This week’s student spotlight is an excellent analysis of Democratic Peace Theory for IPM103: Theories of International Politics by Abdul Samed Karadal. It offers a stellar example of postgraduate work in the area of international relations theory.
Introduction
The Democratic Peace Theory (DPT), popularised by Michael Doyle in the 1980s, can be traced to the work Immanuel Kant in the 1700s. It is evident that Kant’s ‘Perpetual Peace’ closely resembles the principles of the modern DPT, and thus the terms ‘democratic peace’ and ‘Kantian peace’ are often used interchangeably in scholarly articles in the international relations field.
The DPT and absence of war between democracies has been described “as close as anything we have to an empirical law in international relations.” [Levy, 1989: 88]. The evidence does suggest that democracies have rarely gone to war with on another [Owen, 1994]. This proposition challenges the logic behind other political systems and the dominant Realist perspective of international relations. DPT has been an extremely divisive concept among political scientists. It is rooted in the idealist and classical liberalist tradition and it became a popular subject in the post-Cold War era. Scores of studies have been conducted on and devoted to DPT, many of which employ quantitative methods to demonstrate that the DPT is a historical fact.
The essay will first explore in-depth the DPT, and its structural and normative explanations. Here the essay will argue that these explanations together offer a logical and convincing argument. Alongside an in-depth and elaborate unpacking of the concept, the essay will also explore the definition of ‘democracy’ and ‘war’. In this section, the essay will also explore the criticisms directed at the DPT. Here it will analyse the criticism that regardless of what DPT scholars argue, democracies do still go to war with one another. This criticism will then be rebuffed by applying the definitions of democracy and war and demonstrating the simple reason why this criticism does not hold up. The essay will also examine the criticism DPT receives from the definition of democracy and war, namely that it is an inconsistent definition exploited by states who continually reinterpret it for self-interest. Whilst there are many alternatives to the DPT – those that consider geographic distance and contiguity, economic wealth and growth – the second part of the essay will focus on the Realist argument that considerations and evaluations of power, alliances, the Nuclear Deterrence Theory and Mutually Assured Destruction are far more convincing factors to explain the peace between states. This is because realism and liberalism represent two different perspectives.
In doing so, the essay will have reached a conclusion which argues that despite the Realist and other criticisms, the DPT to a great extent still offers a far more convincing account for the pacifism of democracies and the peace between democracies. However, it would not be right to completely dismiss the criticisms, and it should be noted that they do highlight some flaws within the DPT, though they are not the strongest of criticisms.
From Immanuel Kant to Michael Doyle
The basic principles of the liberal ‘DPT’ had been established as early as the 1700s with the works of the Immanuel Kant and his Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch book, first published in 1795. In ‘Perpetual Peace’, Kant speaks of ‘Republikanisch’ (Republican) states that are characterised by having representative forms of government, where the legislative branch of government is separated from the executive branch of government, and where individuals enjoyed freedom and legal equality [Russett, 1996a: 59]. According to Kant, these republican states will be at peace with other republican states because they will tend towards pacifism more so than any other form of government. In ‘Perpetual Peace’, Kant envisioned for the establishment of a zone of peace among states that were considered to be republican’. Kant’s ‘Perpetual Peace’ can be considered to have planted the embryo of the modern DPT.
The DPT came to prominence in the international relations field following two articles by Michael W. Doyle, that built upon Kant’s ‘Perpetual Peace’ and Kantian peace. The first of these article’s was ‘Kant, Liberal Legacies and Foreign Policy’, published in 1983; and his 1986 article, ‘Liberalism and the World Politics’. The DPT posits that democracies do not go to war or threaten other democracies for two reasons –structural and normative explanations. [Layne, 1994: 8].
Proponents of the first argue that it is the political institutions that make war unattractive. The case for this trace back to Kant, who claimed that “If the consent of the citizen is required…nothing is more natural than that they would be very cautious in commencing such a poor game, decreeing for themselves all the calamities of war” [as cited in Sørensen, 1992:397-398]. Since any war has a negative impact on people [Owen, 1994: 100], it is to be expected that the electorate would vote out incumbents [Layne, 1994: 9] for unnecessary wars, giving them great influence. In light of this explanation, it could be argued that Labour’s loss in the 2010 UK General Election was partly a result of the unpopular 2003 Iraq War for being too costly, although this may have also been fuelled by the 2008 Financial Crisis. The influence of the electorate provides a clear incentive for elected officials to anticipate such response, and search for other alternatives to war.
Proponents of the normative explanation argue that shared democratic norms and values best explains the peace between democracies. It is these norms and values that make its leaders more accustomed to negotiating and compromise [Russett et al, 1993: 31; Weart, 1998: 16]. Moreover, democratic culture strives towards peaceful means of conflict resolution [Russett, 1996b: 90]. In the normative explanation, democracies assume that other states also subscribe to pacifism and that they will apply this in their relations with other democracies [Layne, 1994: 9]. To put it more simply, the normative explanation posits relations between democracies as based on mutual respect and perception of the other as ‘dovish’ [Layne, 1994: 9-10]. The importance of perception means that even though a democratic state has ‘enlightened citizens and liberal institutions’, unless other democracies do not perceive it as such, then the DPT will not hold. Once a democracy accepts another as such, they become opposed to war [Owen, 1994: 95]. Moreover, it is the absence of these norms and values that explain why democracies are aggressive with non-democracies. A democracy cannot expect a non-democracy to be restrained by the norms and values, it can expect a democracy to be restrained with [Layne, 1994: 10; Russett et al, 1993: 33].
An intuitive, complementary and reinforcing and highly persuasive defence of the DPT emerges when these two proponents are combined. The norms and values encourage the growth and evolution of democratic institutions that over time, generate a more peaceful and moral culture.
DPT is different from the idea that compared to non-democracies, democracies are less prone to engage or enter into interstate conflict with other states [Ayoob, 1997: 134]. Several studies and academic articles have effectively proven this to be the case. Steve Chan’s 1984 article compares and analyses the “war involvement by countries with comparatively more and less political freedom.” [Chan, 1984: 617]. The data presented in Table 1 in the article concludes that compared to non-democracies, democracies aren’t more pacific. According to Chan’s, the four countries – Israel (score of 0.152), India (0.147), France (0.135) and Britain (0.115) – that come out with the highest “war-per-year scores” are those considered to be politically free [Chan, 1984: 626-628]. Chan’s findings are supported by Zeev Maoz and Nasrin Abdolalis’ who examined the previous academic findings on the nexus between regime type and involvement in a conflict of states. They concluded that democracies cannot be described as being neither more nor less prone to conflict than non-democracies [Maoz and Abdolali, 1989]. DPT scholars state that this war-prone element of democracies is only present in their relations with non-democracies [Doyle, 2012: 25] and align with liberal internationalism. Liberal internationalism is a foreign policy doctrine which posits that liberal states should intervene in other illiberal states for liberal objectives. These objectives include achieving global structures that promote a world order characterised by free trade, liberal economics, and liberal forms of government. Once realised, these objectives would result in a ‘peace dividend’ – or ‘democratic peace’ – because liberal and democracies have relations with each other that are non-violent and pacifist. Doyle, states that the “historical liberal legacy is laden with popular wars fought to promote freedom, protect private property” [Doyle, 2012: 87]. As an essay focusing on DPT and its persuasiveness, it is worth noting that the liberal internationalist doctrine is criticised by Realists, and hence indirectly the DPT, as being ‘liberal interventionism’.
Critics of DPT state that democracies do still go to war with one another. Bruce Russett, Thomas Schwartz and Kiron K. Skinner, in their respective works, list several examples of “candidate” wars between democracies. These include the 1861 American Civil War, the Lebanese vs. Israeli conflict in the 1967 ‘Six Day War’, and the 1974 invasion of Cyprus by Turkey [Russett, 1996a: 75; Schwartz and Skinner, 2002: 160-161]. Taking a look at Doyle’s list of liberal regimes by date shows that in both the 1861 American Civil War and the 1967 Lebanon v. Israel conflict, both all four belligerent forces were considered to be liberal regimes [Doyle, 2012: 15-17]. This would then clearly prove that the DPT assertation that democracies do not go to war with one another is false and not convincing. However, all three cases can easily be dismissed and will be demonstrated once an understanding of what ‘democracy’ and ‘war’ is, is established.
There is no single set definition of what constitutes a ‘democracy’ and a ‘war’. Each scholar adopts their understanding and definition; however, all the definitions share common criteria. Although Kant himself had explicitly linked ‘democracy’ with despotism, contemporary scholars have claimed that his definition of ‘republicanism’ and ‘republican constitutions’, corresponds to the current understanding of democracy. Kant emphasised the separation of power, representative government, freedom, ‘cosmopolitan law’ which embodied international commerce and free trade [as cited in Russett, 1996a: 59]. Russett himself identified universal suffrage, governments elected in contested elections, an executive either elected or responsible to an elected legislature, and civil liberties as characteristics of a democracy [Russett et al, 1993: 14]. Whilst compiling the table of liberal regimes by date, Doyle states four essential institutions to be considered a liberal regime: market/private property economics, externally sovereign polities, judicial rights, and a representative government [Doyle, 2012: 17]. Finally, James Lee Ray’s definition is more elaborate and interesting as he basis it on the competitiveness of elections to the executive and legislature. He states that for a state to be democratic, its executive and legislative members must be elected in fair and competitive elections; and that electoral systems are fair so long as they have at least two independent political parties competing, that 50% of the adult population is eligible to vote and that following an election power is transferred peacefully [Ray, 1995: 102].
Quantitative research on international wars usually defines them as a conflict with more than 1,000 killed in a battle in one year. This definition is accepted and used by the Correlates of War Project (COW). The COW’s definition of ‘war’ classifies it into two different groupings: international and civil wars. International wars are then divided into two different groups: interstate and extra-systemic wars [Sarkees and Schafer, 2000: 124-125]. Russett describes the COW definition as “arbitrary but reasonable”. He says this because he, convincingly, claims that it eliminates any violent events that should instead be considered a: accidents, deliberate actions by local commanders that weren’t authorised by central authorities, limited local military actions undertaken as a bargaining chip, and deliberate military actions larger than probes but not substantially resisted by a weaker adversary [Russett et al, 1993: 12]. In his definition, which is accepted by the three other authors of the book, Russett doesn’t set a numerical value. He explores Ancient Greece and requires that the attacking state needs to know the target and the defending state has to respond. Russett’s definition thus requires some sort of battle engagement between the two sides under state authorisation [Russett et al, 1993: 50]. Another scholar who focuses on Ancient Greece is Spencer R. Weart, who departs from the COW definition by setting a significantly lower cut-off point at 100 deaths in organised combat between troops of two differing nations [Weart, 1998: 27]. Specifying that the deaths must be from a battle engagement between two nations troops’, is significant because by doing so Weart ensures his definition does not fall into the trap Russett claimed the COW’s definition avoided. This, therefore, closes any loophole that critiques could have used to criticise the DPT.
Having established the definitions for ‘democracy’ and war’, these definitions can be applied to dismiss the criticism that the DPT assertation that democracies do not go to war with one another is false. The definitions of democracy mentioned accept that civil liberties and freedom, universal suffrage and representative governments are the basic elements of a democracy. This definition, outright, eliminates the 1861 American Civil War and 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus as case studies to criticise the DPT because, during the American Civil War slavery was still a common practice in the Southern confederate states and the voting franchise only covered the white male population; and in the case of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, the invasion was triggered by the military coup d’état which overthrew the Cypriot civilian government. The definitions of war also refute the 1967 Lebanon v. Israel conflict because Lebanon’s participation in the Six Day War was limited to sending fighter jets into Israeli airspace which were chased out without any casualties; falling below the numerical value set by COW and Weart.
In addition to this ‘baseless’ and refuted criticism, another set of criticisms is directed at the DPT focusing on the definition of democracy. Sebastian Rosato posits that states continually reinterpret what constitutes democracy and the regime types of other states as a result of their objective interests and motives [Rosato, 2003: 592-593]. In his article, Rosato showcases a selection of American Cold War interventions against states that were considered democracies [Rosato, 2003: 590]. In each of these interventions, America had sacrificed democracy for its economic interests [Rosato, 2003: 591]. Similarly, Christopher Layne shows that post-World War I, France had perceived Germany as non-democratic despite it being governed by the Weimar Constitution which declared Germany a parliamentary republic with an elected legislature and universal suffrage, which meets the definition of democracy [Layne, 1994: 37]. Using this same example, John M. Owen argues that it is simply insufficient to be a liberal democracy, but that its fellow liberal democracies must perceive it to be one [Owen, 1994: 96]. Here Layne and Owen, supplement each other in portraying the definition of democracy as inconsistent. Their argument is greatly persuasive and also goes a long way in rebutting not just Rosato’s but also their criticism of the definition of democracy as inconsistent. They demonstrate that a consistent definition is not necessary, because even an objective definition would become subject to continual interpretation by states.
Realist Critique
Liberal and DPT’s biggest rival is the Realist theory. Realism contends that a states behaviour in international relations is primarily shaped by the international systems anarchic structure, due to the absence of a supranational governing body that is capable of maintaining peace and security in the international system. For Realists, as long as this anarchy prevails, a war between states will remain latent regardless of the internal characteristics of states – a clear rebuttal of DPT.
Realists contend that the presence or absence of democracy is not the main cause of peace or war; instead, it is the considerations and evaluations of power. It is the alliances that democracies form between each other that leads to democratic peace. Henry S. Farber and Joanne Gowa’s study finds evidence stating that peace between democracies is statistically only significant post-World War II. They contend that this peaceful nature is an artefact of the Cold War between the United States and the USSR when the Soviet and Communist threat forced western democracies to form alliances [Farber and Gowa, 1995: 124 and 145; Maoz, 2008: 21 and 31]. Farber and Gowa state that it was common interest (security against communism) and not common polities that caused the peace between democracies during the Cold War [Farber and Gowa, 1995: 124]. John Mearsheimer echoes this claim and makes a similar claim, citing the Anglo-American peace before 1945 and improvement in the Franco-British relations that was a result of the Nazi German threat [Mearsheimer, 1990: 50-51]. Rosato raises these explanations further and contends that the US dominance in Europe could be the reason behind the zone of peace in the region and that “one possible explanation is that the democratic peace is in fact an imperial peace based on American power” [Rosato, 2003: 599]. This “possible explanation” itself alone can be used to criticise the DPT even further because many of its advocates base their argument on examples of US relations with other states, and this limited scope of analysis means that the arguments provided by DPT advocates can be debunked as by saying that the peace they claim is a result of democracy is in fact a result of American dominance.
A second realist critique emphasises the role of nuclear weapons in maintaining peace. In realist terms, in disputes between nuclear powers, the presence of nuclear weapons and the possibility of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) prevents either side from engaging in conflict and pushes them to negotiations. MAD functions on the assumption that if a nuclear power were to launch a nuclear strike against another nuclear-armed power, it should expect the other to retaliate, ensuring the destruction of both sides and creating a premise of fear and uncertainty. The Nuclear Deterrence Theory (NDT) and MAD help explain the relative and questionable peace between the USA and the USSR during the Cold War, and hence an alternative to the DPT [Ayoob, 1997; 136]. The peace between the USA and USSR is described as questionable because of the countless proxy wars fought between the two superpowers, which in effect debunks the NDT and MAD. Azar Gat supports the NDT and MAD alternative to DTP, whilst also proposing a range of other alternatives: wealth and comfort, Metropolitan Service Society, Sexual Revolution; Fewer Young Males; Fewer Children per Family; and Women’s Franchise [Gat, 2006: 597-609].
Conclusion
Academic research devoted to the DPT, that was cited in this essay, have shown, not that wars between non-democracies, or those between democracies and non-democracies were frequent, but that wars between democracies were rarer.
By exploring the DPT’s structural and normative explanations, the essay demonstrated that combining the two produces an intuitive, complementary and reinforcing defence of the DPT, which is highly convincing. The norms and values encourage the growth and evolution of democratic institutions that generate a more peaceful and moral culture.
In addition to this, at various and relevant points, the essay has displayed the criticisms directed at the DTP and its persuasiveness. It has demonstrated that the DPT is criticised for its inconsistent and easily manipulated and exploited definition of democracy; and that despite DPT scholars, democracies do still go to war with each other. Furthermore, the main body of criticism of DPT discussed in this essay was the Realist critique. Realists have claimed that it is the consideration and evaluations of power, alliances, common interests and nuclear deterrence that have significantly influenced the peace between democracies, and not shared norms and values or democratic institutions. However, more importantly, the essay has debunked most of these criticisms as invalid and insignificant, for very simple and obvious reasons. Therefore, to a great extent, the Democratic Peace Theory offers a convincing argument that explains the pacifism of democracies and the rarity of wars between democratic states.
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