Warlike Democracies

Abstract

Classical republican theories are monadic in the sense of seeing in each political regime a set of typical operating characteristics. There is disagreement as to what those characteristics are and specifically whether republican governments are more likely to be aggressive or peace loving. We group these two views as (democratic) mobilization theory versus (republican) checks theory and argue, first, that each can help us understand the finer structure of republican government; second, that they are not contradictory but can be combined in various ways in the same institutions; and third, that they offer the prospect of deepening our understanding of what is called the democratic peace proposition.