Structural Change and Democratization in the Major Power Subsystem: Some Systemic Puzzles of the Democratic Peace

Abstract

Two systemic puzzles of the democratic peace are examined within the context of the critical major power subsystem for the 1816–1992 period. One puzzle concerns whether the relationship between systemic democratization and conflict should be linear, curvilinear, or unpredictable. While the arguments for the latter two possibilities are persuasive, the empirical evidence suggests that the relationship is negative and linear in the major power subsystem. The second puzzle focuses on the relative strength of democratization, particularly, vis-a-vis hegemony, in reducing conflict. In contrast to earlier findings, structural change, conceptualized and measured in terms of global and regional power concentration patterns, in conjunction with democratization, predicts significantly to systemic levels of militarized dispute behavior. The democratic peace phenomenon thus works similarly at multiple levels of analysis but its emergence has not eliminated the explanatory utility of older emphases on geopolitical configurations and structural change. At the same time, we do not need to choose between old and new explanations, as long as we can integrate them into coherent and more compelling explanations than their stand-alone equivalents.