LEARNING FROM THE GREAT WAR? THE ORIGIN OF DEMOCRATIC PEACE

Abstract

This paper explores the effects of dyadic democracy on both the occurrence and level of militarized disputes, with an emphasis on longitudinal tendencies and degrees of violence. We argue that experience with total war, namely, the First World War, induced democratic constraints on conflictual foreign policies via significant change in military manpower systems. Experience with total war led democratic governments to recognize each other’s sensitivity to public concerns about the burdens imposed by conscription. Thus, democratic peace in the modern era can be traced to (1) total war experience for ‘old’ democracies; and (2) the level of violence in foreign policies exceeding a threshold that induces public concerns about the burden of conscription. Empirical testing based on the Militarized Interstate Disputes (MID) data set shows a significantly different effect for democratic dyads on the onset of militarized disputes before and after the First World War. Democratic dyads, however, do not reduce the likelihood of disputes in cases with a low level of violence regardless of the era in question. This implies that conflict‐averse behavior between democracies is a product of learning from the experience of total war that leads to greater government awareness of public concern about more intense foreign policy actions.