Joint Democracy Research Articles

Clash of Civilizations, or Realism and Liberalism Déjà Vu? Some Evidence

We assess the degree to which propositions from Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order can account for the incidence of militarized interstate disputes between countries during the period 1950-92. We find that such traditional realist influences as contiguity, alliances, and relative power, and liberal influences of joint democracy and interdependence, provide a much better account of interstate conflict. Pairs of states split across civilizational boundaries are no more likely to become engaged in disputes than are other states ceteris paribus. Even disputes between the West and the rest of the world, or with Islam, were no more common than those between or within most other groups. Among Huntington's eight civilizations, interstate conflict was significantly less likely only within the West; dyads in other civilizations were as likely to fight as were states split across civilizations, when realist and liberal influences are held constant. The dominance of a civilization by a core state, democratic or not, does little to inhibit violence within the civilization. Contrary to the thesis that the clash of civilizations will replace Cold War rivalries as the greatest source of conflict, militarized interstate disputes across civilizational boundaries became less common, not more so, as the Cold War waned. Nor do civilizations appear to have an important indirect influence on interstate conflict through the realist or liberal variables. They help to predict alliance patterns but make little contribution to explaining political institutions or commercial interactions. We can be grateful that Huntington challenged us to consider the role that civilizations might play in international relations, but there is little evidence that they define the fault lines along which international conflict is apt to occur.

Preferences and the Democratic Peace

A debate exists over whether (and to what degree) the democratic peace is explained by joint democracy or by a lack of motives for conflict between states that happen to be democratic. Gartzke (1998) applies expected utility theory to the democratic peace and shows that an index of states' preference similarity based on United Nations General Assembly roll-call votes (affinity) accounts for much of the lack of militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) between democracies. Oneal and Russett (1997b, 1998, 1999) respond by arguing that UN voting is itself a function of regime type—that democracy “causes” affinity. Oneal and Russett seek to demonstrate their thesis by regressing affinity on democracy and other variables from a standard model of the democratic peace. I replicate results reported by Oneal and Russett and then extend the analysis in several ways. I find that the residuals from Oneal and Russett's regression of affinity remain highly significant as a predictor of the absence of MIDs. Further, significance for democracy is shown to be fragile and subject to variable construction, model specification, and the choice of estimation procedure.

A Unified Statistical Model of Conflict Onset and Escalation

In this article I argue that much of the inconsistency in the scholarly literature on conflict escalation can be attributed to selection bias. To control this bias statistically, I use a censored probit model to evaluate hypotheses about conflict escalation over the time period of 1950-1985. I report four results. (1) Power parity and economic development are found to influence conflict nonmonotonically. (2) Although joint democracy and joint satisfaction with the status quo are found to have robust pacifying effects on the onset of conflict, the results suggest that they are unrelated to the escalation of disputes to war. (3) Allied pairs of states appear less likely to escalate their disputes. (4) Finally, the unified model suggests that it is essential for researchers interested in the escalation behavior of states to consider first how states become involved in disputes. Conflict onset and escalation appear to be related processes. any scholars have sought to isolate the causes of escalation, but discrepancies between the theoretical expectations and the empirical results persist. I attribute these discrepancies to a selection effect. Pairs of states do not become entangled in hostilities randomly. They instead select or are selected into disputes by a strategic process. Following previous empirical research focusing on selection effects (Achen 1986; Smith 1996a, 1996b, 1998, 1999; Gartner and Siverson 1996; Leeds and Davis 1997; Signorino 1999), I employ a statistical model to control for the interdependent relationship between the onset of disputes and escalation to war over the time period of 1950-1985. The results suggest that controlling for the selection effect statistically stipulates a link between the formal and empirical studies of escalation. The scholarly literature on what causes escalation is mixed. Although some suggest that joint democracy inhibits escalation (Rousseau et al. 1996), others find that joint democracy actually makes dyads more escalatory (Senese 1997). There is also some disagreement about the effect of military capabilities on conflict onset compared to escalation (Morgan 1984, 1990, 1994; Morrow 1989; Fearon 1994b; Bueno de Mesquita, Morrow, and Zorick 1997). It seems reasonable to suspect that the factors that influence conflict onset may also affect escalation directly and/or indirectly. If this is the case, it is important to consider how the factors that influence onset and escalation may be related to each other. Constructing a unified statistical model offers a first cut at modeling the process of conflict. Similar to the formal literature (Morrow 1989; Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman 1992; Fearon 1994a, 1994b; Smith 1998, 1999) that describes explicitly the selection process by which states get into and escalate disputes, I address the same issue from an empirical perspective (Smith 1996b, 1998, 1999; Signorino 1999). Modeling such selection empirically manages sources of bias and allows one to make truer inferences about the conflict generating process.

Comment: Why “an identified systemic model of the democracy‐peace nexus” does not persuade*

In their article in this journal, James, Solberg and Wolfson (1999) challenge our findings that two states are more likely to have peaceful relations if they are both democratic. They claim to develop a simultaneous system of two equations showing that peace and democracy foster each other, and that the effect of peace in encouraging democracy is stronger than that of democracy on peace. Their analysis, however, is flawed. Their research design employs measures of dispute and joint democracy that are inferior to those now common in the literature, and their equation for predicting peace is not properly specified. These problems distort their results. Even so, their results provide evidence of the pacific benefits of democracy. Analyses we conduct with a more completely specified model reveal stronger support for the democratic “ peace. Furthermore, a test of the effect of interstate conflict on democracy should be done at the national (or monadic) level of analysis; but James et al. perform a dyadic analysis. In a monadic test using vector autoregression, we find that disputes make no contribution to explaining the character of regimes. Even with their dyadic method, their finding that peace promotes democracy is not robust Including a crucial control variable, the ratio of militarily relevant national capabilities, that James et al. omitted, dramatically alters their findings.

Democracy and Maturity: Deciphering Conditional Effects on Levels of Dispute Intensity

A good deal of recent research has focused on the possible dangers associated with young democracies that are trying to weave their way through modern interstate relations for the first time. Democratic transitions, and their immediate aftermath, have been isolated as periods plagued by all sorts of potential conflict. Further, some studies implicitly suggest that the maturity of the regime may matter at least as much as the type of regime. This research directly examines the interactive effects of both joint democracy and joint maturity on the levels of intensity reached in militarized conflict. The findings reveal the conditional importance of both factors. Joint democracy imparts disparate effects on the hostility intensification of disputes, in terms of direction and magnitude, depending on maturity levels. Similarly, the magnitude of the joint maturity impact is contingent on democracy levels, although the direction of its influence remains unchanged across varying degrees of democracy. These findings signal the necessity of explicitly considering linkages between the effects of regime type and regime maturity in theories and tests of dyadic conflict dynamics.

Selection effects and dispute escalation: Democracy and status quo evaluations

Recent research offers inconsistent evidence on the relationship between regime type and the escalation of disputes that do not go to war. We add to this ongoing discussion by evaluating the effect of regime type and status quo evaluations on state decisions to escalate international disputes. We analyze 1,530 bilateral Militarized Interstate Disputes (MIDs) between 1816–1985 using ordered probit models to estimate the effects of regime type and status quo satisfaction on ordinal levels of escalation. Our Findings suggest that democratic initiators and targets are pacific in their escalatory behavior. This finding persists even when we control for the fact that targets are selected into militarized disputes and once we control for the ratio of capabilities between the two disputants. Satisfaction with the status quo also has a significant pacifying influence on escalation. The lack of a pacifying relationship between joint democracy and dispute escalation is suggested to be the product of a dyadic selection effect since pairs of democracies are less likely to experience militarized disputes.

Neoidealism and the Democratic Peace

While analysts hail the democratic peace as an empirical vindication of neoidealist precepts of world politics, actually it is inconsistent with them. Neoidealism focuses on the role of international regimes - not shared political regime type - in reducing the probability of interstate conflict. In this article, I suggest a more consistent neoidealist conceptualization of the stability among democratic dyads. Focusing on the postwar era, I maintain that a combination of factors, including bipolarity, nuclear deterrence, alliance membership, and trade links, contributed to the formation of an international security regime among the major power democracies and their minor power democratic allies. Further, I maintain that the presence of this international regime and not simply joint democracy allowed for the postwar stability among democratic dyads. While democracy may have been associated with the creation of a security regime at the behest of the Western democracies led by the USA, the expansion and maintenance of this regime (and its conflict dampening attributes) are rooted, to a greater extent, in the interplay of alliance-aggregation and security externalities of trade. This argument is consistent with neoidealist precepts and by focusing on the role of security regimes it contributes to the neoidealist research program.

The Democratic Peace Through the Lens of Culture, 1820-1989

This article examines the extent to which cultural similarity vitiates the relationship between joint democracy and the incidence of interstate war. Previous empirical findings which suggest that cultural/normative explanations of the democratic peace are more robust than institutional/structural ones invite an analysis of the impact of broader cultural factors on the relationship between joint democracy and war involvement. The author suggests several ways that cultural factors might mitigate the democratic peace phenomenon and conducts a multivariate logistic analysis of state dyads from 1820 to 1989 to test the main query. Of the cultural variables, religious similarity within dyads is associated with a decreased likelihood of war onset, while both ethnic and linguistic similarity have the opposite effect. Democratic dyads, on average, have higher religious similarity levels than nondemocratic dyads, which, ostensibly, might play a role in reducing conflict within democratic dyads. However, the findings clearly demonstrate that although cultural factors are significant correlates of war they do not vitiate the impact of joint democracy on war. It appears that where a pair of states share a common democratic political culture it exerts a conflict dampening impact that overrides ethnic, linguistic, or religious factors.

The Political Determinants of International Trade: The Major Powers, 1907–1990

We test three arguments about the effect of international politics on trade flows. The first argument states that trade flows are greater between states with similar interests than those with dissimilar interests, the second that trade flows are greater in democratic dyads than nondemocratic dyads, and the third that trade flows are greater between allies. We examine trade flows between the major powers from 1907 to 1990. This period provides variation on all three independent variables of interest and allows us to separate the three arguments empirically. We estimate a gravity model of trade with the above political variables added. Our results demonstrate that joint democracy and common interests increase trade in a dyad, but alliances generally do not, even when controlling for polarity of the system.

New Tests of the Democratic Peace: Controlling for Economic Interdependence, 1950-85

Maoz and Russett (1993) reported that democratic states after World War II were unlikely to engage in militarized disputes with one another, but their continuous measure of joint democracy is problematic. It can decrease if one of a pair of states becomes more democratic, even if the political regime of the other does not change. Thus, results using this index are difficult to interpret. In this study we estimate the likelihood of dyadic conflict using more straightforward indices of joint democracy As in Oneal, Oneal, Maoz, and Russett (1996), we control for economic in terdependence and several other theoretically interesting, potentially con founding influences. Our analyses indicate that the more democratic a pair of states, the less likely they are to become involved in a militarized dispute; but a high level of democracy in one state can not compensate for less democracy in a strategic partner. The political distance separating states along the democracy-autocracy continuum is an important indica tor of the likelihood of dyadic conflict: democracies are unlikely to fight other democracies, but democracies and autocracies are conflict-prone. These results indicate that, ceteris paribus, democratic states are more peaceful than autocracies at the national level of analysis.

Opposites Do Not Attract: The Impact of Domestic Institutions, Power, and Prior Commitments on Alignment Choices

States that choose to involve themselves in an ongoing dispute do so by choosing to align with or against one of the original disputants. What factors lead states to prefer to help one side over the other? We consider the effect of the disputants' power, political and economic institutional similarities between each disputant and the aligning state, and formal alliance commitments between each disputant and the aligning state on these alignment choices. We evaluate these expectations empirically by examining the alignment choices of states that joined with one side or another in a Militarized Interstate Dispute during the period of 1816 to 1986. The results indicate that regardless of regime type, institutional similarities matter to the aligning state's decision. We also find that power concerns matter only to autocracies; democracies do not seem to base their alignment choices on the power of the sides in the dispute. Finally, the evidence indicates that the alignment choices of democracies cannot be anticipated by their prior alliance commitments, although the alignment choices of autocracies can. These results suggest interesting implications for research on the democratic peace, the determinants of threat in the international system, and the impact of selection effects. The consistent empirical evidence that institutional similarity affects alignment decisions also increases our confidence that future investigations of institutional similarity generally, rather than an exclusive focus on joint democracy, will prove fruitful.

Democracy and Militarized Interstate Collaboration

It is well documented that democratic nations very rarely engage in militarized conflict with other free nations. This study expands on this notable pattern by examining the possibility that democracies may also be more amenable to collaborate in militarized interstate conflict. A theoretical rationale for this expectation is developed resting on the cooperative norms of democratic political culture. With empirical analysis encompassing all nations from the Napoleonic era to the end of the Cold War, it is found that joint democracy has a positive and robust impact on the probability that two states will be on the same side at the start of a militarized interstate dispute. This conclusion remains robust after accounting for the potent influences of major power status, geographic proximity, dyadic alliance, and regime maturity on the probability of militarized collaboration. The results suggest that researchers may wish to seek answers for democratic foreign behavior that encompass the realm of interstate cooperation as well as the often-noted absence of interdemocratic militarized conflict.

Between Dispute and War: The Effect of Joint Democracy on Interstate Conflict Escalation

The peace postulate has received much theoretical and empirical attention recently, with the bulk of the evidence coming down in support of its expectations: that democratic pairs of states are unlikely to get involved in militarized disputes (compared with other regime pairs), and more likely to avoid escalation to war when they do occur. This paper does not challenge these findings but examines escalation behavior of democratic disputants at the stages between the two fire break points of dispute and war Interestingly, the results of ordinal level analyses are not in line with the expectations of the joint-democracy hypothesis: once a democratic pair has entered a militarized dispute, it is about as likely (possibly a little more so) to escalate that dispute through further stages of antagonism short of war, as is a non-jointly democratic dyad. Once they pass the initial threshold into conflict, disputes between democracies escalate to uses of force relatively frequently, showing a willin...

Democracy and Peace

Certain topics have currency If one is to judge from scholarly publications and statements by foreign policy elites, the relationship between democracy and peace is one of those topics. There have been differences over definitions and debate about whether the relationship between democracy and peace is absolute. There is disagreement as to whether normative or institutional factors better explain the relationship. But there appears to be little doubt in the minds of most observers that the joint democracy effect is real and, for some, it approaches the status of an empirical law of international relations.' Stated simply, while states characterized by democratic polities are as warprone as any other states, democracies rarely (if ever) engage in war against one another. Extrapolating the logic, a world of democracies would be a peaceful world (although the path to this end might be strewn with conflict).2 Any time scholars write about empirical laws and policy elites invoke such laws to justify policy behavior, one should be wary. Yet, in this case, the weight of evidence seems to support the claim. Nevertheless, there are dissenting views. The article Polities and Peace by Henry Farber and Joanne Gowa that appears in the Fall 1995 issue of International Security (and has since been reprinted in Debating the Democratic Peace) stands out as, perhaps, the most carefully crafted challenge to the democratic peace thesis.3 If Professors Farber and Gowa are correct, the democratic peace thesis is without legs, and policies based on the thesis ill-advised. Polities and Peace is an extremely appealing article. The exposition of substantive arguments and quantitative methodology is wonderfully lucid. The attention to detail, explanation of methodology, and discussion of findings provide a textbook example of how quantitative analysis should be presented. The issue addressed is important and policy relevant; the conclusion contrary to conventional wisdom. There is, to my

Regime types and status quo evaluations: Power transition theory and the democratic peace

A tremendous amount of attention is paid to whether or not joint democracy precludes wars within dyads. Although there now seems to be some measure of consensus that democracies rarely or never fight one another, the scholarly debate continues to be heated, lengthy, and occasionally negative. Part of the reason why the democratic peace proposition has met so much opposition might lie in the threat it poses to many established theories of international relations. However, the empirical phenomenon of the democratic peace may be compatible with at least one established theory of international relations: power transition theory. If it can be shown that democracies evaluate the status quo similarly, then power transition theory predicts that wars between them should be exceedingly rare. Further, if non‐democracies comprise the bulk of states dissatisfied with the status quo, then wars between democracies and non‐democracies are to be expected. Regime type is tentatively linked to status quo evaluations in this article, suggesting that it may be possible to incorporate the empirical observation of a democratic peace within power transition theory. Rather than contradicting established theory, the results associated with the democratic peace might indicate how strong an influence the status quo plays in restraining international conflict.

Demosthenes and democracies: Regime‐types and arbitration outcomes

Recent empirical research has found that democracies almost never wage war against each other. One explanation for this finding is that when given the same opportunities, joint‐democracy dyads are more willing than other types of dyads to entrust third parties with judicial competence to settle their disputes with binding arbitration. But while joint‐democracy dyads show a greater propensity than other pairs of states to use international arbitration, little research has been done on the success of these efforts. In order to determine whether there are any differences in the outcomes of arbitrations among different types of dyads, 221 cases of international arbitration were analyzed. No support was found for the hypothesis that joint‐democracy dyads experience significantly greater success using arbitration than other types of dyads. Joint democracy is an important predictor of whether states will choose a binding method of third‐party conflict resolution, but it does not predict whether a salient outcome...

Economic Interdependence: A Path to Peace or a Source of Interstate Conflict?

This article investigates the long-standing liberal hypothesis that trade ties facilitate interstate peace. Rather than assuming that trade will always promote peace, the author highlights the need to consider both the nature and context of economic linkages in assessing whether such ties are more likely to dampen or amplify interstate conflict. The study encompasses a diverse group of dyadic relationships for the period 1870-1938, 14,341 dyad years, and includes 270 militarized interstate disputes and 14 wars. After controlling for the potentially confounding influences of contiguity, regime type (joint democracy), relative capabilities, and alliance commitments, the author finds evidence that economic linkages have a dramatic influence on whether or not dyads engage in militarized disputes, but no influence on the occurrence of wars. Rather than inhibiting conflict, extensive economic interdependence increases the likelihood that dyads will engage in militarized interstate disputes. Peace through trade is most likely to arise among dyads composed of mutually dependent trading partners. Even then, the relationship between interdependence and conflict appears to be curvilinear, where low to moderate degrees of interdependence reduce the likelihood of dyadic disputes, and extensive economic linkages increase the probability of militarized disputes. Extreme interdependence, whether symmetrical or asymmetrical, has the greatest potential for increasing the likelihood of conflict.

Democracies, Disputes, and Third-Party Intermediaries

The proposition that democracies rarely fight one another has been well-substantiated by empirical research. A prominent explanation for this finding is that shared norms fostered by a democratic political culture promote peaceful conflict resolution. Joint democratic dyads allegedly have a greater propensity than other types of dyads to entrust third parties with judicial competence to settle their disputes. The results from a study of 206 dyadic disputes involving third-party intermediaries support this claim. The presence of joint democracy in dangerous, war-prone dyads has a strong positive effect on the probability of referring interstate disputes to binding third-party settlement, even when controlling for alliance bonds and geographic proximity. In addition, the more a joint democratic dyad is marked by coherent regimes or a rough parity in the distribution of military capabilities, the greater the propensity to refer disputes to binding third-party settlement.

Democracy and militarized interstate conflict, 1816–1965

An investigation of the relationship between “joint democracy” and militarized interstate conflict over the period 1816–1965 at the dyadic level confirms the inhibitory effect of democracy reported...