprising similarities across the different samples discussed above.

A second and related concern is that subjects—both students and elites alike—would behave differently in real-life situations when compared to the lab. This could be because subjects are not fully motivated to engage in the experiment or because the experiment omitted factors in the real world that may cause them to behave differently (similar to omitted variable bias when making inferences in observational studies). The latter is a constant risk with the use of experiments across all fields. For example, in the biological sciences, scientists debate whether effects from “test tube” experiments conducted in vitro are likely to generalize to highly complex living organisms in vivo. When studying decision-making processes, it is possible that important factors like experience, high stakes, and emotions are relevant in the real world, even if not captured in the setup of the experiment.

In the case of our experiment, there are at least two simplifications that may induce different results in the laboratory when compared to the real world. First, a reasonable case can be made that the voting mechanism in the experiment does not capture the intricacies of foreign policy decision-making in a democracy or any other state. This is true. Our voting rule—which calculates a group’s proposal as the median proposal submitted in the group—purposely abstracts from factors like coalitional bargaining within states, democratic deliberation, and the influence of elite opinion leaders. We do not assert that all decision-makers are completely independent in any real-world decision, but rather that, to the extent individual inputs are at least somewhat independent, our treatment manipulation captures this independent component. A second simplification is that the bargaining scenario that our subjects in the experiment face is much simpler and lower stakes than the real-world bargaining scenarios faced by leaders. 21 This is also true. In closely matching our experiment to the assumptions of the bargaining model of war, we abstract from the multidimensional nature and high stakes of international crisis bargaining.

However, compelling evidence exists to suggest that larger groups may still outperform individuals even if the situation becomes more complex 22 or if the stakes are raised in the domain of foreign policy. On the one hand, average accuracy in the model of collective accuracy outlined is likely low among the general population with respect to designing a rocket. On the other hand, in the domain of foreign policy, Tetlock (2005) has shown that—assuming nonspecialists have some baseline knowledge of foreign affairs—“we reach the point of diminishing marginal predictive returns for knowledge disconcertingly quickly” ( Tetlock 2005 , 59) in predicting what will happen in a particular region. That is, average accuracy of foreign affairs is typically at a sufficient level among “attentive readers of the New York Times in ‘reading’ emerging situations” ( Tetlock 2005 , 233) to expect that even individual specialists are not significantly more reliable than groups of nonspecialists. We expect that when the wisdom of the crowds is harnessed in the real world that the larger, more diverse group of independently deciding individuals generally has some baseline accuracy. Moreover, laboratory evidence suggests that higher stakes have a fairly minimal effect on behavior in the ultimatum game ( Camerer and Hogarth 1999 ).

A third concern may be that a “fair” or “acceptable” offer is much clearer in the ultimatum game—namely a fifty-fifty split—than in the real world, where a fair or acceptable division can be much more ambiguous and contingent on factors that nonexperts know little about (history, power, regime type, etc.). If true, the structure of the ultimatum game may bias against the importance of expertise, by providing a clearer focal point around which the offers of nonexpert proposers and responders can more easily converge when compared to the real world.

This concern is certainly possible, and it is an interesting area for future research. However, we note that even in our relatively simple and controlled experiment, experienced individuals actually do perform better than inexperienced individuals, suggesting that the ultimatum game is not so simple that expertise is rendered meaningless. Instead, our results confirm that individual expertise helps, but they show that aggregation helps even more. This finding mimics related research showing that larger and more diverse groups of nonexperts can outperform experts, even on complex issues related to foreign policy ( Tetlock 2005 ). Furthermore, while the norm of fifty-fifty divisions is well-known, there is good reason to suspect that it is not the only widely known norm relevant for crisis bargaining. For example, work by Tomz and Weeks (2013) shows that citizens in different democratic states—the United States and the United Kingdom—share many norms that are relevant to reducing the risk of conflict between democracies. It is possible that processes of aggregation could help distill which of these norms are most relevant to a particular crisis and further reduce the chance of bargaining failure and war between democratic states.

Therefore, despite the fact that each of these three concerns is reasonable, we believe the level of realism in our experiment is appropriate for the specific hypotheses we seek to test. In general, we agree with McDermott that—rather than emerging a property of any individual experiment—“external validity follows, as replications across time and populations seek to delineate the extent to which … conclusions can generalize” (2011, 28). Future studies can, and should, identify theoretically relevant conditions along which our experiment differs from the real world and test—as part of a broader research program—whether the inclusion of these factors moderates the effects identified here.

The evidence gathered from our experiments is, of course, preliminary. There remains much more work that can be done to develop and evaluate our core argument. Such work might include further studies that systematically manipulate how information is distributed across individuals, the identity of bargainers, as well as the precise mechanism by which information is aggregated. Other studies may look at observational data to see how aggregated signals ( LeVeck and Narang 2016 ; Narang and LeVeck 2011) , such as market movements or polls, actually influence democratic decision-making. Finally, democracies and autocracies vary systematically in the caliber of various aggregation mechanisms—such as the depth of markets or how informed their publics are. Measures of this variation might be linked to measures of war-bargaining outcomes.

However, we believe the findings presented here are significant. In bargaining scenarios that mimic key aspects of war bargaining, aggregated offers from larger groups systematically outperform the offers made by smaller groups and individuals. Furthermore, part of the information aggregated appears to involve individuals’ knowledge of what they themselves would do if placed in their opponents’ shoes. This may help them actually predict the responses of their opponents. Thus, the democratic peace may partially arise because democracies aggregate signals from diverse individuals, which increases the chances of some of those individuals matching the characteristics of decision-makers in the other state—and therefore anticipating the strategies and responses of those decision-makers.

These results notwithstanding, we think it important to emphasize an important limitation to our inferences. To be clear, we do not claim that democracies always make better decisions in every situation. Indeed, we see numerous cases in which democratic decision-makers committed grave errors in crisis bargaining. For instance, it is well documented that the United States made several errors in estimating the capabilities and resolve of Saddam Hussein in the run-up to the Iraq War in 2003 ( Gordon and Trainor 2006 ; Lake 2010 ). Such examples suggest that—even if democracies can make collectively wiser decisions compared to nondemocracies on average—they are certainly not immune from making decision errors in particular cases. However, we note that, in many famous cases of miscalculation by democracies, the actual reason for the miscalculation appears to stem from restricted decision-making, where a narrow group of similar-minded leaders engaged in an echo chamber ( Janis 1972 ) and effectively excluded the diverse views of numerous individuals ( Packer 2005 , 50–60; Daalder and Lindsay 2003 , 46–47; Mann 2004 , 351–53).

More broadly, our results may suggest policy implications beyond the domain of crisis bargaining, including situations of international cooperation on issues like health, development, or the global environment. Although there is generally broad support for greater economic development, global health, global peace, and a cleaner environment, uncertainty over the costs and benefits of cooperation can often lead citizens to hold diverse views on whether and how to cooperate. For example, Romano (2011) shows that most Americans assume that developmental aid accounts for 27 percent of the national budget when it is actually less than 1 percent ( Narang 2013 ; Narang 2016; Narang and Stanton 2017 ). Similarly, individuals appear to hold diverse opinions about the risk of global health epidemics ( Leach et al. 2010 ), the process of collective security ( Dellmuth 2016 ), and global climate change ( Keohane and Ostrom 1995 ; Ostrom 2009 ; Stevenson 2013 ; Stevenson and Dryzek 2014 ). However, as we show with bargaining, it may be possible that, in situations of international cooperation, the errors made by one decision-maker may cancel out the error made by another and produce a collectively wise policy decision across domains ( Landemore 2012a , 2012b , 2013 ).

Supplementary Information is available at https://dataverse.harvard.edu/ and the International Studies Quarterly data archive.

There may be thousands of books and articles on the democratic peace—too many to review here. See Rosato (2003) and Dafoe (2011) for more thorough reviews of the theoretical and empirical challenges to the democratic peace finding.

In the interest of space, we review the results of these papers in the supplementary appendix .

One exception is an important study by Reiter and Stam (2002) , who apply a similar logic to a different empirical puzzle: why democracies win the wars they initiate. Reiter and Stam argue that democracies “are better at forecasting war outcomes and associated costs” because they “benefit from more and higher quality information” (2002, 23) and thus only initiate winnable wars. They argue, “the unitary nature of dictatorships … forgoes democratic advantages from the market-place of ideas that provide broad checks on a single leader” (2002, 25). Reiter and Stam build from Schultz (1999) , who also raises the prospect that democracies are more strategic about what conflicts they enter. Here, we explore whether this advantage helps democracies forecast the reservation price of opponents in crisis bargaining and whether it offers a partial explanation for the democratic peace (i.e., bargaining success, rather than war outcomes).

In other words, even though cabinet members’ views may be correlated by a shared ideology or by a desire to gain favor with an ideological leader ( Saunders 2011) , in many contexts, ideology will not induce perfect correlation.

For example, consider that even when partisan media, like Fox News or MSNBC, heavily influences citizens’ views, (1) even these opposing views are likely to create diversity in opinion with errors that cancel out, and (2) some component of citizens’ opinions still remains statistically independent (i.e., unexplained) by these “elite” opinions ( Levendusky 2009) . The experiment below can be understood to capture this independent component.

In Supplementary Appendix Table A6, we compare democracies and autocracies along both variables quantitatively and show that democracies are systematically characterized by a larger, more diverse group of independently deciding individuals on average.

Geddes (1999 , 2003 ) and Weeks (2012 , 2014 ) have also detailed intricate decision-making processes across different types of autocratic regimes.

Indeed, despite the presence of a dedicated intelligence community, organizations in the US federal government maintain their own intelligence agencies. They do this precisely to arrive at independent assessments and avoid group-think; for example, the Department of Defense operates the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the State Department operates the Bureau of Intelligence Research, and the Treasury Department operates the Office of Intelligence Analysis, etc.

For a survey of behavioral and normative theories of the democratic peace dating to Kant’s Liberal Peace, see Rosato (2003) and Dafoe (2011) . See Stevenson (2016) for a review of normative theories.

See Rosato 2003 for a general review of the literature in support of this mechanism.

A related informational mechanism, domestic audience costs, has also received significant attention in the crisis bargaining literature. See Fearon (1994) ; Tomz (2007) ; Weeks (2008) .

We use the ultimatum game instead of the games used by Tingley and Wang (2010) and Tingley and Walter (2011) , which allow the experimenter to manipulate responders’ cost of bargaining failure. We did this for two practical reasons. First, compared to the laboratory, it is more difficult to ensure that subjects in online experiments fully understand complex instructions ( Rand 2012 , 176). We therefore chose the ultimatum game, in part, because it was the simplest game that met our requirements. Second, there now exist hundreds of experiments conducted using the ultimatum game, including international policy elites. We could therefore examine how well crowds performed relative to individual experts.

Indeed, individuals in our experiment vote to propose zero just more than 4 percent of the time, but, in most cases, these votes do not manifest in observing a proposal of zero because the votes occurred as part of a group in which votes for larger proposals bring the actual observed frequency of proposals that offer zero to substantially less than 1 percent.

It is possible that crowds might have additional advantages that would emerge in a more dynamic setting. Future experiments might explore group advantages in learning.

See the supplementary appendix for further details on our recruitment procedure.

The size of the pie is always shown as $0.40. We used numerical examples in the instructions to illustrate how the $0.40 would be divided as a result of the proposal, but the hypothetical payoffs used were drawn randomly, so as not to systematically bias players’ strategies.

The median offer from autocracies and democracies was both twenty and the mean was both seventeen. If we condition on bargaining success, democracies and autocracies earn roughly the same amount in our experiment. This replicates other findings in the literature, which suggest that democracies do not do appreciably worse in the bargains they successfully conclude short of war ( Bueno de Mesquita et al. 1999 ).

See Gleditsch and Hegre (1997) for a summary of the controversy over, and mixed results for, a monadic democratic peace.

Specifically, inexperienced individuals did not answer “yes” to the following post-experiment question: have you ever played a similar game, where one player proposes how to split a monetary prize and another player decides whether to accept or reject the offer?

The elite sample from LeVeck et al. (2014) played for a larger monetary prize. We have therefore rescaled earnings to match the prize used in our study.

For example, in a multidimensional policy space, aggregating diverse preferences across multiple actors may result in a single foreign policy proposal that is ideologically incoherent—with more hawkish measures on some dimensions and more dovish measures on others.

In fact, results from Hong and Page (2004) suggest the opposite. Groups of diverse individuals have a particular advantage in more complex decisions.

Allison Graham. 1969 . “ Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis .” American Political Science Review 63 ( 3 ): 689 – 718 .

Google Scholar

Aldrich John H. 1999 . “ Political Parties in a Critical Era .” American Politics Quarterly 27 ( 1 ): 9 – 32 .

Andreoni James , Blanchard Emily . 2006 . “ Testing Subgame Perfection Apart from Fairness in Ultimatum Games .” Experimental Economics 9 ( 4 ): 307 – 21 .

Bone John , Hey John , Suckling John . 1999 . “ Are Groups More (or Less) Consistent Than Individuals? ” Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 18 ( 1 ): 63 – 81 .

Bornstein Gary , Yaniv Ilan . 1998 . “ Individual and Group Behavior in the Ultimatum Game: Are Groups More ‘Rational’ Players? ” Experimental Economics 1 ( 1 ): 101 – 8 .

Braut-Hegghammer Malfrid . 2016 . Unclear Physics: Why Iraq and Libya Failed to Build Nuclear Weapons . Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press .

Google Preview

Bremer Stuart A. 1992 . “ Dangerous Dyads: Conditions Affecting the Likelihood of Interstate War, 1816–1965 .” Journal of Conflict Resolution 36 ( 2 ): 309 – 41 .

Bremer Stuart A . 1993 . “ Democracy and Militarized Interstate Conflict, 1816–1965 .” International Interactions 18 ( 3 ): 231 – 49 .

Bueno de Mesquita Bruce , Morrow James D. , Siverson Randolph M. , Smith Alastair . 1999 . “ An Institutional Explanation of the Democratic Peace .” American Political Science Review 93 ( 4 ): 791 – 807 .

Camerer Colin F . 2003 . Behavioral Game Theory: Experiments in Strategic Interaction . Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press .

Camerer Colin F. , Hogarth Robin M . 1999 . “ The Effects of Financial Incentives in Experiments: A Review and Capital-Labor-Production Framework .” Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 19 ( 1–3 ): 7 – 42 .

Cason Timothy N. , Mui Vai-Lam . 1997 . “ A Laboratory Study of Group Polarisation in the Team Dictator Game .” Economic Journal 107 ( 444 ): 1465 – 83 .

Chan Steve. 1984 . “ Mirror, Mirror on the Wall…Are the Freer Countries More Pacific? ” Journal of Conflict Resolution 28 ( 4 ): 617 – 48 .

Cox James C. , Hayne Stephen C . 2006 . “ Barking up the Right Tree: Are Small Groups Rational Agents? .” Experimental Economics 9 ( 3 ): 209 – 222 .

Daalder Ivo H. , Lindsay James M . 2003 . America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy . Washington : Brookings Institution Press .

Dafoe Allan . 2011 . “ Statistical Critiques of the Democratic Peace: Caveat Emptor .” American Journal of Political Science 55 ( 2 ): 247 – 62 .

Davis James H. 1992 . “ Some Compelling Intuitions about Group Consensus Decisions, Theoretical and Empirical Research, and Interpersonal Aggregation Phenomena: Selected Examples, 1950–1990 .” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 52 ( 1 ): 3 – 38 .

Dellmuth Lisa M. 2016 . “ The Knowledge Gap in World Politics: Assessing the Sources of Citizen Awareness of the United Nations Security Council .” Review of International Studies 42 ( 4 ): 673 – 700 .

DeNardo James. 1995 . The Amateur Strategist: Intuitive Deterrence Theories and the Politics of the Nuclear Arms Race . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press .

Dixon William J. 1993 . “ Democracy and the Management of International Conflict .” Journal of Conflict Resolution 37 ( 1 ): 42 – 68 .

Dixon William J . 1994 . “ Democracy and the Peaceful Settlement of International Conflict .” American Political Science Review 88 ( 1 ): 1 – 17 .

Dobbs Michael . 2008 . One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War . New York : Vintage .

Downs Anthony. 1957 . An Economic Theory of Democracy . New York : Columbia University Press .

Doyle Michael W. 1997 . Ways of War and Peace: Realism, Liberalism, and Socialism , 276, 24 – 25 . New York : Norton .

Elbittar Alexander , Gomberg Andrei , Sour Laura . 2011 . “ Group Decision-Making and Voting in Ultimatum Bargaining: An Experimental Study .” B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy 11 ( 1 ): 1 – 31 .

Fearon James D. 1994 . “ Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes .” American Political Science Review 88 ( 3 ): 577 – 92 .

Fearon James D . 1995 . “ Rationalist Explanations for War .” International Organization 49 ( 3 ): 379 – 414 .

Fursenko Aleksandr , Naftali Timothy . 1998 . “ One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–1964 . New York : WW Norton & Company .

Fursenko Aleksandr , Naftali Timothy . 2007 . Khrushchev's Cold War: The Inside Story of an American Adversary . New York : WW Norton & Company .

Gartzke Erik. 1998 . “ Kant We All Just Get Along? Opportunity, Willingness, and the Origins of the Democratic Peace .” American Journal of Political Science 42 ( 1 ): 1 – 27 .

Gartzke Erik . 2000 . “ Preferences and the Democratic Peace .” International Studies Quarterly 44 ( 2 ): 191 – 212 .

Gartzke Erik . 2007 . “ The Capitalist Peace .” American Journal of Political Science 51 ( 1 ): 166 – 91 .

Geddes Barbara. “Authoritarian Breakdown: Empirical Test of a Game-Theoretic Argument.” Paper presented at the 95th Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Atlanta, GA, September, 1999 .

Geddes Barbara . 2003 . Paradigms and Sandcastles: Theory Building and Research Design in Comparative Politics . Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press .

Glaser Markus , Thomas Langer , Martin Weber . 2005 . “ Overconfidence of Professionals and Lay Men: Individual Differences Within and Between Tasks? .” Working Paper. Accessed January 20, 2015. Available at https://ideas.repec.org/p/xrs/sfbmaa/05-25.html .

Gleditsch Nils Petter , Hegre Håvard . 1997 . “ Peace and Democracy: Three Levels of Analysis .” Journal of Conflict Resolution 41 ( 2 ): 283 – 310 .

Gleditsch Kristian S. , Ward Michael D . 1997 . “ Double Take: A Reexamination of Democracy and Autocracy in Modern Polities .” Journal of Conflict Resolution 41 ( 3 ): 361 – 83 .

Gordon Michael R. , Trainor Bernard E . 2006 . Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq . New York : Pantheon .

Gorman Martin J. , Krongard Alexander . 2005 . A Goldwater-Nichols Act for the US Government: Institutionalizing the Interagency Process . Washington : Defense Intelligence Agency .

Güth Werner , Schmittberger Rolf , Schwarze Bernd . 1982 . “ An Experimental Analysis of Ultimatum Bargaining .” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 3 ( 4 ): 367 – 88 .

Hafner-Burton Emilie M. , LeVeck Brad L. , Victor David G. , Fowler James H . 2014 . “ Decision Maker Preferences for International Legal Cooperation .” International Organization 68 ( 4 ): 845 – 76 .

Hafner-Burton Emilie M. , Leveck Brad L. , Victor David G . 2017 . “No False Promises: How the Prospect of Non-Compliance Affects Elite Preferences for International Cooperation.” International Studies Quarterly 61 ( 1 ): 136 – 149 .

Hafner-Burton Emilie M. , Hughes D. Alex , Victor David G . 2013 . “ The Cognitive Revolution and the Political Psychology of Elite Decision Making .” Perspectives on Politics 11 ( 2 ): 368 – 86 .

Henisz Witold J. 2000 . “ The Institutional Environment for Economic Growth .” Economics & Politics 12 ( 1 ): 1 – 31 .

Henrich Joseph , Boyd Robert , Bowles Samuel , Camerer Colin , Fehr Ernst , Gintis Herbert , McElreath Richard . 2001 . “ In Search of Homo Economicus: Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small-Scale Societies .” American Economic Review 91 ( 2 ): 73 – 78 .

Hermann Margaret G. , Hermann Charles F . 1989 . “ Who Makes Foreign Policy Decisions and How: An Empirical Inquiry .” International Studies Quarterly 33 ( 4 ): 361 – 87 .

Hong Lu , Page Scott . 2004 . “ Groups of Diverse Problem Solvers can Outperform Groups of High-Ability Problem Solvers .” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 101 ( 46 ): 16385 – 89 .

Hong Lu , Page Scott . 2009 . “ Interpreted and Generated Signals .” Journal of Economic Theory 144 ( 5 ): 2174 – 96 .

Hong Lu , Page Scott . 2012 . “The Micro-Foundations of Collective Wisdom.” In Collective Wisdom: Principles and Mechanisms , edited by Landemore Hélène , Elster Jon , 56 – 71 .

Horowitz Michael C. , Narang Neil . 2014 . “Poor Man's atomic bomb? exploring the relationship between “weapons of mass destruction” . Journal of Conflict Resolution 58 ( 3 ): 509 - 535 .

Janis Irving L. 1972 . Victims of Groupthink: a Psychological Study of Foreign-Policy Decisions and Fiascoes . Oxford : Houghton Mifflin .

Kacowicz Arie M. 1995 . “ Explaining Zones of Peace: Democracies as Satisfied Powers .” Journal of Peace Research 32 ( 3 ): 265 – 76 .

Kant Immanuel. (1795) 1969 . Perpetual Peace . Reprint. New York : Columbia University Press .

Kerr Norbert L. , Maccoun Robert J. , Kramer Geoffrey P . 1996 . “Bias in judgment: Comparing Individuals and Groups.” Psychological Review 103 ( 4 ): 687 .

Keohane Robert O. , Ostrom Elinor . 1995 . “Introduction.” In Local Commons and Global Interdependence , edited by Keohane Robert O. , Ostrom Elinor , 1 – 26 . London : Sage .

Kleindorfer Paul R. , Kunreuther Howard C. , Schoemaker Paul H . 1993 . Decision Science: An Integrative Perspective . New York : Cambridge University Press .

Krehbiel Keith . 1998 . Pivotal Politics: A Theory of US Lawmaking . Chicago : University of Chicago Press .

Lake David A. 1992 . “ Powerful Pacifists: Democratic States and War .” American Political Science Review 86 ( 1 ): 24 – 37 .

Lake David A. 2010 . “ Two Cheers for Bargaining Theory: Assessing Rationalist Explanations of the Iraq War .” International Security 35 ( 3 ): 7 – 52 .

Landemore Helene. 2012a . “Collective Wisdom: Old and New.” In Collective Wisdom , edited by Landemore Helene , Elster Jon , 1 – 20 . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press .

Landemore Helene. 2012b . “ Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and Why It Matters .” Journal of Public Deliberation 8 ( 1 ): Article 7. http://www.publicdeliberation.net/jpd/vol8/iss1/art7/? hc_location=ufi .

Landemore Helene. 2013 . Democratic Reason: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the Many . Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press .

Leach Melissa , Scoone Ian , Stirling Andrew . 2010 . “ Governing Epidemics in an Age of Complexity: Narratives, Politics and Pathways to Sustainability .” Global Environmental Change 20 ( 3 ): 369 – 77 .

Lemke Douglas , Reed William . 1996 . “ Regime Types and Status Quo Evaluations: Power Transition Theory and the Democratic Peace .” International Interactions 22 ( 2 ): 143 – 64 .

Lenz Gabriel S. 2012 . Follow the Leader ? Chicago : University of Chicago Press .

LeVeck Brad L. , Hughes D. Alex , Fowler James H. , Hafner-Burton Emilie , Victor David G . 2014 . “ The Role of Self-Interest in Elite Bargaining .” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111 ( 52 ): 18536 – 41 .

LeVeck Brad L. , Narang Neil . 2016 . “ How International Reputation Matters: Revisiting Alliance Violations in Context .” International Interactions 43 ( 5 ): 1 – 25 .

Levendusky Matthew . 2009 . The Partisan Sort: How Liberals became Democrats and Conservatives became Republicans . Chicago : University of Chicago Press .

Lupia Arthur , McCubbins Matthew D . 1994 . “ Learning From Oversight: Fire Alarms and Police Patrols Reconstructed .” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 10 ( 1 ): 96 .

Lupia Arthur , McCubbins Matthew D . 2003 . The Democratic Dilemma: Can Citizens Learn What They Need to Know ? Cambridge : Cambridge University Press .

Mcdermott Rose. 2011 . Internal and External Validity. In Handbook of Experimental Political Science , edited by Druckman James N. , Green Donald P. , Kuklinski James H. , Lupia Arthur , 27 – 41 . New York : Cambridge University Press .

Maoz Zeev , Russett Bruce . 1993 . “ Normative and Structural Causes of Democratic Peace, 1946–1986 .” American Political Science Review 87 ( 3 ): 624 – 38 .

Maoz Zeev , Abdolali Nasrin . 1989 . “ Regime Types and International Conflict, 1816–1976 .” Journal of Conflict Resolution 33 ( 1 ): 3 – 36 .

Mann James. 2004 . Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet . New York : Penguin .

Marcella Gabriel. 2004 “ National Security and the Interagency Process .” US Army War College Guide to National Security Policy and Strategy 239 : 260 . https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Chas_Freeman/publication/265101496_CHAPTER_3_NATIONAL_SECURITY_AND_THE_INTERAGENCY_PROCESS/links/56cc4ada08ae5488f0dcf2a9.pdf .

Mehta Rupal , Narang Neil . 2017 . “Do Nuclear Umbrellas Increase the Diplomatic Influence of Client States? A Theory and Empirical Evidence” Presented at the Department of Defense, Washington DC

Mintz Alex , Redd Steven B. , Vedlitz Arnold . 2006 . Can We Generalize from Student Experiments to the Real World in Political Science, Military Affairs, and IR? Journal of Conflict Resolution 50 ( 5 ): 757 – 76 .

Mullen Brian , Anthony Tara , Salas Eduardo , Driskell James E . 1994 . “ Group Cohesiveness and Quality of Decision Making: An Integration of Tests of the Groupthink Hypothesis .” Small Group Research 25 ( 2 ): 189 – 204 .

Mullen Brian , Anthony Tara , Salas Eduardo , Driskell James E . 2016 . Forgotten Conflicts: Need versus Political Priority in the Allocation of Humanitarian Aid across Conflict Areas . International Interactions 42 ( 2 ): 189 – 216 .

Narang Neil. 2013 . Biting the Hand that Feeds: An Organizational Theory Explaining Attacks Against Aid Workers in Civil Conflict. Paper presented at Princeton University.

Narang Neil. 2015 . “ Assisting Uncertainty: How Humanitarian Aid Can Inadvertently Prolong Civil War .” International Studies Quarterly 59 ( 1 ): 184 – 95 .

Narang Neil. 2014 . “ Humanitarian Assistance and the Duration of Peace after Civil War .” Journal of Politics 76 ( 2 ): 446 – 60 .

Narang Neil . 2017 . “When Nuclear Umbrellas Work: Signaling Credibility in Security Commitments through Alliance Design.” Presented at the University of California Conference on International Cooperation, Santa Barbara.

Narang Neil , LeVeck Brad L . “Securitizing International Security: How Unreliable Allies affect Alliance Portfolios.” Presented at the American Political Science Association Conference, Seattle, WA, 2011 .

Narang Neil , Stanton Jessica A . 2017 . “A Strategic Logic of Attacking Aid Workers: Evidence from Violence in Afghanistan.” International Studies Quarterly 61 ( 1 ): 38 – 51 .

Narang Neil , Mehta Rupal N . 2017 . “The Unforeseen Consequences of Extended Deterrence: Moral Hazard in a Nuclear Client State.” Journal of Conflict Resolution .

Oneal John R. , Russett Bruce . 1999 . “ The Kantian Peace: The Pacific Benefits of Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations, 1885–1992 .” World Politics 52 ( 1 ): 1 – 37 .

Oneal John R. , Russett Bruce . 2001 . “ Clear and Clean: The Fixed Effects of the Liberal Peace .” International Organization 55 ( 2 ): 469 – 85 .

Ostrom Elinor . 2009 . “A general framework for analyzing sustainability of social-ecological systems.” Science 325 ( 5939 ): 419 – 422 .

Packer George. 2005 . The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq . New York : Farrar, Straus, and Giroux .

Page Scott E. 2008 . The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies (New Edition) . Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press .

Popkin Samuel L. 1991 . The Reasoning Voter . Chicago : University of Chicago Press .

Powell Robert. 1999 . In the shadow of power: States and strategies in international politics . Princeton University Press .

Puncochar Judith M. , Fox Paul W . 2004 . “Confidence in Individual and Group Decision Making: When” Two Heads” Are Worse Than One.” Journal of Educational Psychology 96 ( 3 ): 582 .

Raach George T. , Kass Ilana . 1995 . National Power and the Interagency Process . Washington: National Defense University .

Rand David G. 2012 . “ The Promise of Mechanical Turk: How Online Labor Markets Can Help Theorists Run Behavioral Experiments .” Journal of Theoretical Biology 299 ( 21 ): 172 – 79 .

Rand David G. , Tarnita Corina E. , Ohtsuki Hisashi , Nowak Martin . 2013 . “ Evolution of Fairness in the One-Shot Anonymous Ultimatum Game .” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110 ( 7 ): 2581 – 6 .

Reiter Dan , Stam Allan C . 2002 . Democracies at War . Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press .

Renshon Jonathan . 2015 . “ Losing Face and Sinking Costs: Experimental Evidence on the Judgment of Political and Military Leaders .” International Organization 69 ( 3 ): 659 – 95 .

Rockenbach Bettina , Sadrieh Abdolkarim , Mathauschek Barabara . “Teams Take the Better Risks.” Working paper, University of Erfurt, 2001 .

Romano Andrew. 2011 . “How Ignorant Are Americans?” Newsweek , March 20. Accessed March 24, 2016. http://www.newsweek.com/how-igno rant-are-americans-66053 .

Rosato Sebastian. 2003 . “ The Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory .” American Political Science Review 97 ( 4 ): 585 – 602 .

Rousseau David L. , Gelpi Christopher , Reiter Dan , Huth Paul K . 1996 . “ Assessing the Dyadic Nature of the Democratic Peace, 1918–88 .” American Political Science Review 90 ( 3 ): 512 – 33 .

Russett Bruce. 1993 . Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World . Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press .

Russett Bruce , Oneal John R. , Davis David R . 1998 . “ The Third Leg of the Kantian Tripod for Peace: International Organizations and Militarized Disputes, 1950–85 .” International Organization 52 ( 3 ): 441 – 67 .

Saunders Elizabeth Nathan. 2011 . Leaders at War: How Presidents Shape Military Interventions . Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press .

Schultz Kenneth A. 1998 . “ Domestic Opposition and Signaling in International Crises .” American Political Science Review 92 ( 4 ): 829 – 44 .

Schultz Kenneth A . 1999 “Do Democratic Institutions Constrain or Inform? Contrasting Two Institutional Perspectives on Democracy and War.” International Organization 53 , ( 2 ): 233 – 266 .

Schultz Kenneth A. 2001 . Democracy and Coercive Diplomacy . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press .

Slantchev Branislav L. 2003 . “The Principle of Convergence in Wartime Negotiations.” American Political Science Review 97 ( 4 ): 621 – 632 .

Small Mel , Singer J. David . 1976 . “ The War-Proneness of Democratic Regimes, 1816–1965 .” The Jerusalem Journal of International Relations 1 ( 4 ): 50 – 69 .

Sniezek Janet A. , 1992 . Groups Under Uncertainty: An Examination of Confidence in Group Decision Making . Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 52 ( 1 ): 124 – 155 .

Stevenson Hayley. 2013 . Institutionalizing Unsustainability: The Paradox of Global Climate Governance . Berkeley : University of California Press .

Stevenson Hayley. 2016 . “ The Wisdom of the Many in Global Governance: An Epistemic-Democratic Defense of Diversity and Inclusion .” International Studies Quarterly 60 ( 3 ): 400 – 12 .

Stevenson Hayley , Dryzek John S . 2014 . Democratizing Global Climate Governance . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press .

Surowiecki James. 2005 . The Wisdom of Crowds . New York : Random House LLC .

Tajfel Henri , Turner John C . 1979 . “An Integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict.” The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations 33 ( 47 ): 74 .

Taubman William. 2003 . Khrushchev: The Man and His Era . New York : WW Norton & Company .

Tetlock Philip. 2005 . Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know ? Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press .

Thompson William R. , Tucker Richard . 1997 . “ A Tale of Two Democratic Peace Critiques .” Journal of Conflict Resolution 41 ( 3 ): 428 – 54 .

Tingley Dustin H. , Walter Barbara F . 2011 . “ Can Cheap Talk Deter? An Experimental Analysis .” Journal of Conflict Resolution 55 ( 6 ): 996 – 1020 .

Tingley Dustin H. , Wang Stephanie W . 2010 . “ Belief Updating in Sequential Games of Two-Sided Incomplete Information: An Experimental Study of a Crisis Bargaining Model .” Quarterly Journal of Political Science 5 ( 3 ): 243 – 55 .

Tomz Michael. 2007 . “ Domestic Audience Costs in International Relations: An Experimental Approach .” International Organization 61 ( 4 ): 821 – 40 .

Tomz Michael R. , Weeks Jessica L.P . 2013 . “ Public Opinion and the Democratic Peace .” American Political Science Review 107 ( 4 ): 849 – 65 .

Tsebelis George , Choi. Seung-Whan “Democratic Peace Revisited: It Is Veto Players.” Presented at the American Political Science Association Conference in Toronto, 2009 .

Tyszka Tadeusz , Zielonka Piotr . 2002 . Expert Judgments: Financial Analysts Versus Weather Forecasters . Journal of Psychology and Financial Markets 3 ( 3 ): 152 – 60 . http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/S15327760JPFM0303_3

Weede Erich. 1984 . “ Democracy and War Involvement .” Journal of Conflict Resolution 28 ( 4 ): 649 – 64 .

Weede Erich. 1992 . “ Some Simple Calculations on Democracy and War Involvement .” Journal of Peace Research 29 ( 4 ): 377 – 83 .

Weeks Jessica L. 2008 . “ Autocratic Audience Costs: Regime Type and Signaling Resolve .” International Organization 62 ( 1 ): 35 – 64 .

Weeks Jessica L. 2012 . “ Strongmen and Straw Men: Authoritarian Regimes and the Initiation of International Conflict .” American Political Science Review 106 ( 2 ): 326 – 47 .

Weeks Jessica L. 2014 . Dictators at War and Peace . Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press .

Wolfers Justin , Zitzewitz Eric . 2009 . “ Using Markets to Inform Policy: The Case of the Iraq War .” Economica 76 ( 302 ): 225 – 50 .

Zaller John R. 1992 . The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (Cambridge Studies in Public Opinion and Political Psychology) . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press .

Author notes

Supplementary data, email alerts, citing articles via.

Recommend to your Library

Affiliations

Online ISSN 1468-2478
Print ISSN 0020-8833
Copyright © 2024 International Studies Association
About Oxford Academic
Publish journals with us
University press partners
What we publish
New features
Open access
Institutional account management
Rights and permissions
Get help with access
Accessibility
Advertising
Media enquiries
Oxford University Press
Oxford Languages
University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

Cookie settings
Cookie policy
Privacy policy
Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Even more »

Account Options

Try the new Google Books
Advanced Book Search
Barnes&Noble.com
Books-A-Million
Find in a library
All sellers »

Get Textbooks on Google Play

Rent and save from the world's largest eBookstore. Read, highlight, and take notes, across web, tablet, and phone.

Go to Google Play Now »

From inside the book

Other editions - view all, common terms and phrases, about the author (2010), bibliographic information.

Tools and Resources
Customer Services
Conflict Studies
Development
Environment
Foreign Policy
Human Rights
International Law
Organization
International Relations Theory
Political Communication
Political Economy
Political Geography
Political Sociology
Politics and Sexuality and Gender
Qualitative Political Methodology
Quantitative Political Methodology
Security Studies
Back to results
Share This Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

Article contents

Culture, religion, war, and peace.

Yehonatan Abramson Yehonatan Abramson Department of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.44
Published in print: 14 December 2013
Published online: 30 November 2017

Religion and culture have historically been neglected in international relations (IR) theories and in political science more generally. It was only recently that IR began to consider the role of culture and religion in war and peace. Several main scholarly trends in the study of culture, religion, conflict, and peace can be identified, starting with the definitional problems that IR scholars had to deal with as they tried to incorporate culture and religion. The first major attempt in the IR field to understand war almost exclusively through the religious prism was that of Samuel Huntington, who in his Clash of Civilization (1993, 1996) identifies two main reasons why religion can cause war: first, religion can be considered as a primordial and immutable identity; and second, religion is a form of ideology rather than identity. The scholarly literature has also addressed themes such as religious fundamentalism and violence, the role of religious actors in international conflict, the practical use of religion and culture to promote peace via diplomacy, and engagement of religion and culture in existing peace theories such as democratic peace theory. Avenues for future research may include the relational and constantly changing aspects of religion; what, when, and how various religious interpretations receive political prominence in promoting conflict or peace; how religion can be used as an independent variable across cases; and the hidden set of assumptions that are embedded in the cultural and religion labels.

international relations
Samuel Huntington
religious fundamentalism
democratic peace theory

Introduction

Historically, international relations (IR) theories neglected ideational factors such as identity, religion, and culture. Although culture was a part of political science since Almond and Verba's seminal book in 1963 , IR's dominant schools of thought (Realism and Liberalism) overemphasized material, structural, and “objective” factors in explaining states’ behavior. Religion was ignored altogether not only in IR, but also in political science in general (Wald and Wilcox 2006 ; Bellin 2008 ). In recent years, IR began to consider the role of culture and religion. Culture as a variable appeared during the end of the Cold War together with the “constructivist turn” (Lapid and Kratochwil 1996 ; Checkel 1998 ; Finnemore and Sikkink 2001 ). Religion entered the field a decade later alongside a scholarly focus on ethnic and religious conflicts and religious-inspired terrorism (Fox 2001 :53; Philpott 2009 :184; Snyder 2011 :1).

This essay reviews the main scholarly trends in the study of culture and religion as sources for conflict and resources for peace. After a brief survey of the early works of political theorists regarding religion and war, this essay turns to review how the topic has been understood within IR. As the essay demonstrates, the attempt to deal with religion and culture as part of identity is a source of much confusion. In order to avoid confusion and reiteration of other comprehensive review essays on culture and IR (such as the essays titled “Culture and Foreign Policy Analysis” and “Nonrealist Variables: Identity and Norms in the Study of International Relations” in this work), this essay gives special focus to the topic of religion in studies of conflict and peace. In IR, religion is usually an independent variable that causes war or peace, or an intervening variable that shapes the probability of a conflict and its violent potential (Hasenclever and Rittberger 2000 :644–8). Some scholars focus on what religion says, while others research what religion does; some scholars deal with religion in the individual level, while others emphasize the societal and organizational aspects of religion (Haynes 1998 ). The next section reviews the ways IR scholars define culture and religion and suggests that religion should be viewed as a part of culture. The following sections discuss the clash of civilizations debate; the relationship between fundamentalism and violence; religion as a cause of war; religion and the intensity of war; culture, religion and diplomacy with some references to cross-cultural negotiation; and culture and the democratic peace with some references to the debate regarding religion and democracy. The essay concludes with suggestions for future directions for research.

Conceptualizing Culture and Religion in IR Scholarship

Despite some exceptions, such as Adda Bozeman ( 1960 ), Jack Snyder ( 1977 ), and to some extent Robert Jervis ( 1976 ), IR scholars did not realize the importance of culture and religion to the understanding of peace and conflict until the post-Cold War era and the introduction of constructivism. The first task facing IR scholars trying to incorporate culture and religion is the task of definition. The understanding that these concepts can be rather distinct, but at the same time intrinsically connected has been a source for much confusion and contention. As this section suggests, different IR scholars treat culture and religion in different ways and sometimes use these concepts interchangeably with other concepts, such as norms, identity, and ethnicity.

The first example for such confusion exists in the writings of IR scholars from the English School, who understand religion as the main component in a society's culture. To Bozeman ( 1960 , 1971 ), for example, culture means civilization, and what dictates the mode of thinking and the normative order in a civilization is religion. Similarly, as Buzan ( 1993 :333) and Thomas ( 2005 :153–4) describe, Martin Wight argues that international societies can be formed on the basis of shared culture, but underlines the role of religion in not only promoting such peaceful unity but also holy wars. This view of religion as the core component of civilization is also shared by non-English School scholars such as Huntington ( 1996 ) and some of the authors in the volume edited by Katzenstein ( 2010 ).

While English School theorists understand culture as part of religion, the constructivist theoretical framework does the opposite. In constructivist studies, culture includes religion as well as other concepts such as identity, norms, or ideas (Lapid and Kratochwil 1996 ; Katzenstein 1996 ; Checkel 1998 ; Desch 1998 ). Cohen ( 1997 :11–12), for example, defines culture as “an acquired unique complex of attributes of a society that is subsuming every area of social life,” and we can find a similar approach in Mary Adams Trujillo et al. ( 2008 ). For others, such as Avruch ( 1998 :17) and Abu-Nimer ( 2001 :687) who draw on Theodore Schwartz's definition, culture is a less homogeneous and static concept and it “consists of the derivatives of experience, more or less organized, learned or created by the individuals of a population, including those images or encodement and their interpretations (meanings) transmitted from past generations, from contemporaries, or formed by individuals themselves.”

Subsuming religion under culture kept the concept under-theorized. It is notable that a canonical constructivist text, Alexander Wendt's Social Theory of International Politics ( 1999 ), does not include “religion” in the index (Snyder 2011 :2). An exception is Kubálková ( 2000 ), who brings religion into the study of IR through rule-oriented constructivism. However, the increasing interest in communal conflicts, such as ethno-national wars, and especially the September 11th attacks, have led to a resurgence of religion in the study of world politics (Fox 2001 :53; Philpott 2009 :184; Snyder 2011 :1).

Religion presents further definitional problems. The definition must encompass numerous but exclude from other phenomena such as ideologies or cults (Philpott 2003 ). Some of the early studies that deal with religion and international conflict, such as Ryan ( 1988 ), Azar ( 1990 ), Gurr ( 1994 ), and Gagnon ( 1994 ), consider religion to be part of a larger concept of ethnicity, or communality. Seul ( 1999 :553) tries to explain “the frequent appearance of religion as the primary cultural marker distinguishing groups in conflict,” and concludes that religion often exists “at the core of individual and group identity” (Seul 1999 :558). For Rothschild ( 1981 :86–7), however, religion is subsumed under the concept of ethnic identity. Correlation of War (COW) data uses both religion and ethnicity in measuring culture (see Henderson 1997 :661). Finally, Anthony Smith traces modern nationalism to religious origins (Smith 1999 ; see also Brubaker 2012 ).

Haynes ( 1998 ) provides a brief discussion about the definition dilemma and draws on Aquaviva while offering two sociological definitions. One sees religion as “a system of beliefs and practices related to an ultimate being, beings of the supernatural,” and the other considers religion to be what is “sacred in a society, that is, ultimate beliefs and practices which are inviolate” (Haynes 1998 : 4). The latter kind of definition is sometime referred to as ‘civil religion’ (Liebman and Don-Yiḥya 1983 ).

Toft ( 2007 :99) lists the common elements in most definitions: “a belief in a supernatural being (or beings); prayers and communication with that being; transcendent realities that might include some form of heaven, paradise, or hell; a distinction between the sacred and the profane and between ritual acts and sacred objects; a view that explains both the world as a whole and a person's proper role in it; a code of conduct in line with that world view; and a community bound by its adherence to these elements.”

On one hand, this discussion provides us some indicators to distinguish between religion and culture: the first belongs to the realm of the sacred and involves a relatively stable doctrine that connects the individual with the transcendental, while the latter belongs to the realm of the profane and involves a malleable combination of practices, customs, and expectations in relation to the society. On the other hand, religion and culture are intrinsically connected by myths, practices, and moral judgments that make religion a part of culture.

War and Peace in the Works of Religious Scholars and Political Theorists

Almost all religious texts have references to war and peace – the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, the Quran, the Iliad and Odyssey, the Rig Veda, Mahabharata and Ramayana, Arthasastra, and so on. These references offer different treatments of war and peace. Some describe human nature as aggressive or as pursuing peace, some explain war and peace as a result of divine intervention and will, and some define the conditions in which war and peace can be achieved. Some references in sacred texts condition peace on the society's moral behavior. Other texts determine with whom, when, and how a war can be held and a peace treaty can be signed. Most of the sacred texts also have detailed historical narratives of war and peace, from which we can draw conclusions how the religion conceives war and peace. Religious figures and leaders are still creating new interpretations and commentary about peace and war, and this rich genre receives a lot of attention from scholars. In the Western world, books on Judaism and Christianity were written focusing on analyzing peace and war in the Hebrew Bible, in the New Testament, and in sermons, letters, and other external texts and exegeses (Arias 1533 ; Belli 1563 ; Benezet 1776 ; Heaton 1816 ; Dymond 1834 ). In the Muslim world, a similar attempt was made (Shaybani 1335 ; Ibn Khaldun 1377 ; Baladhuri 1866 ). This trend is still relevant in contemporary research today in Christianity (Faunce 1918 ; Barrett 1987 ; Swartley 2006 ), in Buddhism (Kraft 1992 ; Jerryson and Juergensmeyer 2010 ), in Islam (Khadduri 1940 ; Khadduri 1955 ; Kelsay and Johnson 1991 ; Abu-Nimer 2003 ; Mirbagheri 2012 ), in Judaism (Homolka and Friedlander 1994 ; Eisen 2011 ), in Hinduism (Banerjee 1988 ), and in some of them together (Jack 1968 ; Ferguson 1978 ; Smock 1992 ; Gort et al. 2002 ; Nelson-Pallmeyer 2003 ; Nan, Mampilly, and Bartoli 2012 ).

Political philosophy also includes religion in its scholarship. Religion, God, and faith exist in the writings of Hobbes, Machiavelli, Grotius, Rousseau, Locke, Kant, and other early Western political thinkers. All of them considered religion to be an inherent part of life and society that had to be accounted for in political analysis. Some perceived religion as a moral and ethical guideline for individuals and society, and some debated whether religion is an obstacle for government and society or an integral part of it. The relationship between religion and political life remains a vibrant subject of debate to this day (Eisenach 1981 ; Beiner 1993 ; Martinich 2003 ; De Vries 2003 ). Despite the richness of the contributions of religious scholars and of philosophers, these works have not yet offered a scientific theory regarding the role that religion plays in war and peace.

Religion and Conflict: The Clash of Civilization Debate

The first major attempt in the IR field to understand war almost exclusively through the religious prism was that of Samuel Huntington in his well-known article and book Clash of Civilization ( 1993 , 1996 ). Huntington, rejecting Francis Fukuyama's notion of the “End of History,” divides the world into seven or eight major civilizations that are fundamentally different from each other “by history, language, culture, tradition and, most important, religion” (Huntington 1993 :25). Instead of the traditional territorial nation-states, Huntington recognizes a world comprised of various identities that are not necessarily delineated by national boundaries. He argues that the end of the Cold War and the ideological battle between the West and the East will be replaced by a battle of civilizations, which is the broadest category of identification for individuals and is mainly determined by religious beliefs. More specifically, Huntington predicts that the main civilizational conflict will be between the Islamic civilization and the Judeo-Christian Western civilization, due to conflictual history from both sides, a large gap in values, the rise of Islamic extremists and fundamentalism, and a clash of identities as a result of Muslim immigration.

In sum, Huntington's view clarifies two main reasons why religion can cause war. First, religion can be considered as a primordial and immutable identity. The Manichean perception of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ that religion provides is a main source of conflict (Dark 2000 :4–5, 11). Second, globalization, which folds within it rapid economic development and an increase in interactions between individual groups, creates a clash between traditional customs and Western modernity (Fox 1997 :3; Thomas 2000 :5). The desire of other civilizations to maintain their core values and traditions, and to prevent the domination of Western culture lead Huntington to claim that civilizational differences will be the main source of future wars (Huntington 1993 :29–31, 40).

Huntington's thesis received a lot of interest in scholarly and political discourse, and his thesis was tested and criticized from many angles. Ajami ( 1993 ), Bartley ( 1993 ), and Weeks ( 1993 ), for example, argue that states are still the main actors in the international system and that the English-Western secular modern force is more powerful than Huntington thinks. Kirkpatrick ( 1993 ) claims that intra-civilizational conflicts are more common than inter-civilizational conflicts. Others, such as Tipson ( 1997 ), Pfaff ( 1997 ), and Said ( 2001 ), criticize Huntington's facts and methodology (for more comprehensive reviews of the clash of civilization debate see O'Hagan 1995 ; Fox and Sandler 2004 ; Fox 2005 ). Katzenstein ( 2010 ) rejects Huntington's conception of civilizations as homogeneous in favor of a pluralistic view recognizing internal diversity. Katzenstein ( 2010 ) further questions the Huntingtonian “clash” with the evident capacity for inter-and trans-civilizational encounters.

Scholars have also made quantitative attempts to test Huntington's theory. Russett, Oneal, and Cox ( 2000 ) examine inter-state wars between 1950 and 1992 and conclude that realist and liberal variables provide better explanations of these conflicts than civilizational factors. Henderson and Tucker ( 2001 ) examine international wars between 1816 and 1992 and find no connection between civilization membership and international wars. In addition, Henderson and Tucker find that conflicts within civilizations are more likely than conflicts between civilizations. More recent attempts also do not find support for the clash of civilization thesis (Chiozza 2002 ; Ben-Yehuda 2003 ; Bolks and Stoll 2003 ; Fox 2004 ; Henderson 2005 ). However, Henderson's ( 1997 :663) findings suggest that “the greater the religious dissimilarity between states, the greater the likelihood of war.” Similarly, Roeder ( 2003 ) examines ethnopolitical conflicts and finds support for Huntington's thesis. Fox, James, and Li ( 2009 ) bring a different angle to the clash of civilizations debate in examining international interventions on behalf of the same ethno-religious group in another state. Although they focus only on conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa, their findings show that Muslim states are more likely to intervene on behalf of other Muslim minorities. Moreover, ethnic conflicts with a religious dimension seem more likely to attract intervention than other ethnic conflicts.

Another view of religion as a cause of war sees religion as a form of ideology rather than identity. In this kind of approach, the emphasis is not on how clashing religious identities create conflict, but rather how religious ideas shape worldviews that justify or are consistent with conflict (see also Desch 1998 ). According to Beker ( 2008 ), for example, the Jewish notion of the “chosen people” has fueled many ideological conflicts between Jews and non-Jews. He further demonstrates how the battle over “chosenness” is evident in modern anti-Semitic discourse. Khadduri ( 1955 ) makes an analogous point with the concepts of dar al-harb (territory of war) and dar al-Islam (territory of Islam) in Islamic laws of war. Similarly, in examining Chinese thought and culture and their influence on Ming strategy towards the Mongols, Johnston ( 1995 :xi) finds that the non-militant ideas usually associated with Confucianism may be “inaccurate, misleading, or plainly wrong.” Juergensmeyer ( 2003 ) focuses on ideas that affect “cultures of violence.” Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, and others, Juergensmeyer claims, share a worldview of cosmic war between darkness and light (Juergensmeyer 2003 :13, 35). Because religious ideology is a defined non-negotiable set of rules, resolving a religious dispute peacefully is harder than with other disputes (Dark 2000 :1–2).

Religious Fundamentalism and Violence

The relationship between religious worldviews and war leads us to religious fundamentalism and violence. Of special note is the five-volume work by Marty and Appleby ( 1991 –5) that encompasses different approaches and case studies related to fundamentalism. Marty and Appleby ( 1992 :34) define fundamentalism as “a distinctive tendency – a habit of mind and a pattern of behavior – found within modern religious communities and embodied in certain representative individuals and movements … a religious way of being that manifests itself as a strategy by which beleaguered believers attempt to preserve their distinctive identity as a people or group.” They recount the ideological extremism in social, political, and structural conditions, such as social deprivation, repressive regimes, reaction to secularization, and economic crises. Marty and Appleby argue that religious ideas are not the goal for the fundamentalists, but rather they use religion as a means to achieve political ends. Fundamentalists use “old doctrines, subtly lift them from their original context … and employ them as ideological weapons against a hostile world” (Marty and Appleby 1991 :826). Fundamentalism, in this view, is a religious backlash against secular rule (see also Tibi 1999 ). Juergensmeyer ( 1993 ) shares this view but opposes labeling this religious fervor as fundamentalism due to the accusatory and ambiguous meanings of the term.

Eisenstadt ( 1999 ) agrees with Marty and Appleby that “contemporary” fundamentalist movements are thoroughly modern movements, but disagrees with the link they draw between religious force and fundamentalism. For Eisenstadt, contemporary fundamentalist movements rest on the same universal, utopian, totalistic, and secular claims of modernity that the Jacobins and the communist revolutions were based upon but “promulgate anti-modern or anti-Enlightenment ideologies” (Eisenstadt 1999 :1). The direction which a fundamentalist movement takes depends on its civilization, the political and social circumstances surrounding the movement, and the international setting (Eisenstadt 1999 ). Reviews of religious fundamentalism and violence include Gill ( 2001 ) and Ozzano ( 2009 ).

Religious Actors and International Conflict

Scholarship has gone beyond the clash of civilizations debate and the study of fundamentalism to explore further questions about how and under what conditions religion leads to war. One approach has been to consider individual values and mindsets in the lists of factors that affect decision making by leaders, including decisions about war. Brecher ( 1972 ), Jervis ( 1976 ), and Fisher ( 1997 ) focus on culture, while Fox ( 2001 ), Sandal and James ( 2010 ), and Warner and Walker ( 2011 ) focus specifically on religion. On the collective level, society's core values, conceptions, and assumptions about the world and the enemy can influence foreign policy outcomes (Booth 1979 ; Hudson and Vore 1995 ; Reeves 2004 ). Religious beliefs should not be dismissed as irrational or marginal, but should be included in the strategic calculations of leaders and states (Toft 2007 :129).

Religious affinities on the collective level are not confined to traditional territorial state boundaries. Transnational religious actors are another good example of the role of religion in conflict. Religious terrorist groups that have cells in different countries can initiate a conflict between states, and global riots can result from injury to religious sentiment, as in the Danish caricature case (Dark 2000 :5–10; Fox 2001 :67–9; Haynes 2001 ). These kinds of conflicts can be international, when religious diaspora is engaged in the conflict, or remain domestic (civil wars). Fox and Sandler show how local wars can capture the interest of members of transnational religious groups due to the possible involvement of holy sites (Fox and Sandler 2004 :63–82). Even without direct participation in violence, religious transnational movements and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) participate in global conflict by lobbying or protesting in order to encourage a state to intervene in a distant war between ethno-religious minorities (Fox, James and Li 2009 ).

Religion may also have an indirect effect on war since it can be used as a tool to mobilize people and to enhance legitimacy (Fox 2001 :65–7; Haynes 2004 :456; Snyder 2011 :11). This does not necessarily mean that political leaders actually hold religious beliefs but that such beliefs serve them in accomplishing their political interests. This view holds that the recent global resurgence of religion in various societies occurs as a result of instrumental use of religion by political elites (Fox 1997 :4; Hasenclever and Rittberger 2000 :643–6).

The question of whether religion is the cause of a conflict, or just a tool or a dimension of it was addressed in several quantitative studies. Gurr ( 1993 ) uses the Minorities at Risk data to examine mobilization and collective action in “communal conflicts.” His findings indicate that an essential basis for mobilization is a sense of group identity. Gurr measures group identity by using six indicators including religion, ethnicity, and social customs. Fox ( 1997 , 2002 ) tries to isolate conflicts between groups from different religions. Using the same data as Gurr, Fox concludes that in such cases “religious issues play, at most, a marginal role” (Fox 1997 :16). Henderson, however, using Correlates of War data, concludes that “cultural difference, especially in the case of religion, is positively associated with war” (Henderson 1997 :666). Durward and Marsden ( 2009 ) offer a more nuanced and developed understanding of how religious beliefs, discourses, and practices are politicized and used to trigger conflicts, justify military interventions, and facilitate resolutions.

Religion and the Intensity of War

Another trend in the study of religion and war asks whether religious conflicts are more violent than other conflicts and if some religions are more prone to use more violence than others. Fox and Sandler ( 2004 ), using Minorities at Risk data, conclude that “religious conflicts … are consistently more violent than nonreligious conflicts.” A study by Pearce ( 2005 ) using a different data set supports this conclusion.

As for the relationship between a specific religion and violence, Pearce's ( 2005 :349) results show that Judaism and Hinduism are more violence prone, but this may be due to a small number of cases. Fox and Sandler's ( 2004 :132) results demonstrate “conflicts involving Islamic groups are more violent than conflicts not involving Islamic groups,” and conflicts within the Islamic civilization “are slightly more violent” than conflicts between civilizations. Due to the fact that there are many Muslim states, but only one Jewish state and one Hindu state that are each experiencing protracted conflict, it is still unclear whether specific religions are more violent than others, or whether it is a false image created by the uneven numbers of religious groups. The finding that Islamists were involved in 81 percent of the religious civil wars between 1940 and 2000 led Toft ( 2007 ) to eventually conclude that “overlapping historical, geographical, and, in particular, structural factors account for Islam's higher representation in religious civil wars.” More importantly, her theory suggests that religious aspects are an instrument by political elites for gaining more legitimacy in order to survive, or to achieve another objective (Toft 2007 :97–8, 128).

The degree of religious violence does not have to be related to a specific religion, but rather to the type of regime or degree of state power. Thomas ( 2000 :14–15) suggests that the appeal for religious ideas grows larger especially in weak states. Fox ( 1997 ) shows an increase in religious discrimination and grievance in autocratic states compared with democratic regimes. When a transition to democracy happens, the chances of such communal violence rise due to the diminishing power of the regime and an ease of autocratic repression (Gurr 1994 ).

Culture, Religion, and Diplomacy

Scholars have also been interested in the practical use of religion and culture to promote peace. Discussing culture specifically, Kevin Avruch ( 1998 ) suggests that culture is a significant variable in conflict resolution as each negotiator comes with his or her own subculture (class, region, ethnicity, and more). In contrast, Zartman ( 1993 :17) gives culture little substantive significance and argues that it is as relevant as the breakfast the negotiators ate. Fisher ( 1980 ) and Cohen ( 1997 ) occupy the middle ground suggesting that culture matters together with other variables. For a good introductory review regarding these approaches, see Ramsbotham, Miall, and Woodhouse ( 2011 ).

Cultural gaps may involve language barriers, create problems of interpretation, and disrupt the transfer of information (Gulliver 1979 ; Fisher 1980 ; Faure and Rubin 1993 ; Cohen 1997 ; Berton et al. 1999 ). The dichotomy, made by Hall ( 1976 ) between high-context cultures and low-context cultures, is useful in explaining these cultural obstacles in international negotiation. High-context cultures are generally associated with collective societies in which communication is less verbal and more indirect, emphasizing the context in which things are said and done. High-context cultures require communicators to pay attention to nuances and body language. Consequently, those from such cultures are more sensitive socially, they try to please their audience, and they see great importance in small talk and group consensus. Low-context cultures, on the other hand, are individualistic in character, and communication is direct and with a clear message. Accuracy in the written or spoken word is very important in low-context culture, and less attention is paid to context, body language, and facial expressions (Cohen 1997 ; Rubinstein 2003 ). When two societies from the two different types of culture meet around the negotiation table, potential pitfalls are evident. This line of research has specific practical implications. The US Institute of Peace published a series of works analyzing different negotiating styles and behaviors to equip negotiators with a better understanding of cultural differences. Examples include Wittes ( 2005 ), Solomon and Quinney ( 2010 ), and Schaffer and Schaffer ( 2011 ).

As for structure and the process of negotiation, culture can play an important role in the degree of trust between the sides, which can define negotiation strategy and whether there is a need for mediation. These factors can also influence the size of the delegations, the different roles within the delegation, the degree of unity within the delegation, negotiating procedures, seating arrangements, and public announcements (Berton et al. 1999 :3–5).

This vast literature regarding culture and diplomacy has little to say about religion. As former United States Secretary of State and international relations scholar Madeleine Albright confesses, diplomacy, conflict resolution, negotiation, and peace were all conceptualized in secular terms with no room for religion and faith prior to the terror attacks of September 11th (Albright 2006 :8–9). Indeed, most of the IR studies on culture and diplomatic practices to promote peace were written during the 1980s and 1990s. Only after September 11th did religion and faith become a primary topic.

Many scholars agree that the same power that religion has in inciting conflicts can also be used to promote peace (Gopin 1997 ; Appleby 2000 ; Broadhead and Keown 2007 ). Some works continue the trajectory of previous studies on cross-cultural negotiation and focus on a specific religion. In the case of Islam, Alon ( 2000 ), Alon and Brett ( 2007 ), and Pely ( 2010 ) focus on Muslim perceptions of conflict resolution, values of honor, and the institutional mechanism of sulha (reconciliation). Other studies consider how peace can be achieved with an emphasis on shared religious values, such as empathy, forgiveness, mercy, compassion and the Golden Rule to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Gopin 1997 ; Gopin 2001 ; Cilliers 2002 ; Carter and Smith 2004 ). Similarly, Albright ( 2006 :73) mentions the religious notion that “we are all created in the image of God” as a common ground. Shore ( 2009 :2) shows how “Christianity played a central role in South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” and how values of forgiveness and justice were important in South Africa's peaceful transition to democracy. Similarly, Gopin ( 2002 ) argues that in the Israeli-Palestinian case, the marginalization of religious aspects was crucial in the failure of the Oslo agreement. He adds that by putting religion in the middle of the reconciliation process, and with dialogues between key religious figures from both sides, peace in the Middle East can be achieved.

While traditional realpolitik diplomacy has had difficulties coping with religion-inspired conflicts, non-state actors, such as religious leaders and members of religious NGOs, had more success in promoting peace in different forms – whether peacemaking, peacebuilding, peace enforcing, or peace keeping (Little 2006 :102). Cynthia Sampson ( 1997 ) overviews the various roles and methodologies used by religious-motivated institutional actors in the process of peacebuilding. She provides manifold examples of conflict intervention by religious institutional actors that advocate (such as during the Rhodesian war of independence), intermediate (such as in the 1972 Sudanese peace process), observe (such as during the 1991 Zambian elections), and educate (such as in Northern Ireland). Appleby ( 2000 ) offers a similar approach focusing on religious actors and their roles.

The vast examples of religious involvement in peacebuilding have led Johnston and Sampson ( 1997 ) and Johnston ( 2003 ) to conceptualize this type of diplomacy as “faith-based diplomacy,” which takes place through track II channels (the informal and unofficial negotiations). In general, the Catholic Church receives more scholarly attention than other religious institutions in mediating disputes. Examples include the 1968–89 internal dispute in Bolivia (Klaiber 1993 ) and the Beagle Channel dispute between Argentina and Chile (Garrett 1985 ; Lindsley 1987 ; Laudy 2000 ). Bartoli's analyses of the reconciliation process in Mozambique specify how religion plays a role in conflict resolution. He demonstrates that religion does not replace or transform the political process of negotiation, but rather provides motivation, organizational capacities, legitimacy, and flexibility (Bartoli 2001 , 2005 ; see also Toft, Philpott, and Shah 2011 ).

The volume edited by David Little ( 2007 ) offers a different perspective that focuses on individual religious figures, rather than institutions, as peacemakers. Examples from El Salvador, Israel/Palestine, Kosovo, Northern Ireland, and Sudan highlight the grassroots efforts by religious individuals to promote peace. Using religious texts, rituals, and networks these individuals increase global attention, help find common ground, provide moral justification, and facilitate face-to-face communication between the warring sides (see also Smock 2008 ; for more on the topic of diplomacy and religion see “Diplomacy and Religion”).

Recently, there is a growing interest in challenging the secularist assumptions of United States foreign policy. Hurd ( 2008 ), for example, demonstrates that the perceived separation between religious and secular political authorities is a result of a political process and is socially constructed. By identifying two trajectories of secularism – a laicist one and a Judeo-Christian one – she shows how religion and secularism were never apart. Thus, instead of characterizing religion as a threat, diplomats and decision makers should realize that there are various political representations and interpretations of religion and should make more room for non-Western forms of politics (Hurd 2007 ). From a different perspective, Farr ( 2008 ) calls for rejecting the American narrow version of religious freedom that focuses on humanitarian violations in favor of a more tolerant and broader version that builds and encourages different versions of religious freedom in different regimes. Philpott ( 2013 :31) supports Farr's conclusions by highlighting how religious freedom is a “critical enabler of peace.”

Culture, Religion, and the Democratic Peace

Another research theme in IR tries to engage religion and culture in existing peace theories. The main example is democratic peace theory, by which liberal democracies tend not to fight each other. One of the explanations for democratic peace argues that shared cultures, values, and norms favoring compromise and peaceful solutions lead liberal democracies to solve disputes peacefully (Maoz and Russett 1993 ). But the traditional cultural explanation for democratic peace focuses on political culture and not on other elements such as ethnicity, language, and religion. Henderson ( 1998 ) tests the theory with those elements included and concludes that religious similarities within democratic dyads decrease the likelihood of war, while ethnic and lingual similarities increase this likelihood.

The connection between peaceful behavior and regime type led scholars to examine the connection between specific religions and democracy as a way to better understand the conditions for democracy and presumably for peace. After Huntington's theory and the events of September 11th, Western scholars tested Bernard Lewis’ hypothesis that Islamic religion conflicts with democracy (Midlarsky 1998 :486). This topic was researched from different angles. Some argue that Muslim resistance to modernity is an obstacle to democracy (Sivan 1990 ); some argue that lack of sufficient economic development holds back democracy; others claim that the possession of oil and the concept of the ‘rentier state’ hinder democracy (Ross 2001 ; Fish 2002 ); and some claim that the ideas grounded in Islamic thought and religion are incompatible with democracy (Huntington 1984 ; Lewis 1996 ). On the other hand, Esposito and Piscatori ( 1991 ) and Esposito and Voll ( 1996 ) argue that Islam is not necessarily hostile to democracy, and urge us to remember that Islam, like democracy, has a variety of interpretations, meanings, and political practices. Midlarsky ( 1998 ) tries to test the relationship between Islam and democracy using a political rights index (measuring procedural democracy) and an index of liberal democracy (measuring liberal freedoms). He finds that Islam, measured by the percentage of population that is Muslim, has a negative correlation with liberal freedoms but does not necessarily rule out democratic procedure. Recently, Hunter and Malik ( 2005 ) offer an antithesis to this view and demonstrate how military, colonial, international economic, and domestic economic factors prevented the creation of a civil society that is crucial for democracy. Sonn and McDaniel's chapter in the same book demonstrates how modern Islamic thought is quite similar to Western values, including rationality and tolerance.

Future Research

In the study of war and peace, religion long played a marginal role. Both sacred texts and Western canonical philosophical works contain religious references to war and peace, but none of the main theoretical works in IR address religion. Since the end of the Cold War and the growing attention to ethnic conflicts, new interests in culture and religion emerged. Scholars first explored the interplay of culture, war, and peace focusing on decision making, negotiation, national character, and the cultural construction of friends and foes. Then, as a result of the growing attention to ethnic conflict and terrorism, there was a resurgence of interest in religion in IR scholarship. Treated both as a central component of social identity and as an overarching ideology, religious international violence is understood by some scholars as a reaction to global population flows, modernization processes, and secularization.

Religion, as a social phenomenon, is also able to help us understand the growing power of actors outside the traditional boundaries of the state. Transnational actors that share religious beliefs with each other can pursue different, and sometimes contradictory, goals from those of the nation-state. Such actors can ignite conflicts, but can also help in mediating negotiations and promoting peace. Diplomats have learned to use key religious figures in their reconciliation attempts and they try to emphasize common values and diminish differences between religions.

The rediscovery of religion in IR scholarship has produced many studies that try to theorize the role of religion in conflict and peace. Thus far, these studies treat religion either as a political tool used by agents for their own interests or as an essentialist ideological scheme that informs actors’ behavior. Future research may focus on the relational and constantly changing aspects of religion and show what, when, and how various religious interpretations receive political prominence in promoting conflict or peace. Moreover, IR scholarship could use more theorization of how religion can be used as an independent variable across cases. How can one compare the religious passions animating the Crusades, with the religious passions during the Thirty Years War, or with modern fundamentalist terrorism? The definitional problems, mentioned earlier, provide difficulties in that regard.

A new way to look in more depth at religious and cultural elements of international politics is to use them as interpretive tools. Culture can be conceptualized as the “practices of meaning-making,” and thus open an opportunity to investigate the ways in which meanings are created within a society (Wedeen 2002 ). For example, examining political rhetoric can help us understand how meanings become inscribed within a society and how changes in rhetoric can lead to changes in foreign policy (Krebs and Jackson 2007 ; Krebs and Lobasz 2007 ). Another beneficial way to engage the elusive concepts of culture and religion is to trace the hidden set of assumptions that are embedded in the cultural and religion labels. What does “democracy” or “freedom” mean to different cultural or religious groups? What types of behavior are expected from a negotiator who is labeled Muslim or Buddhist and how does it affect the negotiation process? Moreover, how does popular representation of different religions shape these hidden assumptions?

IR literature will probably continue to engage culture and religion in its research, but in order to develop the field and avoid academic stagnation, it is important to enable scientific pluralism that will force us to reconsider how we treat religion and culture. A deeper understanding of different religions and cultures will open our understanding of the different “worlds” within “our world” and will identify the values that drive these worlds.

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Renée Marlin-Bennett for her valuable guidance and comments, and Andrew Mark Bennett for his meticulous assistance.

Abu-Nimer, M. (2001) Conflict Resolution, Culture, and Religion: Toward a Training Model of Interreligious Peacebuilding. Journal of Peace Research (38) (6), 685–704.
Abu-Nimer, M. (2003) Nonviolence and Peacebuilding in Islam . Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.
Ajami, F. (1993) The Summoning. Foreign Affairs (72) (4), 2–9.
Albright, M.K. (2006) The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs . New York: Harper Perennial.
Almond, G.A. , and Verba, S. (1963) The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Alon, I. (2000) Negotiation in Arab-Speaking Islam: A Research Note . Jerusalem: Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Alon, I. and Brett, J.M. (2007) Perceptions of Time and Their Impact on Negotiations in the Arabic-Speaking Islamic World. Negotiation Journal (23) (1), 55–73.
al-Shaybani, M. (1335) Kitab al-Siyar al-Kabir [A Treatise on the International Law] . Hyderabad.
Appleby, R.S. (2000) The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation . Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.
Arias, F. (1533) De Bello et Eius Iustitia in Tractatus Universi Iuris [Justice of War in Universal Law Treaties] .
Avruch, K. (1998) Culture and Conflict Resolution . Washington: United States Institute of Peace Press.
Azar, E.E. (1990) The Management of Protracted Social Conflict: Theory and Cases . Aldershot: Dartmouth.
Baladhuri, A. (1866) Futuh al-Buldan [Conquests of the Lands] . Leiden.
Banerjee, N.V. (1988) Towards Perpetual Peace . Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study.
Barrett, C. (1987) Peace Together: A Vision of Christian Pacifism . Cambridge: J. Clarke.
Bartley, R.L. (1993) The Case for Optimism. Foreign Affairs (72) (4), 15–18.
Bartoli, A. (2001) Forgiveness and Reconciliation in the Mozambique Peace Process. In R.G. Helmick and R.L. Petersen (eds.), Forgiveness and Reconciliation: Religion, Public Policy, and Conflict Transformation . Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press.
Bartoli, A. (2005) Learning from the Mozambique Peace Process: The Role of the Community in Sant'Egidio. In R.J. Fisher (ed.), Paving the Way: Contribution of Interactive Conflict Resolution to Peacemaking . Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Beiner, R. (1993) Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau on Civil Religion. The Review of Politics (55) (4), 617–38.
Beker, A. (2008) The Chosen: The History of an Idea, the Anatomy of an Obsession . New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Belli, P. (1563) De re Militari et de Bello in Tractatus Universi Iuris [The Military Affairs of the War in Universal Law Treaties] .
Bellin, E. (2008) Faith in Politics: New Trends in the Study of Religion and Politics. World Politics (60) (2), 315–47.
Benezet, A. (1776) Thoughts on the Nature of War . Philadelphia.
Ben-Yehuda, H. (2003) The “Clash of Civilizations” Thesis: Findings from International Crises, 1918–1994. Comparative Civilizations Review ( (49) ), 28–42.
Berton, P. , Kimura, H. , and Zartman, W.I. (eds.) (1999) International Negotiation: Actors, Structure/Process, Values . New York: Saint Martin's Press.
Bolks, S. , and Stoll, R. (2003) Examining Conflict Escalation within the Civilizations Context. Conflict Management and Peace Science (20) (2), 85–109.
Booth, K. (1979) Strategy and Ethnocentrism . New York: Holmes & Meier.
Bozeman, A.B. (1960) Politics and Culture in International History . Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Bozeman, A.B. (1971) The Future of Law in a Multicultural World . Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Brecher, M. (1972) The Foreign Policy System of Israel: Setting, Images, Process . New Haven: Yale University Press.
Broadhead, P. , and Keown, D. (2007) Can Faiths Make Peace? Holy Wars and the Resolution of Religious Conflicts . New York: IB Tauris.
Brubaker, R. (2012) Religion and Nationalism: Four Approaches. Nations and Nationalism (18) (1), 2–20.
Buzan, B. (1993) From International System to International Society: Structural Realism and Regime Theory Meet the English School. International Organization (47) (3), 327–52.
Carter, J. , and Smith, G.S. (2004) Religious Peacebuilding: From Potential to Action. In H.G. Coward , and G.S. Smith (eds.) Religion and Peacebuilding . New York: State University of New York Press, pp. 279–302.
Checkel, J.T. (1998) The Constructivist Turn in International Relations Theory. World Politics (50) (2), 324–48.
Chiozza, G. (2002) Is There a Clash of Civilizations? Evidence from Patterns of International Conflict Involvement, 1946–97. Journal of Peace Research (39) (6), 711–34.
Cilliers, J. (2002) Building Bridges for Interfaith Dialogue. In D.R. Smock (ed.), Interfaith Dialogue and Peacebuilding . Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, pp. 47–60.
Cohen, R. (1997) Negotiating Across Cultures . Washington: United States Institute of Peace Press.
Dark, K.R. (2000) Religion and International Relations . Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
Desch, M.C. (1998) Culture Clash: Assessing the Importance of Ideas in Security Studies. International Security (23) (1), 141–70.
De Vries, H. (2003) Religion and Violence: Philosophical Perspectives from Kant to Derrida . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Durward, R. , and Marsden, L. (eds.) (2009) Religion, Conflict, and Military Intervention . Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
Dymond, J. (1834) An Inquiry into the Accordance of War with the Principles of Christianity . Philadelphia: William Brown.
Eisen, R. (2011) The Peace and Violence of Judaism: From the Bible to Modern Zion . New York: Oxford University Press.
Eisenach, E.J. (1981) Two Worlds of Liberalism: Religion and Politics in Hobbes, Locke, and Mill . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Eisenstadt, S.N. (1999) Fundamentalism, Sectarianism, and Revolution: The Jacobin Dimension of Modernity . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Esposito, J.L. , and Piscatori, J.P. (1991) Democratization and Islam. Middle East Journal (45) (3), 427–40.
Esposito, J.L. , and Voll, J.O. (1996) Islam and Democracy . New York: Oxford University Press.
Farr, T.F. (2008) World of Faith and Freedom: Why International Religious Liberty is Vital to American National Security . New York: Oxford University Press.
Faunce, H.P. (1918) Religion and War . New York: The Abingdon Press.
Faure, G.O. , and Rubin, J.Z. (eds.) (1993) Culture and Negotiation: The Resolution of Water Disputes . Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Ferguson, J. (1978) War and Peace in the World's Religions . New York: Oxford University Press.
Finnemore, M. , and Sikkink, K. (2001) Taking Stock: The Constructivist Research Program in International Relations and Comparative Politics. Annual Review of Political Science (4) (1), 391–416.
Fish, M.S. (2002) Islam and Authoritarianism. World Politics (55) (1) 4–37.
Fisher, G. (1997) Mindsets: the Role of Culture and Perception in International Relations . Maine: Intercultural Press.
Fisher, G. (1980) International Negotiation: A Cross-Cultural Perspective . Chicago: Intercultural Press.
Fox, J. (1997) The Salience of Religious Issues in Ethnic Conflicts: A Large-N Study. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics (3) (3), 1–19.
Fox, J. (2001) Religion as an Overlooked Element of International Relations. International Studies Review (3) (3), 53–73.
Fox, J. (2002) Ethnoreligious Conflict in the Late Twentieth Century: A General Theory . Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Fox, J. (2004) Religion and State Failure: An Examination of the Extent and Magnitude of Religious conflict from 1950 to 1996. International Political Science Review (25) (1), 55–76.
Fox, J. (2005) Paradigm Lost: Huntington's Unfulfilled Clash of Civilizations Prediction into the 21st Century. International Politics (42) (4), 428–57.
Fox, J. , and Sandler, S. (2004) Bringing Religion into International Relations . New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Fox, J. , James, P. and Li, Y. (2009) Religious Affinities and International Intervention in Ethnic Conflicts in the Middle East and Beyond. Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue Canadienne (42) (1), 161–86.
Gagnon, V.P. (1994) Ethnic Nationalism and International Conflict: The Case of Serbia. International Security (19) (3), 130–66.
Garrett, J.L. (1985) The Beagle Channel Dispute: Confrontation and Negotiation in the Southern Cone Journal of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs (27) (3), 81–109.
Gill, A. (2001) Religion and Comparative Politics. Annual Review of Political Science (4) (1), 117–38.
Gopin, M. (1997) Religion, Violence, and Conflict Resolution. Peace & Change (22) (1), 1–31.
Gopin, M. (2001) Forgiveness as an Element of Conflict Resolution in Religious Cultures: Walking the Tightrope of Reconciliation and Justice. In M. Abu-Nimer (ed.), Reconciliation, Justice, and Coexistence: Theory & Practice . Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 87–99.
Gopin, M. (2002) Holy War, Holy Peace: How Religion Can Bring Peace to the Middle East . New York: Oxford University Press.
Gort, J.D. , Jansen, H. , and Vroom, H.M. (2002) Religion, Conflict, and Reconciliation . New York: Rodopi.
Gulliver, P.H. (1979) Disputes and Negotiations: a Cross-Cultural Perspective . New York: Academic Press.
Gurr, T.R. (1993) Why Minorities Rebel: A Global Analysis of Communal Mobilization and Conflict Since 1945. International Political Science Review (14) (2), 161–201.
Gurr, T.R. (1994) Peoples Against States: Ethnopolitical Conflict and the Changing World System: 1994 Presidential Address. International Studies Quarterly (38) (3), 347–77.
Hall, E.T. (1976) Beyond Culture . New York: Anchor.
Hasenclever, A. , and Rittberger, V. (2000) Does Religion Make a Difference? Theoretical Approaches to the Impact of Faith on Political Conflict. Millennium-Journal of International Studies (29) (3), 641–74.
Haynes, J. (1998) Religion in Global Politics . London: Longman.
Haynes, J. (2001) Transnational Religious Actors and International Politics. Third World Quarterly (22) (2), 143–58.
Haynes, J. (2004) Religion and International Relations: What Are the Issues? International Politics (41) (3), 451–62.
Heaton, A. (1816) War and Christianity Contrasted . New York: Samuel Woods & Sons.
Henderson, E.A. (1997) Culture or Contiguity. Journal of Conflict Resolution (41) (5), 649–68.
Henderson, E.A. (1998) The Democratic Peace Through the Lens of Culture, 1820–1989. International Studies Quarterly (42) (3), 461–84.
Henderson, E.A. (2005) Not Letting Evidence Get in the Way of Assumptions: Testing the Clash of Civilizations Thesis with More Recent Data. International Politics (42) (4), 458–69.
Henderson, E.A. , and Tucker, R. (2001) Clear and Present Strangers: The Clash of Civilizations and International Conflict. International Studies Quarterly (45) (2), 317–38.
Homolka, W. , and Friedlander, A.H. (1994) The Gate to Perfection: The Idea of Peace in Jewish Thought . Providence: Berghahn Books.
Hudson, V.M. , and Vore, C.S. (1995) Foreign Policy Analysis Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. Mershon International Studies Review (39) (2), 209–38.
Hunter, S.T. , and Malik, H. (2005) Modernization, Democracy, and Islam . Westport: Praeger.
Huntington, S.P. (1984) Will More Countries Become Democratic? Political Science Quarterly (99) (2), 193–218.
Huntington, S.P. (1993) The Clash of Civilizations. Foreign Affairs (72) (3), 22–49.
Huntington, S.P. (1996) The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order . New York: Simon and Schuster.
Hurd, E.S. (2007). Political Islam and Foreign Policy in Europe and the United States. Foreign Policy Analysis (3) (4), 345–67.
Hurd, E.S. (2008) The Politics of Secularism in International Relations . Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Ibn Khaldun, A. (1377) Muqaddimat Ibn Khaldun [Ibn Khaldun's Introduction] .
Jack, H.A. (1968) World Religions and World Peace . Boston: Beacon Press.
Jerryson, M.K. , and Juergensmeyer, M. (2010) Buddhist Warfare . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jervis, R. (1976) Perception and Misperception in International Politics . Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Johnston, A.I. (1995) Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History . Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Johnston, D.M. (2003) Faith-Based Diplomacy: Trumping Realpolitik . New York: Oxford University Press.
Johnston, D.M. , and Sampson, C. (1997) Religion, the Missing Dimension of Statecraft . New York: Oxford University Press.
Juergensmeyer, M. (1993) Why Religious Nationalists are not Fundamentalists. Religion (23) (1), 85–92.
Juergensmeyer, M. (2003) Terror in the Mind of God: the Global Rise of Religious Violence . Berkeley: University of California Press.
Katzenstein, P.J. (ed.) (1996) The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics . New York: Columbia University Press.
Katzenstein, P.J. (ed.) (2010) Civilizations in World Politics: Plural and Pluralist Perspectives . New York: Routledge.
Kelsay, J. , and Johnson, J.T. (1991) Just war and Jihad: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives on War and Peace in Western and Islamic Traditions . New York: Greenwood Press.
Khadduri, M. (1940) The Law of War and Peace in Islam: A Study in Muslim International Law . London: Luzan.
Khadduri, M. (1955) War and Peace in the Law of Islam . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Kirkpatrick, J.J. (1993) The Modernizing Imperative. Foreign Affairs (72) (4), 22–4.
Klaiber, J. (1993) The Catholic Church's Role as Mediator: Bolivia, 1968–1989. Journal of Church and State (35) (2), 351–65.
Kraft, K. (1992) Inner Peace, World Peace: Essays on Buddhism and Non-Violence . New York: State University of New York Press.
Krebs, R.R. , and Jackson, P.T. (2007) Twisting Tongues and Twisting Arms: The Power of Political Rhetoric. European Journal of International Relations (13) (1), 35–66.
Krebs, R.R. , and Lobasz, J.K. (2007) Fixing the Meaning of 9/11: Hegemony, Coercion, and the Road to War in Iraq. Security Studies (16) (3), 409–51.
Kubálková, V. (2000) Towards an International Political Theology. Millennium – Journal of International Studies (29) (3), 675–704.
Lapid, Y. , and Kratochwil, F.V. (1996) The Return of Culture and Identity in IR Theory . Boulder: Lynne Rienner.
Laudy, M. (2000) The Vatican Mediation of the Beagle Channel Dispute: Crisis Intervention and Forum Building. In M.C. Greenberg , J.H. Barton , and M.E. McGuinness (eds.) Words over War: Mediation and Arbitration to Prevent Deadly Conflict . Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 293–320.
Lewis, B. (1996) A Historical Overview. Journal of Democracy (7) (2), 52–63.
Liebman, C.S. , and Don-Yiḥya, E. (1983) Civil Religion in Israel: Traditional Judaism and Political Culture in the Jewish State . Berkeley: University of California Press.
Lindsley, L. (1987) The Beagle Channel Settlement: Vatican Mediation Resolves a Century-Old Dispute. Journal of Church and State (29) (3), 435–54.
Little, D. (2006) Religion, Conflict and Peace. Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law (38) (1), 95–103.
Little, D. (ed.) (2007) Peacemakers in Action: Profiles in Religious Conflict Resolution . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Maoz, Z. , and Russett, B. (1993) Normative and Structural Causes of Democratic Peace, 1946–1986. The American Political Science Review (87) (3), 624–38.
Martinich, A.P. (2003) The Two Gods of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes on Religion and Politics . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Marty, M.E. , and Appleby, R.S. (eds.) (1991) Fundamentalisms Observed . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Marty, M.E. , and Appleby, R.S. (eds.) (1992) The Glory and the Power: The Fundamentalist Challenge to the Modern World . Boston: Beacon Press.
Midlarsky, M.I. (1998) Democracy and Islam: Implications for Civilizational Conflict and the Democratic Peace. International Studies Quarterly (42) (3), 485–511.
Mirbagheri, F. (2012) War and Peace in Islam: A Critique of Islamic/ist Political Discourses . New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Nan, S.A. , Mampilly, Z.C. , and Bartoli, A. (eds.) (2012) Peacemaking: From Practice to Theory . Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger.
Nelson-Pallmeyer, J. (2003) Is Religion Killing Us? Violence in the Bible and the Quran . New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group.
O'Hagan, J. (1995) Civilisational Conflict? Looking for Cultural Enemies. Third World Quarterly (16) (1), 19–38.
Ozzano, L. (2009) A Political Science Perspective on Religious Fundamentalism. Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions (10) (3–4), 339–59.
Pearce, S. (2005) Religious Rage: A Quantitative Analysis of the Intensity of Religious Conflicts. Terrorism and Political Violence (17) (3), 333–52.
Pely, D. (2010) Honor: The Sulha's Main Dispute Resolution Tool. Conflict Resolution Quarterly (28) (1), 67–81.
Pfaff, W. (1997) The Reality of Human Affairs. World Policy Journal (14) (2), 89–96.
Philpott, D. (2003) The Challenge of September 11 to Secularism in International Relations. World Politics (55) (1), 66–95.
Philpott, D. (2009) Has the Study of Global Politics Found Religion? Annual Review of Political Science (12) (1), 183–202.
Philpott, D. (2013) Religious Freedom and Peacebuilding: May I Introduce You Two? The Review of Faith & International Affairs (11) (1), 31–7.
Ramsbotham, O. , Miall, H. , and Woodhouse, T. (2011) Contemporary Conflict Resolution . Malden, MA: Polity.
Reeves, J. (2004) Culture and International Relations: Narratives, Natives, and Tourists . New York: Routledge.
Roeder, P.G. (2003) Clash of Civilizations and Escalation of Domestic Ethnopolitical Conflicts. Comparative Political Studies (36) (5), 509–40.
Ross, M.L. (2001) Does Oil Hinder Democracy? World Politics (53) (3), 325–61.
Rothschild, J. (1981) Ethnopolitics: A Conceptual Framework . New York: Columbia University Press.
Rubinstein, R.A. (2003) Cross-Cultural Considerations in Complex Peace Operations. Negotiation Journal (19) (1), 29–49.
Russett, B.M. , Oneal, J.R. , and Cox, M. (2000) Clash of Civilizations, or Realism and Liberalism Déjà Vu? Some Evidence. Journal of Peace Research (37) (5), 583–608.
Ryan, S. (1988) Explaining Ethnic Conflict: The Neglected International Dimension. Review of International Studies (14) (3), 161–77.
Said, E. (2001) A Clash of Ignorance. The Nation , 11–13.
Sampson, C. (1997) Religion and Peacebuilding. In W.I. Zartman , and L.J. Rasmussen (eds.) Peacemaking in International Conflict: Methods & Techniques . Washington: United States Institute of Peace Press, pp. 273–318.
Sandal, N.A. , and James, P. (2010) Religion and International Relations Theory. European Journal of International Relations (17) (1), 3–25.
Schaffer, H.B. , and Schaffer, T.C. (2011) How Pakistan Negotiates with the United States: Riding the Roller Coaster . Washington: United States Institute of Peace Press.
Seul, J.R. (1999) Ours is the Way of God: Religion, Identity, and Intergroup Conflict. Journal of Peace Research (36) (5), 553–69.
Shore, M. (2009) Religion and Conflict Resolution: Christianity and South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission . Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
Sivan, E. (1990) Radical Islam: Medieval Theology and Modern Politics . New Haven: Yale University Press.
Smith, A.D. (1999) Ethnic Election and National Destiny: Some Religious Origins of Nationalist Ideals. Nations and Nationalism (5) (3), 331–55.
Smock, D.R. (1992) Religious Perspectives on War: Christian, Muslim and Jewish Attitudes toward Force after the Gulf War . Washington, DC: United State Institute of Peace Press.
Smock, D.R. (ed.) (2008) Religious Contributions to Peacemaking: When Religion Brings Peace, Not War . Washington, DC: United State Institute of Peace Press.
Snyder, J.L. (1977) The Soviet Strategic Culture: Implications for Nuclear Options . Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation.
Snyder, J.L. (2011) Religion and International Relations Theory . New York: Columbia University Press.
Solomon, R.H. , and Quinney, N. (2010) American Negotiating Behavior: Wheeler-Dealers, Legal Eagles, Bullies, and Preachers . Washington: United States Institute of Peace Press.
Swartley, W.M. (2006) Covenant of Peace: The Missing Peace in New Testament Theology and Ethics . Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing.
Thomas, S.M. (2000) Religion and International Conflict. In K.R. Dark (ed.) Religion and International Relations . New York: Macmillan, pp. 1–23.
Thomas, S.M. (2005) The Global Resurgence of Religion and the Transformation of International Relations: The Struggle for the Soul of the Twenty-First Century . New York: Macmillan.
Tibi, B. (1999) The Fundamentalist Challenge to the Secular Order in the Middle East. The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs (23) (1), 191–210.
Tipson, F.S. (1997) Culture Clash-ification: A Verse to Huntington's Curse. Foreign Affairs (76) (2), 166–9.
Toft, M.D. (2007) Getting Religion? The Puzzling Case of Islam and Civil War. International Security (31) (4), 97–131.
Toft, M.D. , Philpott, D. , and Shah, T.S. (2011) God's Century: Resurgent Religion and Global Politics . New York: W.W. Norton.
Trujillo, M. , Bowland, S.Y. , Myers, L.J. , Richards, P.M. , and Roy, B. (eds.) (2008) Re-centering Culture and Knowledge in Conflict Resolution Practice . Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
Wald, K.D. , and Wilcox, C. (2006) Getting Religion: Has Political Science Rediscovered the Faith Factor? American Political Science Review (100) (4), 523–9.
Warner, C.M. , and Walker, S.G. (2011) Thinking about the Role of Religion in Foreign Policy: A Framework for Analysis. Foreign Policy Analysis (7) (1), 113–35.
Wedeen, L. (2002) Conceptualizing Culture: Possibilities for Political Science. American Political Science Review (96) (4), 713–28.
Weeks, A.L. (1993) Do Civilizations Hold? Foreign Affairs (72) (4), 24–5.
Wendt, A. (1999) Social Theory of International Politics . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wittes, T.C. (ed.) (2005) How Israelis and Palestinians Negotiate . Washington: United States Institute of Peace Press.
Zartman, W.I. (1993) A Skeptic's View. In G.O. Faure , and J.Z. Rubin (eds.) Culture and Negotiation: The Resolution of Water Disputes . Newbury Park, CA: Sage, pp. 17–21.

Links to Digital Materials

Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs. At http://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/ , accessed August 21, 2013 . The Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs, based at Georgetown University, is an educational and a research center for the study of religion in relation to various international phenomena, such as globalization, human rights, ethnics of war, negotiation, and more. The website also includes data regarding international religious freedom.

The Institute for Cultural Diplomacy (ICD). At http://www.culturaldiplomacy.org/index.php?en , accessed August 21, 2013 . The ICD is an international NGO whose main goal is to enhance the intercultural relations between peoples and areas in the world. The ICD offers reports and publications researching various aspects of cultural diplomacy – definitions, efforts, implementation, and future directions. The institute combines academic development of the field with practical programs and educational resources.

Minorities at Risk (MAR). At http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/mar/ , accessed August 21, 2013 . The MAR project, located at University of Maryland, collects data regarding active conflict between communal groups. Among other variables, the MAR data measures religious characteristics of the conflicting groups.

Religions and Ethics in the Making of War and Peace Project. At http://relwar.org/ , accessed August 21, 2013 . The project on Religion and Ethnics in the Making of War and Peace, based at the University of Edinburgh, is an academic and practical forum to discuss the relationship between military and religious ethics. The publication section includes several articles on that topic.

Religions for Peace. At http://religionsforpeace.org/ , accessed August 21, 2013 . Religion for Peace was founded in 1970 as a coalition of representatives from the world's major religions dedicated to promote peace. The website offers guides and resources aimed to help religious leaders decrease violence and encourage development and peace.

United States Institute of Peace. At http://www.usip.org/ , accessed August 21, 2013 . Beside various books dealing with negotiation styles of different cultures, the United States Institute of Peace offers panels, initiatives, reports, and other publications dealing both with culture and religion in diplomacy and in war.

Printed from Oxford Research Encyclopedias, International Studies. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a single article for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

date: 25 May 2024

Cookie Policy
Privacy Policy
Legal Notice
Accessibility
[66.249.64.20|185.66.14.133]
185.66.14.133

Character limit 500 /500

The Democratic Peace Theory: Merits and Demerits Analytical Essay

Introduction, democratic peace theory, liberal theory in international relations, democratic peace theory and the liberal theory in international relations, list of references.

Peace is an essential aspect that any country ought to uphold for the better growth and development of the country. However, peace is dictated by the type of regime that a given state has in its leadership. Some countries would prefer a democratic system.

Others use the capitalist way of administration, whereas there are a few countries that exercise dictatorship as a form of administration.

The democratic peace theory has been argued to support the liberal theory of international relations. However, there is also a thought that the democratic peace theory is a failed form of administration.

This paper will discuss the democratic peace theory, its merits and demerits, the reasons for its contribution to the international relation, and the reasons for its rejection by some scholars.

According to Reiter (2012 p. 1), democratic peace refers to the idea that certain democracies are safe as well as peaceful in other foreign relations.

It is the assumption that through democracy, nations will be peaceful with relations that they have with their international allies Democratic peace is anchored on the premise that peace is attainable when elements of negativity are banished from the international sphere (Reiter 2012, p. 3).

However, Gobatti claims that it is impossible to have democratic peace or even to study democratic peace theory and its application without mentioning the place that war has in this type of governance (2000, p. 22).

He continues to explain that, many democratic countries are always looking for ways to benefit from other nations at the minimum costs possible.

In other words, a democratic country will use international relations to gain maximally from other nations at the least cost implications. Some may, however, decide to enter into some of an agreement that can result in a mutually beneficial situation, says Hobson (2011, p. 1904)

Aviles (2005, p. 34) reveals that democracies are less likely to engage in war than other forms of rulership. This can be contributed to the fact that these countries tend to use negotiations while dealing with the international community.

Aviles (2005, p. 35) continues to reveal that countries that have not established firm democracies tend to be unstable in terms of peace than countries that do not practice democracy.

This is attributed to the fact that the process in which the less democratic country goes through to attain full democracy is commonly characterized by internal wars, where the different communities fight over the limited resources and the hunger and thirst for power (Palan 2000, p. 576).

There are two explanations for the democratic peace; the monadic explanation and the dyadic view of democratic peace, says Guadro (2013, p. 6).

With a monadic view of democratic peace, there is an assumption that a democratic country will maintain peace with other international communities regardless of whether those foreign communities are of democratic view of peace or not (Douglas 1997, p. 408).

In addition, it holds the thought that, countries do not need to engage in any form of war unless when provoked in the form of an attack; thus, they need to fight back as a way of protection. (Douglas 1997, p. 409). This can be argued as an advantage to the country that practices such a democratic peace position.

The reason is that a country that does not believe so much in violence will not invest highly in the military. It will not recruit as many military personnel as those countries that believe in the power and might of war.

As a result, Mousseau (2003, p. 486) admits that the cost implicated in maintaining a small military group and less sophisticated weapons is reduced.

This has also been confirmed by Slaughter (1995, p. 720) who says that it is even better to invest heavily in the health and medicine sectors rather than having sophisticated weapons. Such a country will thus shift its focus to other developmental goals that the ruling government has.

Examples of such developmental goals would be the improvement in industrialization, tourism, mining, agriculture, among others.

On the other hand, this form of democratic peace can be seen a weakness in the country might not be able to rescue itself in the event that there is a serious invasion of a country that has strong military power and highly sophisticated weapons (Chioza, Giacomo & Goemans 2011, p. 35).

Dyadic democracies are typically associated with various European countries, says Ray (1995, p. 68). Also on this list are Canada and the United States of America. According to Gobatti (2000, p. 22), this type of democracy tends to reduce its perseverance in countries that are not considered as more democratic.

In other words, countries in a dyadic form of democracy may engage in war with countries that do not primarily hold onto a democracy from of administration.

This is believed to be part of their international relations with the international community. Macmillan (2003, p. 234) admits that, such democracies as dyadic democracy are seen as to support various wars that are fought against non-democratic countries.

According to Mousseau (2003, p. 491), international relations can be looked at in three ways. There are the realism approach, institutionalism approach, and the liberal approach to international relations. Slaughter (1995, p. 717) admits that the realist approach to international relations is the widely used approach.

It uses the realist nature of events to address to various issues that are affecting the countries in consideration. Mousseau (2003, p. 492) reveals that this approach is anchored on the assumptions that the international community is made up of different states that are unique and governed differently.

Therefore, there is no guarantee that the different nations will be in an agreement over any matter should these countries meet to discuss issues affecting them (Mousseau 2003, p. 492).

In institutionalism, various aspects of rules and principles are integrated with decision-making, where different nations have to follow certain laid rules and principles as the founding principles of their interaction.

This, as explained by Slaughter (1995, p. 719) results in signing of international agreements that govern the way international communities will relate to each other.

According to Douglas (1997, p. 410), these agreements require commitments from each country as a violation of the same would lead to sanctions and other far-reaching consequences that are imposed by the country that feels agitated, says Palan (2000, p. 581).

Liberalism is the third and the best alternative to both realism and institutionalism approaches to international relation. According to Aviles (2005, p. 46), liberalism is an approach that has attracted different theories that explain its operation, and among the notable ones being the ‘liberal internationalism’ by Wilsonian.

According to Chioza, Giacomo and Goemans (2011, p. 40). The main aim of liberalism is to achieve lasting cooperation as well as the peace that would be enjoyed internationally.

Chioza et al. (2011, p. 41) add that liberalism also tends to address the various approaches that can be used to achieve international peace. It uses other theories such as the ‘democratic peace theory’, ‘commercial peace theory’, ‘institutional peace theory’, and the ‘international law.

According to Reiter (2012, p. 10), the democratic peace theory holds the thought that there is no need for war unless the practicing country has been so pressed that there is no other alternative to counter the attack other than to fight back.

On the other hand, liberal theory tends to advocate for an international community that is peaceful with increased cooperation, says Hobson (2011, p. 1910). There is a collaboration between what the democratic peace theory hold to and what the liberal theory advocates for, admits Hobson (2011, p. 1911).

If nations could resort to the democratic view of administration, then the entire world could be a peaceful place to be, where war is rare and the different nations are united and collaborates in various agendas (Sucharov 2009, p. 6).

There are cases where the democratic peace theory has been used to address peace that is advocated for by the liberal theory.

According to Chioza et al. (2011, p. 43), the UN General Assembly has in the past called for nations to sign peace agreements and declarations that they would not engage in a war for their selfish reasons, other than when provoked and their security threatened.

Chioza et al. (2011, p. 41) go on to say that there are quite a considerable number of countries that have agreed to this UN General Assembly requirement on promoting global peace.

According to Ray (1995, p. 50) the results have been tremendous. The number of wars against nations has reduced significantly to a point where only wars that are related to the terror attacks and threats are being fought by some of the countries that signed the agreement (Ray 1995, p. 51).

Chioza et al. (2011, p. 43) say that among the reasons that makes it possible to intertwine the democratic peace theory with the liberal theory is that many countries are in dire need of peace. Hobson (2011, p. 1914) adds that no country wishes to see its members dying as a result of the war that could have been prevented otherwise.

As Palan (2000, p. 583) puts it, in democratic countries, a ruler is re-elected only if he performed according to the expectation of the voters.

Palan (2000, p. 583) continues to say that, one of the major determinants of the success of a ruler is the ability to promote peace. Those who are seen as promoting peace are likely to be re-elected back to the office.

On the contrary, those who do not seem to promote peace as required for by the voters are normally not re-elected. It is therefore easy to agree with Macmillan (2003, p. 240) who says that democratic peace theory is crucial in promoting international relations as it is peace that is at the heart of any international relations.

According to Palan (2000, p. 584), democratic peace encourages economic growth among the countries that practice this form of administration. The economy of any country is dependent on the political stability of a country.

Aviles (2005, p. 50) agrees with this as he is quoted as saying that in a country that is marred by war, then the establishment of industries is hampered, people no longer go to their places of work and are instead made to flee to safer places.

Houses are burnt with businesses looted. To this effect, the economic development of such countries is staggering (Aviles 2005, p. 50).

On the contrary, in a country where the political field is stable, then there are hardly wars that are reported to emanate from such a country. New industries will be established, jobs will be created, no houses will be burnt and no businesses will be looted.

As a result, the economic growth of such a nation will grow at a higher rate because of the efforts that are made by the stakeholders.

Therefore, this explains why the democratic peace theory promotes the liberal theory of international relations. Countries that practices democratic peace will have its economy stable and can even collaborate with other countries to promote peace at an international platform (Aviles 2005, p. 52).

Another reason that explains why the democratic peace theory is necessary for supporting liberal theory of international relations is the fact that in a democratic country, leaders tend to listen to what the public is saying (Slaughter 1995, p. 739).

If the public is not heard, then the leaders in such a nation are assured of being ousted from power especially during general elections. To this effect, many leaders in democratic nations promote peace and economic growth because they would not love to see themselves out of power soon.

Mousseau (2003, p. 505) reports that leaders in democratic nations tend to come together to promote what their public desires. Given that a majority of the public in democratic nations want peace, then the liberal theory of a peaceful world can be realized.

It is possible to come to terms with anyone who has the same goals and ambitions as yours. Similarly, it is possible for nations that have the same goals come together and unite for the achievement of those shared goals.

This is the case with democratic nations. Hobson (2011, p. 1920) says that democratic countries tend to have common interests. This unites them even more and thus there is the promotion of peace.

Douglas (1997, p. 413) claims that democratic nations promote what can be termed as a transnational community.

This is to mean that although these nations have their policies that govern them, they tend to embrace what other nations believe and the way that the leadership in that country carries out its authoritative operation.

Douglas (1997, p. 413) adds that there is the high possibility that democratic communities will promote each other in terms of culture, especially during the times of national calamities.

This can be supported by the reality that many democratic nations have the tendency to promote the tourism sector of their democratic like countries.

Also, it is possible to witness several democracies offerings to assist other democratic countries in times of calamities as floods, earthquakes, and tsunamis. This is the exact promotion of transnational community.

On the other hand, there are those who feel that democratic peace theory do not in any way contribute to the international relation that is attributed to international peace.

Douglas (1997, p. 413) reveals that such people hold the thought that it is the capitalist way of doing things that contributes to enhanced international relations rather than democratic peace.

Douglas continues to say that such activities as market growth and increased trade among nations are the driving forces of peace.

Such schools of thought maintain that nations with a capitalist way of administration are more likely to enter into collaboration with other countries in an effort to strengthen trade ties. It is this kind of collaboration that promotes international relation and not democratic peace, claims.

Another reason that is given in opposition to the contribution of democratic peace to the international relation is the fact that some leaders are naturally secretive.

Douglas (1997, p. 414) says that such leaders are not willing to engage with other nations as they think that in so doing, then their administrative system might be at risk.

Douglas admits that, the secrecy among such leaders could be due to their cruel way of rulership or simply because they have a military approach of rulership where one’s secrets are not supposed to be given to the opposing side.

These types of leaders make it difficult to promote international relations through democratic peace.

Douglas (1997, p. 413) adds to the reasons that do not support the contribution of democratic peace to the fact that wars against nations are not necessarily caused by the kind of regime that is applied by the ruling leaders.

He says that wars on nations are mainly due to the perspective of the individuals that are in power. Whether or not a country will go to war against another country will depend on the decisions of the few selected individuals that are at the centre of leadership.

Democratic peace theory holds the thought that it is possible for nations to coexist without the need to engage in a war. In a democratic nation, war is not the first option to seek for attention from the international community. However, there are two types of democracies; monadic and dyadic forms of democracies.

In a monadic democracy, there is the assumption that that the democratic country will remain peaceful to all countries without considering their view and support of the democratic regime.

In a dyadic democracy, the democratic nation tends to support attacks to nations that seem to oppose democracy. There is a good contribution that democratic peace theory makes to the support of the liberal theory of international relations.

Leaders in a democratic nation tend to listen to what the public is saying regarding certain issues as a way of engaging the masses. The leaders are compelled to support peace with the international community rest they be ousted from power in a general election.

Most of the democratic regimes share the same interests. This explains why many of the democratic nations join hands in support of the international collaboration and unity.

On the other hand, some people hold the thought that the democratic peace theory does not necessarily lead to better international relations compared to the capitalist way if the administration is to be credited for such relations.

Aviles, W 2005, ‘The democratic-peace thesis and U.S. relations with Colombia and Venezuela’, Latin American Perspectives, vol. 32, no. 3, pp. 33-59.

Chiozza, G & Goemans, HE 2011, Leaders and international conflict, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

Cuadro, M 2014, ‘ Democracy, intervention and liberal strategy’, The Economist , vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 3-8.

Douglas, A 1997, ‘Press freedom and the democratic peace’, Journal of Peace Research, vol. 34, no. 4, pp. 405–414.

Gobetti, Z 2000, A revision of the theory of democratic peace , Bologna University Press, Bologna.

Hobson, C 2011, ‘Towards a critical theory of democratic peace’, International Studies, vol. 37, no. 4, pp. 1903-1922.

Kahl, CH 1999, ‘Constructing a separate peace: constructivism, collective liberal identity, and democratic peace’, Security Studies, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 94–144.

Macmillan, J 2003, ‘Beyond the separate democratic peace’, Journal of Peace Research , vol. 40, no. 2, pp. 233-243.

Mousseau, M 2003, ‘The nexus of market society, liberal preferences, and democratic peace: interdisciplinary theory and evidence’, International Studies Quarterly, vol. 47, no. 2, pp. 483-508.

Oneal, J & Bruce, R 2000, ‘Comment: Why ‘an identified systemic analysis of the democracy–peace nexus’ does not persuade’, Defence and Peace Economics, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 197–214.

Palan, R 2000, ‘A world of their making: an evaluation of the constructivist critique in international relations’, Review of International Relations, vol. 26, pp. 575-598

Rasmussen, MV 2003, The West, civil society and the construction of peace , Palgrave Macmillan, Hampshire.

Ray, JL1995, Democracy and international conflict: an evaluation of the democratic peace proposition , University of South Carolina Press, Columbia.

Risse-Kappen, T 1995, Cooperation among democracies: The European influence on U.S. foreign policy, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.

Slaughter, M 1995, ‘Liberal international relations theory and international economic law’, American University International Law Review, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 717-743.

Sucharov, M 2009, Theory and research in international relations, Carleton University Press, Loeb.

Wendt, A 1999, Social theory of international politics , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK

Widmaier, WW 2005, ‘The democratic peace is what states make of it: a constructivist analysis of the US–Indian ‘NearMiss’ in the 1971 South Asian crisis’, European Journal of International Relations, vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 431–455.

E-Mails as a Medium of Communication: Merits and Demerits
Social Media Marketing Merits and Demerits
Merits and Demerits of Hospice Care Review
Assassination of Osama Bin Laden Influence
Supranational Organizations: NATO
The Bilateral Relationships Between the UAE and Japan
The Asian-Pacific Region and Australia
International Intervention in Libya
Chicago (A-D)
Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2019, June 24). The Democratic Peace Theory: Merits and Demerits. https://ivypanda.com/essays/theories-of-international-relations-2/

"The Democratic Peace Theory: Merits and Demerits." IvyPanda , 24 June 2019, ivypanda.com/essays/theories-of-international-relations-2/.

IvyPanda . (2019) 'The Democratic Peace Theory: Merits and Demerits'. 24 June.

IvyPanda . 2019. "The Democratic Peace Theory: Merits and Demerits." June 24, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/theories-of-international-relations-2/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Democratic Peace Theory: Merits and Demerits." June 24, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/theories-of-international-relations-2/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The Democratic Peace Theory: Merits and Demerits." June 24, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/theories-of-international-relations-2/.

Скидки дня
Справка и помощь
Адрес доставки Идет загрузка... Ошибка: повторите попытку ОК
Продажи
Список отслеживания Развернуть список отслеживаемых товаров Идет загрузка... Войдите в систему , чтобы просмотреть свои сведения о пользователе
Краткий обзор
Недавно просмотренные
Ставки/предложения
Список отслеживания
История покупок
Купить опять
Объявления о товарах
Сохраненные запросы поиска
Сохраненные продавцы
Сообщения
Уведомление
Развернуть корзину Идет загрузка... Произошла ошибка. Чтобы узнать подробнее, посмотрите корзину.

Oops! Looks like we're having trouble connecting to our server.

Refresh your browser window to try again.

IMAGES

Democratic peace theory by Alina Kunbulatova on Prezi
PPT
PPT
(PDF) DEMOCRATIC PEACE THEORY
PPT
PPT

VIDEO

Mps002q12. Write a short note on democratic peace theory
Immanuel Kant's Perpetual Peace: A Vision for a Peaceful World?
What Do We Need To Do To Achieve a Just Peace? A “Conversation” with John Rawls
Democratic Peace Theory
The Lie of Democratic Peace Theory
Democratic Peace Theory in International Relations

COMMENTS

The Democratic Peace Theory
Of the two main variants of the democratic peace theory, ... Conclusion. The institutional and normative aspects of the democratic peace proposition, thus, provide a very clear, logical reason why the global spread of democracy will result in greater international peace: democratic political institutions make it difficult for governments to ...
What Is the Democratic Peace Theory?
The Democratic Peace Theory was first articulated by German philosopher Immanuel Kant in his 1795 essay entitled "Perpetual Peace."In this work, Kant argues that nations with constitutional republic governments are less likely to go to war because doing so requires the consent of the people—who would actually be fighting the war. While the kings and queens of monarchies can unilaterally ...
Democratic peace theory
Proponents of democratic peace theory argue that both electoral and republican forms of democracy are hesitant to engage in armed conflict with other identified democracies. Different advocates of this theory suggest that several factors are responsible for motivating peace between democratic states. Individual theorists maintain "monadic" forms of this theory (democracies are in general more ...
Democratic peace
democratic peace, the proposition that democratic states never (or almost never) wage war on one another.. The concept of democratic peace must be distinguished from the claim that democracies are in general more peaceful than nondemocratic countries. Whereas the latter claim is controversial, the claim that democratic states do not fight each other is widely regarded as true by scholars and ...
Making liberal use of Kant? Democratic peace theory and
The work of Immanuel Kant has been foundational in modern democratic peace theory. His essay Toward Perpetual Peace gives three prescriptions for attaining peace between democracies: republican institutions, a pacific union between states, and an ethos of universal hospitality. Contemporary democratic peace theory, however, has warped the Kantian framework from which it draws inspiration: the ...
Democratic Peace Theory
Democratic peace is the proposition that democracies are more peaceful in their foreign relations. This idea dates back centuries, at least to Immanuel Kant and other 18th-century Enlightenment thinkers. In recent decades it has constituted a major research agenda, competing with and arguably supplanting other research agendas such as neo-realism.
Is Democracy a Cause of Peace?
Causation and the Democratic Peace. The central claim of the democratic peace proposition is that democracy causes peace. As noted, the focus in this essay will be on causal processes within the dyadic democratic peace. The dyadic democratic peace proposes that relations within a pair of democracies are more peaceful than relations within other kinds of pairs, such as pairs of autocracies or a ...
Introduction: History, Theory, and the Democratic Peace
History, Theory, and the Democratic Peace COLIN ELMAN R. Weart's recent work joins a vigorous, sometimes un-Spencer pleasant, conversation among political scientists about democratic peace theory.1 The essays that follow present the reactions of a group of them to a historian's account of how republican states have avoided war.
The Theory of Democratic Peace and Threat Perception
Democratic peace theory implies that, for democracies, regime type should be a strong indicator of threat. Indeed, John Owen would "bring ideology back in" by showing that democracies "assess threat through an ideological prism" (1994:186). The Munich case supports this approach, but not exactly as democratic peace theorists would predict.
Explaining the Democratic Peace
Therefore, the existing logics cannot explain the democratic peace finding: two democracies, each relatively unconstrained and expecting the other to be similarly unconstrained, may well fight one another. In sum, the logics underpinning democratic peace theory are monadic in form; thus the tests that I carried.
The Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory
The Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory. SEBASTIAN ROSATO The University of Chicago. Democratic causes peace of war and theory peace. In is this probably paper I examine the the most causal logics powerful that underpin liberal the theory contribution to the debate on the. to determine whether they offer compelling explanations for the ...
Full article: The microfoundations of normative democratic peace theory
Liberal norms, the microfoundations of democratic peace theory. The so-called 'democratic peace' is an empirical pattern that indicates an absence of war between democracies (Babst Citation 1964; Rummel Citation 1983).Although there is a general consensus about this pattern, we are still far from a consensus about any explanation (Hayes Citation 2012; Ungerer Citation 2012).
Conclusion: Ironic Democratic Peace Theory
The West came into being during the First World War as an alliance of democratic governments allied by virtue of their belief that the war could result in a lasting peace only if 'the world was made safe for democracy'. This shows that peace is not a fact; peace is a policy. Western peacemaking has been a distinct type of policy defined by ...
Progress in the Democratic Peace Research Agenda
Summary. According to the democratic peace theory, democracies are hesitant to engage in armed conflict with other identified democracies. Contrary to theories explaining war engagement, it is a "theory of peace" outlining motives that dissuade state-sponsored violence.
PDF Robustness of Empirical Evidence for the Democratic Peace: A
scholars disagree with the democratic peace theory.4 In particular, skeptics have 1. Kant 1991, 14. ... Their conclusion is worth quoting here: Cigarette smokers have a ninefold greater risk of developing lung cancer than nonsmokers, while over-two-pack-a-day smokers have at least a 60-fold greater
Democratic Peace: Weighing the Evidence and Cautious Inference1
This empirical association, known as the democratic peace, is highly robust and has been the foundation of a productive research program. Various political explanations have been offered. Skeptics have challenged the democratic peace on realist grounds and in the belief that some economic aspect of liberal societies accounts for the phenomenon.
Realist and cultural critiques of the democratic peace: A theoretical
The examination of these criticisms leads to a number of empirical replications and novel statistical tests of the democratic peace proposition. The overall conclusion is that none of these criticisms damages the basic fact of the democratic peace. The conclusion urges moving on to solving new puzzles raised by the democratic peace research.
The Democratic Peace and the Wisdom of Crowds
This article proposes a new theory for the democratic peace that highlights a previously unexplored advantage enjoyed by democracies in crises. We argue that because democracies typically include a larger number of decision-makers in the foreign policy process, they will produce fewer decision-making errors in situations of crisis bargaining ...
Democratic Peace in Theory and Practice
A collection of scholarly essays on democratic peace theory Historical patterns suggest that democratic governments, which often fight wars against authoritarian regimes, maintain peaceful relationships with other governments that uphold political freedoms and empower their civil societies--a concept known as "democratic peace." Democratic Peace in Theory and Practice is a timely collection of ...
Democratic Peace Theory
Dyadic Democratic Peace: The dyadic peace hypothesis is the ''classic'' formulation of the democratic peace theory. It proposes that democratic states are less likely to go to war with one another.
The Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory
Abstract. Democratic peace theory is probably the most powerful liberal contribution to the debate on the causes of war and peace. In this paper I examine the causal logics that underpin the theory to determine whether they offer compelling explanations for the finding of mutual democratic pacifism. I find that they do not.
Culture, Religion, War, and Peace
The scholarly literature has also addressed themes such as religious fundamentalism and violence, the role of religious actors in international conflict, the practical use of religion and culture to promote peace via diplomacy, and engagement of religion and culture in existing peace theories such as democratic peace theory.
The Democratic Peace Theory: Merits and Demerits
Conclusion. Democratic peace theory holds the thought that it is possible for nations to coexist without the need to engage in a war. In a democratic nation, war is not the first option to seek for attention from the international community. However, there are two types of democracies; monadic and dyadic forms of democracies. ...
Democratization
Since 1900, the number of countries democratizing (yellow) has been higher than those autocratizing (blue), except in the late 1920s through 1940s and since 2010. Democratization, or democratisation, is the structural government transition from an authoritarian government to a more democratic political regime, including substantive political ...
World peace
A nuclear disarmament symbol, commonly called the "peace symbol". World peace is the concept of an ideal state of peace within and among all people and nations on Planet Earth.Different cultures, religions, philosophies, and organizations have varying concepts on how such a state would come about. Various religious and secular organizations have the stated aim of achieving world peace through ...
Advancing the democratization of work: A new intellectual history of
Amidst growing demands for more democratic forms of organizing, we argue that better understanding the origins of transformational leadership theory offers a way forward. Transformational leadershi...
Territorial peace theory
The territorial peace theory finds that the stability of a country's borders has a large influence on the political climate of the country. Peace and stable borders foster a democratic and tolerant climate, while territorial conflicts with neighbor countries have far-reaching consequences for both individual-level attitudes, government policies, conflict escalation, arms races, and war.
K. Rasler W. Thompson Puzzles of the Democratic Peace (Paperback ...
Step by step, Thompson and Rasler examine the democratic peace through a series of puzzles concerning arguments at the dyadic, systemic, and individual state levels. Synthesizing a broad range of knowledge and linking islands of theory, Puzzles of the Democratic Peace provides a distinctive look at the state of the field and paths forward.
Can America's Special Relationship With Israel Survive?
On May 8, the Biden administration confirmed that it was withholding a major weapons shipment to the Israel Defense Forces. It was the biggest step that the United States has taken in decades to restrain Israel's actions. The decision concerned a consignment of 2,000-pound bombs—weapons that the United States generally avoids in urban ...