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Democracies don't fight: a case of the wrong research agenda?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 1996

John Macmillan
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The contention that ‘democracies don't fight against each other’ has received considerable attention in recent years from academics, policy analysts and world leaders. While the accuracy, significance and implications of the claim are still debated, supporters and critics alike have, virtually without exception, agreed that they are addressing the significant topic: the absence of war between democracies. Both accept the terms of the debate which is to focus upon the existence of a ‘separate peace’ between democracies or liberal states. Supporters of the contention are engaged in devising an explanation of the relationship between democracies/liberal states and peace which ‘needs to explain, simultaneously, both (a) the fact that democratic states have rarely clashed with one another—the democratic peace phenomenon, and (b) the fact that democracies are about as war prone as non–democracies’ in their relations with non–democracies. Critics (mostly Realists) are engaged in refuting the accuracy and challenging the significance of the claim. It is the argument of this article, however, that the concentration upon this agenda is misguided, and that the absence of war between liberal states is but a sub–category of a broader and potentially more significant relationship: a connection between liberalism and peace that is actually more extensive than that apparent in inter–liberal state relations.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , July 1996 , pp. 275 - 299
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1996

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References

1 The literature uses the terms ‘liberal state’, ‘democracy’, ‘liberal democracy’ and ‘libertarian’ state to signify virtually the same subject. I shall use the term‘ liberal state’, though when discussing particular authors shall use the term they themselves employ.

2 Mintz, A. and Geva, N., ‘Why Don't Democracies Fight Each Other: An Experimental Study’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 37:3 (Sept. 1993), p. 484CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 For recent articles critical of the claim see Mearsheimer, J. J., ‘Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War’, International Security, 15:1 (Summer 1990), pp. 5–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Waltz, K., ‘The Emerging Structure of International Polities’, International Security, 18:2 (Fall 1993), pp. 44–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cohen, R., ‘Pacific Unions: A Reappraisal of the Theory that “Democracies do not Go to War with Each Other”’, Review of International Studies, 20:3 (July 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Layne, C., ‘Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace’, International Security, 19:2 (Fall 1994), pp. 5–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Spiro, D., ‘The Insignificance of the Liberal Peace’, International Security, 19:2 (Fall 1994), pp. 50–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Owen, J. M., ‘How Liberalism Produces Democratic Peace’, International Security, 19:2 (Fall 1994), pp. 87–125CrossRefGoogle Scholar, is sympathetic to the claim that there is a positive relationship between democracies and peace, accredits this to liberalism, though maintains that the relationship is manifest only in inter–liberal state relations.

4 I borrow the term ‘pacificism’ from Ceadel, M., Thinking about Peace and War (Oxford, 1987)Google Scholar. It refers to the belief that peace is both possible and desirable, and is thus similar to ‘eirenicism’.

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6 Rummel, ‘Libertarianism’, p. 28.

7 Doyle, ‘Kant, Part 1’, pp. 213, 225, 223.

8 There are a number of scholars besides Rummel who have considered different aspects of the relationship between liberal states and peace. Levy, J. S., ‘Domestic Politics and War’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 18:3 (1988), pp. 653–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar, has, as will be discussed below, drawn attention to the differences between the way historians and political scientists study the question of war. Schweller, R. L., ‘Domestic Structure and Preventive War: Are Democracies More Pacific?’, World Politics, 44:2 (1992), pp. 235–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar, has developed the interesting argument that democracies do not wage preventive war as this is inconsistent with liberal principles. A merit of this piece is that Schweller recognizes that liberal democracies recognize norms applicable beyond inter–liberal state relations. Forsythe, D. P., Human Rights and Peace (Lincoln and London, 1993)Google Scholar, has developed an approach which synthesizes the variables of rights and power in explaining the breakdown of peace, and supports his case with a number of empirical case–studies. This argument is, however, in the context of the claim that democracies don't fight each other. Lynch, C., ‘Kant, the Republican Peace, and Moral Guidance in International Law’, Ethics and International Affairs, 8 (1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar directed a discussion of Kantian ethics to the relationship between liberal states and peace.

9 Besides the works cited above in notes 2 and 3 see, for instance, Morgan, C. T. and Campbell, S. Howard, ‘Domestic Structure, Decisional Constraints, and War: So Why Kant Democracies Fight?’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 35:2 (June 1991), pp. 187–211CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Morgan, C. T. and Schwebach, V., ‘Take Two Democracies and Call Me in the Morning: A Prescription for Peace?’, International Interactions, 17:3 (1992), pp. 305–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gleditsch, N., ‘Democracy and Peace’, Journal of Peace Research, 29:4 (1992), pp. 369–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Starr, H., ‘Why Don't Democracies Fight One Another? Evaluating the Theory–Findings Feedback Loop’, Jerusalem Journal of International Relations, 14:4 (1992), pp. 41–59Google Scholar; Ray, J. L., ‘Wars Between Democracies: Rare, or Nonexistent?’, International Interactions, 18:3 (1993), pp. 251–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Russett, B., Grasping the Democratic Peace Princeton, 1993Google Scholar.

10 Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace, p. 32.

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15 Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace, p. 30, cites ch. 4 of his own book; Bremer, S. A., ‘Dangerous Dyads: Conditions Affecting the Likelihood of Interstate War, 1816–1965’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 36:2 (1992), pp. 309–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Maoz, Z. and Abdolali, N., ‘Regime Types and International Conflict’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 33:1 (1989), pp. 3–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar. One of Maoz and Abdolali's general conclusions, for instance, is that ‘there is no relationship between regime type and conflict involvement at the national (or polity) level of analysis. This finding is extremely robust; it holds regardless of the indexes of regime type used, the aggregation of specific indexes to overall regime categories, the indexes of conflict involvement, and the breakdown of the temporal domain into subperiods’ (p. 30). Qualitative factors are, however, completely neglected and as such there is no indication of how the incidence of violence by liberal states is related to any normative framework. See also Mintz and Geva, ‘Why Don't Democracies…?’.

16 Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace, pp. 30–1, 38.

17 Doyle, ‘Kant, Part 1’, p. 230.

18 Ibid., p. 225; see also Doyle, ‘Kant, Part 2’; Doyle, ‘Liberalism and World Polities’, pp. 1156–7; and Doyle, M. W., ‘Liberalism and International Relations’, in Beiner, R. and Booth, W. J., Kant and Political Philosophy: The Contemporary Legacy London, 1993), pp. 176–7Google Scholar.

19 To be fair to Doyle, in his most recent work he does qualify his claim that ‘peaceful restraint only seems to work in the liberals’ relations with other liberals‘ with the qualification that relations with non–liberals do appear to be ‘more complicated’. Doyle, ‘Liberalism and International Relations’, pp. 176–7. In his ‘Kant, Part 2’ he discusses the relations of liberal states with non–liberal states at some length.

20 See the heading of Doyle's lists of liberal states in Doyle, ‘ K a n t, Part 1’, p. 209, a n d Doyle, ‘Liberalism and International Relations’, p. 193.

21 Suganami, H., Reflections on the Causes of War provisional title, Oxford, 1996CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ch. 3; Cohen, ‘Pacific Unions’, p. 214.

22 See Russett, B., ‘And Yet It Moves’, International Security, 19:4 (Spring 1995), pp. 164–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar, pp. 171–2 and n.16 therein; see also Maoz, Z. and Russett, B., ‘Normative and Structural Causes of Democratic Peace’, American Political Science Review, 87:3 (Sept. 1993), pp. 624–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Russett, B., Ray, J. L. and Cohen, R., ‘Raymond Cohen on Pacific Unions: A Response and a Reply’, Review of International Studies, 21:3 (July 1995), pp. 319–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 325.

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28 Doyle, ‘Kant, Part 1’, p. 216.

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31 See Cohen, ‘Pacific Unions’, p. 219, and Layne, ‘Kant or Cant’, pp. 28–33. Their interpretation of the conflict in terms of superior British power probably overplays the assumption of ‘rationality’. They overlook the possibility that the parties could have been pushed to war through concern for other factors such as credibility, honour, or domestic political pressures.

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35 Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace being the paradigmatic case.

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39 Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace, p. 22; my italics.

40 Although I do discuss the implications of Kant's political philosophy for the ‘democracies don't fight’ debate, and the way in which Kant's thought has been interpreted by liberal peace theorists, in ‘A Kantian Protest against the Peculiar Discourse of Inter–Liberal State Peace’, Millennium, 24:3 (Winter 1995), pp. 549–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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47 Ibid., pp. 32–3; Doyle, ‘Liberalism and World Polities’, p. 1161.

48 Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman, War and Reason, p. 160.

49 Ibid., p. 158. Z. Maoz and B. Russett adopt a broadly similar explanatory framework in ‘Normative and Structural Causes’.

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59 For a critical discussion of the adoption of the neoliberal model of economic development see Lee, K., ‘A Neo–Gramscian Approach to International Organisation’, in MacMillan, J. and Linklater, Andrew (eds.), Boundaries in Question: New Directions in International Relations London, 1995Google Scholar. Rosecrance, R., The Rise of the Trading State New York, 1986Google Scholar; Ziegler, C., Foreign Policy and East Asia, Learning and Adaptation in the Gorbachev Era Cambridge, 1993Google Scholar.

60 In this vein, Lumsdaine, D. H., Moral Vision in International Politics: The Foreign Aid Regime, 1949–1989 Princeton, NJ, 1993Google Scholar, shows convincingly the way in which the foreign aid regime emerged after World War II as the international counterpart of the domestic welfare state and increasing awareness of world poverty and beliefs regarding the interdependencies of peace, prosperity and justice.

61 For a study of the relationship between domestic political ideologies and foreign policy assumptions see Ceadel, Thinking about Peace and War.

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64 Allison, G., Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis Boston, 1971)Google Scholar.

65 Meinecke, F., Machiavellism (London, 1957 [1924])Google Scholar. In case readers think it odd that I should draw upon Realist writers to support an argument rooted in liberalism, it should be remembered that a number of liberals (e.g. Kant) held similar views regarding the impediment to moral development presented by the anarchic nature of the international system.

66 Lumsdaine's analysis of the foreign aid regime in Moral Vision is a notable model of how to disaggregate the significance of particularly liberal elements upon policy–making within a liberal democratic state.