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	The '''democratic peace theory''' or simply '''democratic peace''' (often '''DPT''' and sometimes '''democratic pacifism''') is a ] in ] and ] which holds that ]—specifically, ]—never or almost never go to ] with one another. A more general version is that all kinds of systematic violence is rare in and by democracies. Despite criticism, it has grown in prominence among ] and has become influential in the policy world.
	]]]

			] was an early peace theorist, from the late 18th century.]]
	==History of the theory==
			A '''democratic peace theory''', in ], was originally a claim that ] - specifically, ] - never or almost never go to ] with one another. The original '''democratic peace''' ] referred to peace ''between'' democracies, the later '''pacifist democracy''' hypothesis to an inherently less warlike nature of democracies; some theories include both. The '''separate peace''' hypothesis implies that wars between ''unlike regimes'' (democracy and non-democracy) are more probable. The '''militant democracy''' hypothesis implies that democracies are ''inherently likely'' to go to war with non-democracies.
	]
	The idea came relatively late in political theory, one contributing factor being that democracies were very rare before the late nineteenth century. No ancient author seems to have thought so. Early authors referred to republics rather than democracies, since the word democracy had acquired a bad name until early modern times. ] believed that republics were by nature excellent war-makers and empire-builders, citing Rome as the prime example. It was ] who first foreshadowed the theory in his essay ''Perpetual Peace'' written in ] , although he thought that democracy was only one of several necessary conditions for a perpetual peace. US President ] advocated the idea in politics during and after ].

			Despite the variations, all such theories are referred to as democratic peace theory, abbreviated '''DPT'''. Often, that term is used to refer to the original hypothesis only, disregarding later developments in the theory. Such theories have also been referred to as the "liberal peace" or the "Kantian peace" in honor of Immanuel Kant, who proposed an early version of the theory.
	In ], ] was the first to claim that statistical evidence supported the theory. Thereafter, an increasing amount of research has been done on the theory and related subjects. More than one hundred researchers have contributed to the literature according to an incomplete bibliography . Despite criticism, it has grown in prominence among political scientists and has become influential in the policy world. Scholar ] famously remarked that the democratic peace is "the closest thing we have to an empirical law in the study of international relations"

			==History of the theories==
	]s of both ] parties have expressed support for the theory. "Ultimately, the best strategy to ensure our security and to build a durable peace is to support the advance of democracy elsewhere. Democracies don't attack each other." ]'s ] Address, Jan 25, 1994 . "And the reason why I'm so strong on democracy is democracies don't go to war with each other. And the reason why is the people of most societies don't like war, and they understand what war means.... I've got great faith in democracies to promote peace. And that's why I'm such a strong believer that the way forward in the Middle East, the broader Middle East, is to promote democracy." ] at the White House Press Conference, 12 November, 2004 .
			{{main\|Perpetual peace}}

			The idea that democracy is a source of world peace came relatively late in political theory, one contributing factor being that democracies were very rare before the late nineteenth century. No ancient author seems to have thought so. Early authors referred to republics rather than democracies, since the word democracy had acquired a bad name until early modern times. ] believed that republics were by nature excellent war-makers and empire-builders, citing Rome as the prime example. It was ] who first foreshadowed the theory in his essay "]" written in 1795 , although he held that peace would, in addition to ], need a ], and "hospitality": freedom of movement and trade, like the ].
	==Statistical studies supporting the DPT==
	''War'' and ''liberal democracy'' can be defined in different ways. The studies supporting the DPT have often defined war as any military action with more than 1000 killed in battle. This is the definition used in the ] which has also supplied the data regarding the wars and the militarized disputes for many of the studies. The early researcher ] required liberal democracies to have voting rights for at least 2/3 of all adult males and that the democracy should be older than 3 years at the start of the war. He also had some implicit criteria; for example, the chief officer of the democracy must have had a contested election. Another example is requiring that at least 50% of the adult population is allowed to vote and that there has been at least one peaceful, constitutional transfer of executive power from one independent political party to another by means of an election. Many researchers have used the ] which scores states for democracy on a continuous scale for every year from ] to ]. There are also many other data sets used in conflict research .

			] The peacefulness of ]s was the basis for the American policy of ] and the foreign policy of ]. It was also represented in the ] ] of ], ], and of ], who argued in August 1914 that popular governments would not go to war with each other, and therefore that the First World War could be the ''War that will End War''.
	Numerous studies using many different kinds of data, definitions, and statistical analyses have found support for the democratic peace theory. They have concluded that no wars have been fought between liberal democracies and that this is statistically significant when compared with the wars fought with and between nondemocracies during the last two centuries. There is also much research showing that all kinds of systematic violence is rare in and by democracies . Most statistical work has focused on the 19th and 20th centuries, but there is also some research on the applicability of the theory outside this period .

			===Development of the modern theory===
	''Militarized interstate disputes'' (MIDs) include the disputes that later will become wars but also the disputes causing less than 1000 or even no battle deaths but including for example a military display of force. There have been more than 2000 MIDs since 1816, allowing more detailed statistical analyses than when looking at wars. Research using a continuous measure of democracy shows that the most democratic nations have the least MIDs. There is an ongoing debate regarding whether it is the most authoritarian or the intermediate regimes that have the most MIDs. When examining these MIDs in more detail, the inter-liberal disputes have on the average more hostility, but are less likely to involve third parties, hostility is less likely to be reciprocated, when reciprocated the response is usually proportional to the provocation, and the disputes are less likely to cause any loss of life . Enduring militarized competition between democratic states is rare. After both states have become democratic, there is a decreasing probability for MIDs within a year and this decreases almost to zero within five years .

			In ], ], then a Wisconsin ], published a paper asserting that no two democracies had ever been at war with each other, and substantially republished it in an industrial trade journal in ]. This was also claimed at greater length in ] by ], professor of ] at the ], and much of this research is available on his web-site.
	Democracies do sometimes attack nondemocracies. Many earlier papers found that democracies in general are as warlike as nondemocracies, but according to several recent papers democracies are overall slightly less involved in war, initiate wars and MIDs less frequently than nondemocracies, and tend more frequently to seek negotiated resolutions . A recent theory is that democracies can be divided into "pacifist" and "militant". While both avoid attacking other democracies, "militant" democracies have a tendency to distrust and use confrontational policies against dictatorships. Most MIDs by democracies since ] have involved only four nations: the ], the ], ], and ] .

			] was the first democratic peace theorist to observe the similarity to Kant, and published a largely accurate summary of Kant's essay. He, working with ], distinguished between the '''strong''' (or ''monadic'') form of the theory (that democracies tend to be peaceful in general) and the '''weak''' or ''dyadic'' form (that they tend to be peaceful with each other). He also studied the even weaker proposition that liberal regimes have less purely internal conflict.
	In international crises that include the threat or use of military force, if the parties are democracies, then relative military strength has no effect on who wins. This is different from when nondemocracies are involved. This pattern is the same for both allied and nonallied parties .

			===Political affinities===
	Research also shows that wars involving democracies are less violent and that democracies have much less ] . The most democratic and the most authoritarian states have few ]s, and intermediate regimes the most. The probability for a civil war is also increased by political change, regardless whether toward greater democracy or greater autocracy. Intermediate regimes continue to be the most prone to civil war, regardless of the time since the political change. In the long run, since intermediate regimes are less stable than autocracies, which in turn are less stable than democracies, durable democracy is the most probable end-point of the process of ] . The fall of ] and the increase in the number of democratic states were accompanied by a sudden and dramatic decline in total warfare, interstate wars, ] wars, ] wars, and the number of ] and ]s .

			''Monadic'' theories tend to be akin to ], and emphasise the internally peaceful nature of democracies. More general theories developed from the monadic version claim that democracies are in general less apt to engage in systematic violence; and that, therefore, violence within or between democracies is also very rare. ''Dyadic'' theories, usually ] of historical data sets, compare wars between democracies, on one hand, with wars between democracies and non-democracies and wars between non-democracies, on the other; and argue that there are special reasons why wars between democracies do not occur.
	==Causes==
	One idea is that democracies have a common ] and that this creates good relations. However, there have been many wars between non-democracies that share a common culture. Democracies are however characterized by ], and therefore the inhabitants may be used to resolve disputes through ] rather than by force. This may reduce the use of force between democracies.

			Democratic peace theories are highly controversial, and the findings of individual studies are often vigorously disputed. Most of that controversy has arisen from the misuse of the theory, especially dyadic versions, to suggest that democracies are ''objectively better'' than non-democracies. This is a questionable claim: ] and ] never went to war with each other, but that is not an argument for a world of fascist dictatorships.
	]]]
	Another idea is that democracy gives influence to those most likely to be killed or wounded in wars, and their relatives and friends. However, democracies sometimes attack non-democratic states. One explanation is that these democracies were threatened or otherwise were provoked by the non-democratic states. This idea also suggests that the relationship in the DPT became stronger when graphic movies and television made wars less romantic.

			Nevertheless, democratic peace theories are, in practice, used as an argument for western cultural superiority, and for ], and for military intervention. ] quoted it to justify the ], and later to urge democratisation. ] presidents of both main parties have rhetorically based their policies (in ] and ]) on the democratic peace...
	Studies show that democratic states are more likely than autocratic states to win the wars. One explanation is that democracies, for internal political and economic reasons, have greater resources. This might mean that democratic leaders are unlikely to select other democratic states as targets because they perceive them to be particularly formidable opponents. One study finds that interstate wars have important impacts on the fate of political regimes, and that the probability that a political leader will fall from power in the wake of a lost war is particularly high in democratic states .

			:''If we can create a great area of democracy stretching from the west coast of the United States ... to the Far East, that would give us the best guarantee of all for security - because democracies don't go to war with one another.'' Margaret Thatcher, then British Prime Minister, in 1990.
	A ] explanation is that the participation of the public and the open debate send clear and reliable information regarding the intentions of democracies to other states. In contrast, it is difficult to know the intentions of nondemocratic leaders, what effect concessions will have, and if promises will be kept. Thus there will be mistrust and unwillingness to make concessions if at least one of the parties in a dispute is a nondemocracy .

			:''Ultimately, the best strategy to ensure our security and to build a durable peace is to support the advance of democracy elsewhere. Democracies don't attack each other.'' William Clinton's 1994 , Jan 25, 1994
	==Criticisms==
	There are at least four logically distinguishable classes of criticism. One that the criteria has not been applied accurately to the historical record. For example, critics have argued that ] was a democracy at the time of ]. Another that the criteria are not appropriate. For example, critics may prefer that liberal democracy should exclude or include both of Germany and England at the time of WWI, rather than separate them into democratic and non-democratic. A third that the theory may not actually mean very much. For example, there were very few liberal democracies before the twentieth century. Democracies have fought many offensive ] and ] wars. A fourth that it is not democracy itself but some other external factor(s) associated with democratic states that explain the peace.

			:''And the reason why I'm so strong on democracy is democracies don't go to war with each other. And the reason why is the people of most societies don't like war, and they understand what war means.... I've got great faith in democracies to promote peace. And that's why I'm such a strong believer that the way forward in the Middle East, the broader Middle East, is to promote democracy.'' George W. Bush at the , 12 November 2004.
	These tend to overlap, being in fact complementary criticisms, and many critics make more than one of them. It is particularly hard to tell the first two classes apart on for example 1914 Germany and England, since they cannot be separated into democracy and nondemocracy using numerical factors like the percentage of the population having the right to vote, but must be separated by qualitative factors. These criticisms are discussed in the remaining sections.

			For these reasons, democratic peace theory was until recently seen as a pro-western and pro-democracy theory, reflecting ] ideas about the inevitable global triumph of western values. However, disappointment about the results of some post-Soviet democratisations, increasing scepticism about forced democratisation, and opposition to the ] have eroded support for the assumption of inherent superiority of democracy. More recent dyadic theories also seek theoretical explanations for wars by democracies against non-democracies, including the 'militant democracy' thesis, which reverses the original expectations that democracies are more peaceful than non-democracies.

			==Democratic peace theories==
	==Specific historic examples==
	{\| {{prettytable}} ALIGN="left"
	\|+ '''Number of wars 1816-1991'''
	\|-
	\| Democracies vs. Democracies \|\| 0
	\|-
	\| Democracies vs. Nondemocracies \|\| 155
	\|-
	\| Nondemocracies vs. Nondemocracies \|\| 198
	\|-
	\|Source: . Other studies show<br/> similar results.
	\|}
	Note that the following concerns the claim of no wars between liberal democracies and not other claims like fewer MIDs.

			A democratic peace theory has to define what it means by "democracy" and what it means by "peace" (or, more often, "war"), and what it claims as the link between the two.
	===Liberal democracy?===
	For the ] critics have argued that the ] was a democracy, (the ] was elected by universal male suffrage and it did vote overwhelmingly to fund the war), or that Britain was not a democracy (only 2/3 of British males could vote , to say nothing of the Empire beyond the Seas, the majority of which had no say in the decision at all). Supporters respond that the German ] had the executive power. He appointed and dismissed the ], the Imperial officials, and the officers. He could and did declare war together with the not democratically elected ], 30% of which was appointed by the Emperor, and most of the rest by the German princes. The Reichstag had little control over the executive power and its legislative power was greatly limited by the Bundesrat. The Emperor's appointees in the Bundesrat could themselves veto amendments to the ]. In 1913 the Chancellor ignored a ] and there were often threats of a military ] if the Reichstag should ignore the Emperor on important issues. In effect, therefore, especially in foreign and military affairs, there was little democratic control. The Emperor was also the King of ] which had 3/5 of the German population and the Prussian constitution gave him even greater power there. The landed ] of the ]s formed the officer corps of the army, dominated Prussia, and had strong influence on national politics as well . If Britain was not a liberal democracy, then this is another reason why WWI was not a war between democracies. The last argument may however weaken the statistical support for the DPT, because fewer democracies mean fewer possible wars.

			===Democracy===
	There can be similar responses to other objections. During the ], only a small minority had the right to vote in the ], many new urban areas had no representation, the ballot was not secret, many seats in ] were appointed or openly bought from the owners of ]s, and the ] could ] all laws. The defenders of DPT exclude the ] because, in addition to it being an internal conflict, in the ] only 30-40% of male population could vote and there was never a competitive presidential election. Similarly, only a minority had the right to vote in the ]s before the ]. ], the president of ] at the time of the ], used terror tactics to silence critical press and the previously independent judiciary, for example storming the ] in order to force the Chief Justice out of office. ], the president of the ] at the start of the latest conflicts with ], and ], the president of the ] during the ], can be criticized on similar grounds. There was never a democratic election in the ] before the ]. All the ] presidents at the time of the conflicts with the U.S., like ], took their power in coup d'etats. At the time of the ], ] and ] had suffrage requirements like literacy or property that excluded almost all of the population. ] had the ] system during the ].
			Democratic peace theorists have used different terms for the class of states they consider peaceable; Babst called them ], Rummell ], Doyle ]s. In general, these require not only that the government and legislature be chosen by free and genuinely contested elections, but more besides

			There are several lists of democracies. ] drew up a list of government types by country and year, the ]. This is a ranking on two ten-point scales, one for the degree of democracy, one for the degree of ]; but he calls the countries which score above 6 on the first scale simply '''the''' democracies; and those which score above 5 on the second, the autocracies. Gurr calls States which do neither ]; no state has yet done both. Many theorists simply use the binary version of Gurr's list: democracy/no democracy.
	===Liberal democracies before the nineteenth century?===

			Dean Babst made his own decisions on what was a democracy. He required also a ], asserting (wrongly) that this existed in the United States back to 1789 and in Britain back to the 1830's. More recent theorists have set a numerical limit on suffrage, say, that half or two-thirds of the male population be able to vote.
	In ], ]s with limited democracy fought wars with one another. Most noted is the ] by the ] against ]. These states had large numbers of non-voting ]s and ]s. It is estimated that only 30-40% of adult males in Athens had the right to vote. The ] and ] had limited democracy and fought the three ]. There were persistent wars among ], ], ], and other ] city-states with limited democracy.

			===War===
	An interesting case is the ], which had some qualities of today's democracies and in which ] (the nobles), using ] (a parliament), blocked many ] attempts to declare a war on other countries. Some scholars have put forward the ] (or parts of it) and the Six ] Nations as early examples of communities of democratic states upholding the theory. Of course that is completely wrong since the Iroquois were participants in many wars including the ] and were eventually driven into Canada by the US military.

			Many theorists have used the convenient list at the ] at the ], which compiled the wars from 1816 to 1991 with at least a thousand battlefield casualties. This data is particularly convenient for statistical analysis, and the large-scale statistical studies cited below have generally used this definition.
	===Deaths in battle===
	The rule of at least 1000 killed in battle excludes attacks by one democracy on another in such overwhelming force that there is no effective resistance, and thus few deaths in battle. Some ] and small scale foreign interventions by the United States may be examples.

			Babst excluded wars in which one democracy was not independent at the start of the war, on the grounds that the war was not their decision; it was on this basis, unfortunately, that he attempted to exclude the ]. Rummel extended this to exclude wars in which one state had not yet been a democracy for three years, on the ground that democracy and the associated customs had not stabilized.
	Democracies have engaged in covert conflict resulting in a change of regime on the losing side. The British- and American-supported ] coup d'etat in ] against ] and the ] U.S.-backed coup in ], led by ] are examples of such events, also excluded.

			===Claims===
	Five months after the start of the ], the United Kingdom reluctantly issued a formal ] on ] due to pressure from ]. However, the United Kingdom's only significant act of war happened prior to the declaration (a ] raid on German-run mining operations in ]), Finland spent the ] fighting a totalitarian opponent who had previously attacked the nation, the United Kingdom and Finland for almost the whole of WWII carefully avoided attacking one another, and the casualties were too few to be classified as a war statistically. There have been very few formal declarations of war since WWII and using this as the definition of war would mean that for example the US has fought no wars since WWII. The lavish material support the United Kingdom and the United States provided to Soviet Union raises the question if democracies can make war against other democracies through ].
			Democratic peace theorists make two possible connections between democracy and war:
			*Babst, Singer, Rummel and Doyle claimed that democracies, properly defined, have ''never'' made war on each other; such DPTs face the difficulty that Ted Gurr classes both ] and the ] as democracies in ], the year of the ].
			*Most more recent studies assert that two democracies are ''less likely'' to make war on each other than other pairs of states. Some studies make the somewhat stronger claim that the chance of war between two states is ] with their scores on Gurr's democracy index.

			While the following claims are not strictly part of the theory, they have been made by various democratic peace theorists and form an important part of the analysis of causes.
	===Rummel's time limit===
	Rummel's version of the DPT has a requirement that the democracies must be stable and therefore must be older than three years. This excludes the war between the ] and the ], the ]-] war between ] and the ], and the ]-] war between ] and ]. The ] is excluded if one considers the Ottoman Empire to have become democratic after the first election in November ] or when the constitution was amended so that the parliament could control the cabinet in April ]. The war started in October ], which would be before four years had passed. Critics instead argue that democracy occurred in July 1908 when a constitution was introduced. It is also doubtful if the opposing Christian states fulfill the democratic criteria since the Kings continued to have extensive powers in all of them. Studies using the Polity data set have required a score of least 7 out of 10, which excludes the French Second Republic (6), the Ottoman Empire (3), Croatia (3), and Yugoslavia (0) at the time of the wars.

			*The more democratic two nations are, the less the violence between them. (This may include violence short of full-scale war, or may be a claim that such wars as do occur between democracies are waged with restraint.)
	The time limit and other requirements like democratic institutions and elections on both sides also exclude ]s within democracies over legitimacy or secession, such as the American Civil War, the ] War, the ] and the ] which followed, and the ] civil wars in ], ], ] and ].
			*Democracies engage in the least amounts of foreign violence.
			*Democracies use less violence in their ''internal'' affairs. In particular, modern democracies do not murder their citizens.

			Democracies have done harm to each other in ways short of full-scale war. Depending on the theory involved, these may not be counterexamples:
	==Colonial and imperialistic wars==
	One criticism against a general peacefulness for democracies is that they were involved in more colonial and imperialistic wars than other states during the 1816-1945 period. On the other hand, this relation disappears if controlling for factors like power and number of colonies. Democracies have less of these wars than other states after 1945. This might be related to changes in the perception of non-European peoples, as embodied in the ] .

			*civil wars within a democracy over legitimacy or sucession;
	==Native peoples==
			*attacks by one democracy on anotherin such overwhelming force that there is no effective resistance,and thus few deaths in battle;
			*covert conflict resulting in a change of regime on the losing side;
			*attacks by an established democracy upon a newly declared one;
			*proxy wars, in which a democracy helps non-democratic opponents of another democracy.

			==Causes==
	Similar to 'Colonial War' is the problem of what do you call the systematic destruction of the aboriginal societies that occupied vast swaths of the earth before the 'liberal democracies' came and killed them in the name of 'civilization'. Many of these events were not called 'wars' but they were between democracies and hundreds of thousands of people died.
			"]," is a bedrock standard of ]. In order to bridge the gap from a statistical curiosity to a meaningful theory, the researcher must first identify a mechanism, and (ideally) make ] predictions based on that mechanism.

			There has been much research into possible mechanisms for a democratic peace. These do not, in general, depend on whether an absolute or statistical peace is being asserted. Many such explanations focus on the fact that the consent of the citizenry is necessary for a democracy to initiate and sustain a war. Even where ] allow the executive to act without legislative approval, public acceptance, at the least, is needed to avoid an electoral backlash.
	One of the most glaring examples is the Cherokee Removal of the 1830s. The Cherokees had originally a rather democratic form of government. This of course is challenged by racists who believe Native people's had no 'democratic ideals' because they had never read Rosseau, despite the fact of regular elections and so forth in many Native culture. But in the Cherokee case this criticism has a problem: after the early 1800s the Cherokee had adopted European elements into their government and had a written constitution.

			Kant made the straightforward point that, since an absolute prince can order war "without the least sacrifice of the pleasures of his table, the chase, his country houses, his court functions, and the like", he will be likely to do so for light or trivial causes that the citizenry would never find sufficient. This, however, would explain why democracies prefer peace with all states, not just with each other. The wars of democracies with non-democracies must therefore be explained by other motives, such as provocations from reckless non-democratic states, or a belief that the two systems cannot peacefully co-exist.
	However ], president of the United States, wanted to remove the Cherokees from their land. The Supreme Court of the United States under ] ordered the President to stop the removal, but the President ignored the order of the court. Under ] the US government forcibly marched the Cherokees and five other ] out of the Southeastern US into ] on something called ]. This resulted in the loss of thousands of innocent lives, a large portion of the Cherokee population, including old people and children, and deprived the Cherokees of their land. Technically this is not a 'war' but it was certainly a slaughter and it was between two 'modern, liberal' democracies.

			Other scholars suggest a theory of common ]: the citizens of democratic societies tend not to view the citizens of other democracies as enemies, and wars against other democracies are unlikely to get the necessary support. This resembles Kant's article of "hospitality", as do the economic arguments of Angell and Schumpeter.
	==Correlation is not causation==
	A statistical ] does not establish ]. Critics have thus argued that the absence of wars and the few MIDs may be explained by other factors in democratic states that are not related to democracy. Supporters of the DPT do not deny that other factors affect the risk of war but argue that many studies have controlled for such factors and that the DPT is still validated. Examples of factors controlled for are contiguity, power status, alliance ties, militarization, economic wealth and economic growth, power ratio, and political stability . Studies have also controlled for reverse causality from peace or war to democracy .

			A recent paper by Mousseau, Hegre and Oneal presents statistical evidence that the democratic peace is real, but that it only applies when there is substantial economic development (at least $1400 US ''per capita''). Moreover, the paper found that trade is also a significant force for peace, irrespective of the level of democracy. The paper goes on to note that the three factors of trade, development and democracy, are interrelated. This triad recalls the original Kantian theory, and Oneal has specifically acknowledged this in other works.
	===The Kantian peace theory===
	]
	], one intergovernmental organization]]
	Several studies find that more ] causing greater economic ] and membership in more ] reduce the risk of war. Democracy, interdependence, and intergovernmental organizations are positively related to each other but each has an independent pacifying effect. This is often called the Kantian peace theory since it is similar to Kant's earlier theory about a perpetual peace . However, other studies find an effect from more democracy but no effect from more trade .

			Rummel dismisses all of these as superficial. ] and ] propose that democracy involves a pervasive social mechanism (called a ''"social field"'') in which, "The primary mode of power is exchange, political system is democratic, and democratic government is but one of many groups and pyramids of power." In contrast, authoritarian systems involve a ''"social anti-field"'', " divides its members into those who command and those who must obey, thus creating a schism separating all members and dividing all issues, a latent conflict front along which violence can break out." Thus, the citizens of a democracy are habituated to compromise, conflict resolution, and to viewing unfavorable outcomes as temporary and/or tolerable.
	===Economic development===
	One study indicates that independently of trade, democracy is not a significant factor unless both of the democracies have a GDP/capita of at least 1400 USD. This level is quite low and 91% of all the democratic pairs passed this criteria during the 1885–1992 period and all in 1992. Still, higher economic development than this makes the effect of democracy stronger. Low economic development may hinder development of liberal institutions and values .

			Another paper . presents the decision to go to war as a ]: the best outcome for both sides is peace, but it is better to attack than be attacked. The prisoner's dilemma is not a problem if both sides can observe the deision-making of the other; which (they argue) is true for both sides if the decisions are being made democratically, and so publicly. The paper only does the ]; it does not discuss whether modern democracies do in fact reach "open covenants openly arrived at".
	===Geographic isolation===
	Critics have argued that few democracies mean that they are geographically isolated and thus unable to make war with one another. As described above, several of the studies finding evidence for the DPT have controlled for this. One study has demonstrated that democratic pairs of nations have not been more geographically separated than non-democratic pairs . Supporters also note that today more than 50% of all nations are democratic .

			==Statistical studies of DPTs==
	===The bloc peace theory===
			Many different kinds of statistical analyses have been used on democratic peace theories. A ] was employed to evolve its own peace theory: it found the three Kantian variables of democracy, economic interdependence and ]s the most important, but that distance, common alliance, and power ratio were also significant.
	] argues in ''Ballots and Bullets: The Elusive Democratic Peace'', that the structure of the international political system during the ] was responsible for creating the illusion of a democratic peace. At about the same time many of today's democracies came into existence, the Cold War divided much of the world into two systems of institutionalized alliances. (Many states belonged to neither: examples are Communist ] after 1961 and democratic ].) These critics ascribe the inter-democratic peace of the period to this structure of blocs: almost all the democracies of the Cold War were members of the Western bloc, and the members of that bloc abstained from attacking one another in a collective effort to contain Communism: which was perceived to be a far bigger threat than any intra-alliance conflict. Not only was the system of alliances produced by this common interest; also, once it had come into existence, the relations between two members of the bloc were not permitted to decline into full-scale war; the alliance provided their common allies with the interest and the leverage to prevent it.

			Democracies do sometimes initiate wars against authoritarian states. Some argue that democracies usually enter these wars because they are provoked by authoritarian states. Several papers show that democracies are slightly, but significantly less involved in wars in general than others states, and that they also initiate wars less frequently than non-democratic states .
	Considering the time before the Cold War, these critics point out that before the ] and the First World War, there was only a limited period during which ], Great Britain, and the United States were non-allied and democratic ]. Several disputes occurred between two of them. They were conducted as fiercely as many diplomatic conflicts involving a non-democratic state and war had some public support on both sides. Between the two World Wars, France and Britain were allies. The United States either acted as their ally, or did not act in international affairs at all. On the other hand, the external threat from Communist states did not exist or was weak and thus cannot or have difficulty explaining why democracies allied with each other in this period. There were also democratic nations beside these Great Powers. When there were conflicts between democracies, this did not cause wars.

			A recent theory is that democracies can be divided into "pacifist" and "militant". While both avoid attacking democracies, "militant" democracies have tendency to deep distrust and confrontational policies against dictatorships and may initiate wars against them. Most wars by democracies since 1950 have involved only four nations: the U.S., the U.K., Israel, and India .
	These critics admit that there have been wars between members of other alliances, although one study finds that 88% of the treaties made in the last two centuries have been kept. They argue that this line of criticism need not claim that alliances prevent ''all'' wars; just that the ] alliance, and the common interest it represented, caused enough peace that the rest may be the result of other causes or of chance.

			==Criticisms==
	On the other hand, that 12% of all formal treaties failed can be seen as very high. While not statistical evidence, DPT supporters point out that external threat did not prevent several wars between Communist nations: the ], the ], and the ]. There were also minor conflicts, not meeting the threshold of deaths, particularly the ] and the ].
			There are four logically distinguishable classes of criticism of any DPT:
			*That its creator was not '''accurate''' in applying his criteria to the historical record.
			*That the criteria are not '''appropriate''' in discussing the record.
			*That the peace theory does not actually '''mean''' very much. For example, that it applies to few states (very few before the twentieth century), or doesn't actually limit their behavior to each other very much.
			*That such peace as there has been between democracies is at least in part due to '''external causes'''.

			For example, almost all DPTs handle the ] by asserting that ] were not democracies because: the ] had the power to appoint his ministers, he and the General Staff made the decision for war, as did ] in ], and that many structural features of the ] made democratic institutions ineffective. ] raises very complex questions of how much power the ] had by 1914, and how much the ]s were answerable to the ] they had called.
	DPT supporters also point out that external threat did not prevent wars in the Western bloc between democracies and dictatorships. One example is the ] invasion of ] in ], at a time when Cyprus had British military bases and close ties to Turkey's NATO partner ]. Another is the ]. However, the US put pressure on the combatants to stop the Football War which fits the bloc peace theory. A third is the ] US invasion of the ]. The ] and the ] may also be wars within the Western bloc, because Iraq belonged to ], the US and the UK were also member, and the UK had nuclear weapons deployed on Cyprus for the defense of CENTO until 1975 . Israel received extensive aid during the Yom Kippur War from the US. Bloc peace theory supporters note that the Soviet-Iraqi Treaty of Friendship was signed in 1972. All of these wars had more than 1000 military casualties . The ] almost qualify (936 causalities).

			The first class of criticism argues either that Germany ''was'' a democracy (the ] was elected by universal suffrage, its votes of no confidence did cause governments to fall, and it did vote on whether to fund the war - which passed overwhelmingly), or at least that it was no less democratic than Britain (the 1911 elections enfranchised only 60% of the British male population, and most of the ] had no say in the decision at all). The second class prefers a border of 'democracy' that lies in the interval between both Germany and England, on the one end, and perfect democracy on the other; or between both of them and totalitarianism. (The DPT theorist Rummel has said that the word 'democracy' was not important to his argument; but his use of it has made his claim far more interesting.) The third class observes that any reasonable border which excludes Wilhelmine Germany also excludes almost all states before the Cold War. The fourth class explains the Cold War democratic peace as a special case.
	More importantly, many studies that show support for the DPT have controlled for alliances . Gowa and another study have argued that democracies had more MIDs than nondemocracies before WWI, but more recent studies show the opposite . There is no explanation for the low domestic violence in democracies or why relative military strength does not influence the outcome of crises between democracies .

			These tend to overlap, being in fact complementary criticisms, and many critics make more than one of them. It is particularly hard to tell the first two classes apart on 1914 Germany, since DPTs must reject it on qualitative, not numerical, grounds.
	DPT supporters also argue that there has been continued peace between democracies after the end of the Cold War. Critics disagree and even if true they note that the ] and NATO still exist and that they contain some of the democracies capable of maintaining a war. However, there are many democracies outside Europe . The threat from the Communist states which Gowa thought explained both the peace and the alliances has largely disappeared. Contrary to what could be expected from Gowa's theory, the fall of Communism and the increase in the number of democratic states were accompanied by a sudden and dramatic decline in interstate warfare .

	==~~See~~ ~~also~~==		===The Cold War peace===
			The chief external cause, cited (with many other criticisms) in Joanne Gowa's ''Ballots and Bullets: The Elusive Democratic Peace'', is that the structure of the international political system during the ] was responsible for creating the illusion of a democratic peace. At about the same time many of today's democracies came into existence, the ] divided much of the world into two systems of permanent institutionalized alliances. (Many states belonged to neither; chief among these was the ] after ].)
	*]

	*]
			These critics ascribe the inter-democratic peace of the period to this structure of blocs: almost all the democracies of the Cold War were members of the Western bloc, and the members of that bloc abstained from attacking one another in a collective effort to contain Communism: which was perceived to be a far bigger threat than any intra-alliance conflict.
	*]

	*]
			Not only was the system of alliances produced by this common interest; also, once it had come into existence, the relations between two members of the bloc were not permitted to decline into full-scale war; the alliance provided their common allies with the interest and the leverage to prevent it.
	*]

			There have been wars between members of other alliances, although one study finds that 88% of the treaties made in the last two centuries have been kept. This line of criticism need not claim that alliances prevent ''all'' wars; just that the ] alliance, and the common interest it represented, caused enough peace that the rest may be the result of other causes or of chance.

			===External causes===
			In addition to the external cause of the ], the democratic peace has been attributed to wealth, as above, and to geographic isolation. Some democratic peace theorists have controlled for these variables. Bremer (1992, 1993) controlled for contiguity, power status, alliance ties, militarization, economic development, and power ratios. Maoz & Russett (1992, 1993) and Russett (1993) controlled for contiguity, alliance ties, economic wealth and growth, political stability, and power ratios. They also studied the period from 1945 and 1986 and discounted all pairs that did not involve a major power or nations that were not geographically continuous. .

			===Before the Cold War===

			Before the ] and the First World War, there was a limited period during which France, Great Britain, and the United States were non-allied and democratic Great Powers. During this time, several disputes occurred between two of them. None led to war; but they were conducted as fiercely as many diplomatic conflicts involving a non-democratic state; and war was popular on both sides. Between the two World Wars, France and Britain were allies. The United States either acted as their ally, or did not act in international affairs at all.

			== References ==
			Most of the following are from Rummel's extensive :

			*Beck, Nathaniel, and Richard Tucker. Midwest Political Science Association: April 1998.
	== Further reading ==
			*
	*Brown, Michael E., Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller. ''Debating the Democratic Peace''. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996. ISBN 0262522136.
	*~~Doyle~~, Michael W. ~~''Ways~~ of ~~War~~ and ~~Peace~~''. ~~New~~ ~~York:~~ ~~W.W~~. ~~Norton~~, ~~1997.~~ ~~ISBN~~ ~~0393969479~~.		*Brown, Michael E., Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller. ''Debating the Democratic Peace''. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996.
			*Doyle, Michael W. ''Ways of War and Peace''. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997.
	*Gowa, Joanne. ''Ballots and Bullets: The Elusive Democratic Peace''. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. ISBN 0691070229.
			*Gowa, Joanne. ''Ballots and Bullets: The Elusive Democratic Peace''. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.
	*Huth, Paul K., et al. ''The Democratic Peace and Territorial Conflict in the Twentieth Century''. Cambridge University Press: 2003. ISBN 0521805082.		*Huth, Paul K., et al. ''The Democratic Peace and Territorial Conflict in the Twentieth Century''. Cambridge University Press: 2003. ISBN 0521805082.
			*Levy, Jack S. “Domestic Politics and War.” ''Journal of Interdisciplinary History'', Vol. 18, No. 4, (Spring, 1988), pp. 653-673.
	*Lipson, Charles. ''Reliable Partners: How Democracies Have Made a Separate Peace''. Princeton University Press: 2003. ISBN 0691113904.		*Lipson, Charles. ''Reliable Partners: How Democracies Have Made a Separate Peace''. Princeton University Press: 2003. ISBN 0691113904.
			*
			*Plourde, Shawn May, 2004
	*Ray, James Lee. ''Democracy and International Conflict: An Evaluation of the Democratic Peace Proposition''. University of South Carolina Press: 1998. ISBN 1570032416.		*Ray, James Lee. ''Democracy and International Conflict: An Evaluation of the Democratic Peace Proposition''. University of South Carolina Press: 1998. ISBN 1570032416.
			*Ray, James Lee. ''Annual Review of Political Science'' 1998:1, 27-46
	*Rummel, R.J. ''Power Kills: Democracy As a Method of Nonviolence''. Transaction Publishers: 2003. ISBN 0765805235.		*Rummel, R.J. ''Power Kills: Democracy As a Method of Nonviolence''. Transaction Publishers: 2003. ISBN 0765805235.
			*Rummel, R.J.
	*Russett, Bruce & Oneal, John R. ''Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations''. W. W. Norton & Company: 2001. ISBN 039397684X.
	*~~Weart~~, ~~Spencer R~~. ''~~Never~~ at ~~War: Why Democracies Will Not Fight One~~ ~~Another~~''. ~~Yale~~ University Press: ~~2000~~. ISBN ~~0300082983~~.		*Russett, Bruce. ''Grasping the Democratic Peace''. Princeton University Press: 1994. ISBN 0691001642.
			*Russett, Bruce and John R. O'Neal: ''Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations'' . New York: W. W. Norton, 2001.
			*Schwartz, Thomas, and Kiron Skinner. ''The Wall Street Journal''. January 7, 1999.

	==External links==		==External links==
	===Supportive===		===Supportive===
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	===Critical===		===Critical===
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Immanuel Kant was an early peace theorist, from the late 18th century.

A democratic peace theory, in political science, was originally a claim that democratic states - specifically, liberal democracies - never or almost never go to war with one another. The original democratic peace hypothesis referred to peace between democracies, the later pacifist democracy hypothesis to an inherently less warlike nature of democracies; some theories include both. The separate peace hypothesis implies that wars between unlike regimes (democracy and non-democracy) are more probable. The militant democracy hypothesis implies that democracies are inherently likely to go to war with non-democracies.

Despite the variations, all such theories are referred to as democratic peace theory, abbreviated DPT. Often, that term is used to refer to the original hypothesis only, disregarding later developments in the theory. Such theories have also been referred to as the "liberal peace" or the "Kantian peace" in honor of Immanuel Kant, who proposed an early version of the theory.

History of the theories

Main article: Perpetual peace

The idea that democracy is a source of world peace came relatively late in political theory, one contributing factor being that democracies were very rare before the late nineteenth century. No ancient author seems to have thought so. Early authors referred to republics rather than democracies, since the word democracy had acquired a bad name until early modern times. Nicolo Machiavelli believed that republics were by nature excellent war-makers and empire-builders, citing Rome as the prime example. It was Immanuel Kant who first foreshadowed the theory in his essay "Perpetual Peace" written in 1795 , although he held that peace would, in addition to representative government, need a league of nations, and "hospitality": freedom of movement and trade, like the Schengen Treaty.

The peacefulness of responsible governments was the basis for the American policy of George Canning and the foreign policy of Palmerston. It was also represented in the liberal internationalism of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and of H.G. Wells, who argued in August 1914 that popular governments would not go to war with each other, and therefore that the First World War could be the War that will End War.

Development of the modern theory

In 1964, Dean Babst, then a Wisconsin criminologist, published a paper asserting that no two democracies had ever been at war with each other, and substantially republished it in an industrial trade journal in 1972. This was also claimed at greater length in 1979 by R.J. Rummel, professor of Political Science at the University of Hawaii, and much of this research is available on his web-site.

Michael Doyle was the first democratic peace theorist to observe the similarity to Kant, and published a largely accurate summary of Kant's essay. He, working with Bruce Russett, distinguished between the strong (or monadic) form of the theory (that democracies tend to be peaceful in general) and the weak or dyadic form (that they tend to be peaceful with each other). He also studied the even weaker proposition that liberal regimes have less purely internal conflict.

Political affinities

Monadic theories tend to be akin to political philosophy, and emphasise the internally peaceful nature of democracies. More general theories developed from the monadic version claim that democracies are in general less apt to engage in systematic violence; and that, therefore, violence within or between democracies is also very rare. Dyadic theories, usually statistical analyses of historical data sets, compare wars between democracies, on one hand, with wars between democracies and non-democracies and wars between non-democracies, on the other; and argue that there are special reasons why wars between democracies do not occur.

Democratic peace theories are highly controversial, and the findings of individual studies are often vigorously disputed. Most of that controversy has arisen from the misuse of the theory, especially dyadic versions, to suggest that democracies are objectively better than non-democracies. This is a questionable claim: Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy never went to war with each other, but that is not an argument for a world of fascist dictatorships.

Nevertheless, democratic peace theories are, in practice, used as an argument for western cultural superiority, and for democratisation, and for military intervention. Margaret Thatcher quoted it to justify the Falklands War, and later to urge democratisation. United States presidents of both main parties have rhetorically based their policies (in Bosnia and Iraq) on the democratic peace...

If we can create a great area of democracy stretching from the west coast of the United States ... to the Far East, that would give us the best guarantee of all for security - because democracies don't go to war with one another. Margaret Thatcher, then British Prime Minister, in 1990.

Ultimately, the best strategy to ensure our security and to build a durable peace is to support the advance of democracy elsewhere. Democracies don't attack each other. William Clinton's 1994 State of the Union Address, Jan 25, 1994

And the reason why I'm so strong on democracy is democracies don't go to war with each other. And the reason why is the people of most societies don't like war, and they understand what war means.... I've got great faith in democracies to promote peace. And that's why I'm such a strong believer that the way forward in the Middle East, the broader Middle East, is to promote democracy. George W. Bush at the White House Press Conference, 12 November 2004.

For these reasons, democratic peace theory was until recently seen as a pro-western and pro-democracy theory, reflecting historicist ideas about the inevitable global triumph of western values. However, disappointment about the results of some post-Soviet democratisations, increasing scepticism about forced democratisation, and opposition to the occupation of Iraq have eroded support for the assumption of inherent superiority of democracy. More recent dyadic theories also seek theoretical explanations for wars by democracies against non-democracies, including the 'militant democracy' thesis, which reverses the original expectations that democracies are more peaceful than non-democracies.

Democratic peace theories

A democratic peace theory has to define what it means by "democracy" and what it means by "peace" (or, more often, "war"), and what it claims as the link between the two.

Democracy

Democratic peace theorists have used different terms for the class of states they consider peaceable; Babst called them elective, Rummell liberal democracies, Doyle liberal regimes. In general, these require not only that the government and legislature be chosen by free and genuinely contested elections, but more besides

There are several lists of democracies. Ted Gurr drew up a list of government types by country and year, the Polity Data Set. This is a ranking on two ten-point scales, one for the degree of democracy, one for the degree of autocracy; but he calls the countries which score above 6 on the first scale simply the democracies; and those which score above 5 on the second, the autocracies. Gurr calls States which do neither anocracies; no state has yet done both. Many theorists simply use the binary version of Gurr's list: democracy/no democracy.

Dean Babst made his own decisions on what was a democracy. He required also a secret ballot, asserting (wrongly) that this existed in the United States back to 1789 and in Britain back to the 1830's. More recent theorists have set a numerical limit on suffrage, say, that half or two-thirds of the male population be able to vote.

War

Many theorists have used the convenient list at the Correlates of War Project at the University of Michigan, which compiled the wars from 1816 to 1991 with at least a thousand battlefield casualties. This data is particularly convenient for statistical analysis, and the large-scale statistical studies cited below have generally used this definition.

Babst excluded wars in which one democracy was not independent at the start of the war, on the grounds that the war was not their decision; it was on this basis, unfortunately, that he attempted to exclude the Boer War. Rummel extended this to exclude wars in which one state had not yet been a democracy for three years, on the ground that democracy and the associated customs had not stabilized.

Claims

Democratic peace theorists make two possible connections between democracy and war:

Babst, Singer, Rummel and Doyle claimed that democracies, properly defined, have never made war on each other; such DPTs face the difficulty that Ted Gurr classes both Spain and the United States as democracies in 1898, the year of the Spanish-American War.
Most more recent studies assert that two democracies are less likely to make war on each other than other pairs of states. Some studies make the somewhat stronger claim that the chance of war between two states is correlated with their scores on Gurr's democracy index.

While the following claims are not strictly part of the theory, they have been made by various democratic peace theorists and form an important part of the analysis of causes.

The more democratic two nations are, the less the violence between them. (This may include violence short of full-scale war, or may be a claim that such wars as do occur between democracies are waged with restraint.)
Democracies engage in the least amounts of foreign violence.
Democracies use less violence in their internal affairs. In particular, modern democracies do not murder their citizens.

Democracies have done harm to each other in ways short of full-scale war. Depending on the theory involved, these may not be counterexamples:

civil wars within a democracy over legitimacy or sucession;
attacks by one democracy on anotherin such overwhelming force that there is no effective resistance,and thus few deaths in battle;
covert conflict resulting in a change of regime on the losing side;
attacks by an established democracy upon a newly declared one;
proxy wars, in which a democracy helps non-democratic opponents of another democracy.

Causes

"Correlation does not prove causation," is a bedrock standard of statistical analysis. In order to bridge the gap from a statistical curiosity to a meaningful theory, the researcher must first identify a mechanism, and (ideally) make falsifiable predictions based on that mechanism.

There has been much research into possible mechanisms for a democratic peace. These do not, in general, depend on whether an absolute or statistical peace is being asserted. Many such explanations focus on the fact that the consent of the citizenry is necessary for a democracy to initiate and sustain a war. Even where emergency powers allow the executive to act without legislative approval, public acceptance, at the least, is needed to avoid an electoral backlash.

Kant made the straightforward point that, since an absolute prince can order war "without the least sacrifice of the pleasures of his table, the chase, his country houses, his court functions, and the like", he will be likely to do so for light or trivial causes that the citizenry would never find sufficient. This, however, would explain why democracies prefer peace with all states, not just with each other. The wars of democracies with non-democracies must therefore be explained by other motives, such as provocations from reckless non-democratic states, or a belief that the two systems cannot peacefully co-exist.

Other scholars suggest a theory of common culture: the citizens of democratic societies tend not to view the citizens of other democracies as enemies, and wars against other democracies are unlikely to get the necessary support. This resembles Kant's article of "hospitality", as do the economic arguments of Angell and Schumpeter.

A recent paper by Mousseau, Hegre and Oneal presents statistical evidence that the democratic peace is real, but that it only applies when there is substantial economic development (at least $1400 US per capita). Moreover, the paper found that trade is also a significant force for peace, irrespective of the level of democracy. The paper goes on to note that the three factors of trade, development and democracy, are interrelated. This triad recalls the original Kantian theory, and Oneal has specifically acknowledged this in other works.

Rummel dismisses all of these as superficial. Kurt Lewin and Andrew Ushenko propose that democracy involves a pervasive social mechanism (called a "social field") in which, "The primary mode of power is exchange, political system is democratic, and democratic government is but one of many groups and pyramids of power." In contrast, authoritarian systems involve a "social anti-field", " divides its members into those who command and those who must obey, thus creating a schism separating all members and dividing all issues, a latent conflict front along which violence can break out." Thus, the citizens of a democracy are habituated to compromise, conflict resolution, and to viewing unfavorable outcomes as temporary and/or tolerable.

Another paper . presents the decision to go to war as a prisoner's dilemma: the best outcome for both sides is peace, but it is better to attack than be attacked. The prisoner's dilemma is not a problem if both sides can observe the deision-making of the other; which (they argue) is true for both sides if the decisions are being made democratically, and so publicly. The paper only does the game theory; it does not discuss whether modern democracies do in fact reach "open covenants openly arrived at".

Statistical studies of DPTs

Many different kinds of statistical analyses have been used on democratic peace theories. A neural net was employed to evolve its own peace theory: it found the three Kantian variables of democracy, economic interdependence and international organizations the most important, but that distance, common alliance, and power ratio were also significant.

Democracies do sometimes initiate wars against authoritarian states. Some argue that democracies usually enter these wars because they are provoked by authoritarian states. Several papers show that democracies are slightly, but significantly less involved in wars in general than others states, and that they also initiate wars less frequently than non-democratic states .

A recent theory is that democracies can be divided into "pacifist" and "militant". While both avoid attacking democracies, "militant" democracies have tendency to deep distrust and confrontational policies against dictatorships and may initiate wars against them. Most wars by democracies since 1950 have involved only four nations: the U.S., the U.K., Israel, and India .

Criticisms

There are four logically distinguishable classes of criticism of any DPT:

That its creator was not accurate in applying his criteria to the historical record.
That the criteria are not appropriate in discussing the record.
That the peace theory does not actually mean very much. For example, that it applies to few states (very few before the twentieth century), or doesn't actually limit their behavior to each other very much.
That such peace as there has been between democracies is at least in part due to external causes.

For example, almost all DPTs handle the First World War by asserting that Central Powers were not democracies because: the Kaiser had the power to appoint his ministers, he and the General Staff made the decision for war, as did Franz Josef in Austria-Hungary, and that many structural features of the Reich made democratic institutions ineffective. Ottoman Turkey raises very complex questions of how much power the Sultan had by 1914, and how much the Young Turks were answerable to the parliament they had called.

The first class of criticism argues either that Germany was a democracy (the Reichstag was elected by universal suffrage, its votes of no confidence did cause governments to fall, and it did vote on whether to fund the war - which passed overwhelmingly), or at least that it was no less democratic than Britain (the 1911 elections enfranchised only 60% of the British male population, and most of the British Empire had no say in the decision at all). The second class prefers a border of 'democracy' that lies in the interval between both Germany and England, on the one end, and perfect democracy on the other; or between both of them and totalitarianism. (The DPT theorist Rummel has said that the word 'democracy' was not important to his argument; but his use of it has made his claim far more interesting.) The third class observes that any reasonable border which excludes Wilhelmine Germany also excludes almost all states before the Cold War. The fourth class explains the Cold War democratic peace as a special case.

These tend to overlap, being in fact complementary criticisms, and many critics make more than one of them. It is particularly hard to tell the first two classes apart on 1914 Germany, since DPTs must reject it on qualitative, not numerical, grounds.

The Cold War peace

The chief external cause, cited (with many other criticisms) in Joanne Gowa's Ballots and Bullets: The Elusive Democratic Peace, is that the structure of the international political system during the Cold War was responsible for creating the illusion of a democratic peace. At about the same time many of today's democracies came into existence, the Cold War divided much of the world into two systems of permanent institutionalized alliances. (Many states belonged to neither; chief among these was the People's Republic of China after 1961.)

These critics ascribe the inter-democratic peace of the period to this structure of blocs: almost all the democracies of the Cold War were members of the Western bloc, and the members of that bloc abstained from attacking one another in a collective effort to contain Communism: which was perceived to be a far bigger threat than any intra-alliance conflict.

Not only was the system of alliances produced by this common interest; also, once it had come into existence, the relations between two members of the bloc were not permitted to decline into full-scale war; the alliance provided their common allies with the interest and the leverage to prevent it.

There have been wars between members of other alliances, although one study finds that 88% of the treaties made in the last two centuries have been kept. This line of criticism need not claim that alliances prevent all wars; just that the NATO alliance, and the common interest it represented, caused enough peace that the rest may be the result of other causes or of chance.

External causes

In addition to the external cause of the Cold War, the democratic peace has been attributed to wealth, as above, and to geographic isolation. Some democratic peace theorists have controlled for these variables. Bremer (1992, 1993) controlled for contiguity, power status, alliance ties, militarization, economic development, and power ratios. Maoz & Russett (1992, 1993) and Russett (1993) controlled for contiguity, alliance ties, economic wealth and growth, political stability, and power ratios. They also studied the period from 1945 and 1986 and discounted all pairs that did not involve a major power or nations that were not geographically continuous. .

Before the Cold War

Before the Entente Cordiale and the First World War, there was a limited period during which France, Great Britain, and the United States were non-allied and democratic Great Powers. During this time, several disputes occurred between two of them. None led to war; but they were conducted as fiercely as many diplomatic conflicts involving a non-democratic state; and war was popular on both sides. Between the two World Wars, France and Britain were allies. The United States either acted as their ally, or did not act in international affairs at all.

References

Most of the following are from Rummel's extensive bibliography:

Beck, Nathaniel, and Richard Tucker. Democracy and Peace: General Law or Limited Phenomenon? Midwest Political Science Association: April 1998.
Correlates of War Project
Brown, Michael E., Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller. Debating the Democratic Peace. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996.
Doyle, Michael W. Ways of War and Peace. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997.
Gowa, Joanne. Ballots and Bullets: The Elusive Democratic Peace. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.
Huth, Paul K., et al. The Democratic Peace and Territorial Conflict in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge University Press: 2003. ISBN 0521805082.
Levy, Jack S. “Domestic Politics and War.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 18, No. 4, (Spring, 1988), pp. 653-673.
Lipson, Charles. Reliable Partners: How Democracies Have Made a Separate Peace. Princeton University Press: 2003. ISBN 0691113904.
Polity IV Project: Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800-2002
Plourde, Shawn Democide, Democracy and the Man from Hawaii May, 2004
Ray, James Lee. Democracy and International Conflict: An Evaluation of the Democratic Peace Proposition. University of South Carolina Press: 1998. ISBN 1570032416.
Ray, James Lee. Does Democracy Cause Peace? Annual Review of Political Science 1998:1, 27-46
Rummel, R.J. Power Kills: Democracy As a Method of Nonviolence. Transaction Publishers: 2003. ISBN 0765805235.
Rummel, R.J. The Democratic Peace
Russett, Bruce. Grasping the Democratic Peace. Princeton University Press: 1994. ISBN 0691001642.
Russett, Bruce and John R. O'Neal: Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations . New York: W. W. Norton, 2001.
Schwartz, Thomas, and Kiron Skinner. The Myth of Democratic Pacifism. The Wall Street Journal. January 7, 1999.