Pacific unions: a reappraisal of the theory that ‘democracies do not go to war with each other’

Abstract

Considerable support has emerged over recent years among scholars of international relations for the theory that ‘democracies do not go to war with each other.’ Bruce Russett and Harvey Starr note that over the last two centuries ‘Democracies were very unlikely to fight each other.’ This finding is supported, R. J. Rummel argues, by both ‘Historical studies and empirical social science research’. Some authors hail it as a law—perhaps the only one we have—of international relations. References in the literature suggest that the theory has acquired the status of a received truth. It is ‘the one argument that all the analysts agree on’, concludes Robert Rothstein. ‘Scholars of contemporary international relations are nearing consensus, suggest the Embers and Russett. In the latest, most comprehensive study of the phenomenon, Russett even finds evidence for it in non-industrial societies. Believing the facts of the matter to have been established, theorists have moved on to seek the causal mechanism generating the phenomenon.