“Democracies don’t attack each other” declared President Clinton in his 1994 State of the Union address. This tenet has been variably described as “the closest thing we have to an empirical law in the study of international relations” and dismissed as “a myth.” Nonetheless, it is a feature of the area of international relations research that in the last twenty years the democratic peace thesis has emerged to challenge the accepted view of real-world events as dictated by the broadly accepted paradigm of the realist approach. What is even more important about the idea that democracies posses innate characteristics that preclude conflict between them (simply as a result of being democracies) are the policy implications that this suggests – the spread of democracy can instantly be recognised as the quickest solution to preventing international conflict once one accepts the democratic peace thesis. It is for this reason that Clinton has made democratization the “third pillar” of his foreign policy. Yet the danger may be that such a simple postulate really is “too good to be true,” and consequently a close examination is required to determine if democratic peace theory offers a credible alternative to realism that can be practised in the post-Cold War era, or if it is utopian wishful-thinking.
The notion of an absence of conflict between democracies (in the modern sense of the word) is not new – Kant wrote in 1795 of his belief in the emergence of a “perpetual peace” between liberal republics in the future. Modern democratic peace theory attempts to build on this base, but in doing so encounters several conceptual and methodological difficulties as are highlighted by Chan. Firstly, Kant was referring not specifically to democracies as we would understand them, but republics instead, meaning polities where market economies were present, the citizens had legal equality with one another, and there existed representative and separated government. In practice, all democracies as exist today are in fact republics, but it is not necessarily the case that modern democracies are liberal as Kant’s perception of a republic would have entailed. For example, Britain before the 1832 Reform Act was liberal, but not a democracy, and during the Civil War in the United States, the Confederacy was democratic, but not liberal. A related difficulty is what we understand in our definition of a “democratic” regime. Proponents of democratic peace theory have often been accused by their detractors of modifying their interpretation of terms such as this (as well as what actually constitutes a war or even peace, inasmuch as peace may not be simply the absence of war) to suit their data on historical conflicts to supporting their theory. In response, democratic peace theorists have extended their propositions to phenomena such as foreign intervention, dispute mediation, civil strife, covert subversion, and alliance membership in attempts to show the widespread utility and applicability of their theories. The danger is that in doing so, there is more likelihood that valid counterarguments can be found that will damage democratic peace theory in a manner that would destroy it as described below.
Regardless of these distractions, the rationale behind why democracies should be inherently more peace-loving than non-democracies can be divided into three areas, starting off with the ideas of Kant, who identified public opinion, the spirit of commerce, and the existence of a pacific union as restraints on the outbreak of war between democracies. The nature of democratic institutions and public control over their representatives is a major factor in averting war, as citizens of one liberal democracy respect the integrity of other liberal democratic states and forego violence and coercion in favour of tolerance and freedom. The more people that are free, the better all are; furthermore, as liberalism is cosmopolitan, it posits that all citizens, and not just those of one’s own state, should be free. By allowing free debate on issues of foreign policy, citizens can evaluate alternative strategies and articulate these preferences to their elected representatives, either directly or indirectly through periodic elections. The fact that war costs all citizens “blood and treasure” (as Owen puts it) dictates that conversion to acceptance of the proposed war will be necessary by those who believe in it, and this will not be an easy task; thus there will be a tendency to avoid conflict and achieve a peaceful resolution of crises. Liberal ideas thus work through ideology and institutions to constrain the actions of government. Secondly, the development of economic links between nations will lead both to realise that they have much to lost from conflict, and will reinforce the desire to avoid war. Finally, the emergence of a pacific union will reinforce the idea that democracies share common goals and interests, and further mitigate the desire for armed conflict between two countries with similar regimes.
These ideals have been challenged by realists, who argue that public opinion is too reactionary to be a driving force in restraining the policies of politicians, and further that its efficiency depends on the structure of institutions in translating the citizens’ policy preferences to the decision-makers; this ability varies between countries to such an extent that in some countries it fails to have any impact on the political elites. Secondly, it is argued that there is a lack of distinction between cause and effect in arguing that the idea of commerce restrains war – it could just as easily be the case that a lack of war leads to commerce, rather than vice-versa. Given the growing concerns with lack of accountability in current government structures in developed countries, these arguments weaken the case of why democratic peace emerges. Nonetheless, the other arguments that democratic peace theorists advance are compelling, these being normative rather than structural in origin, and argue that democracies are satiated powers who wish to maintain the status quo (inasmuch as that does not present a challenge from an illiberal power to the security of the democracies). Secondly, the rationalist, calculating approach of politicians as to the penalties of losing a war, especially given the transparency of democratic politics to domestic citizens, as well as foreign policymakers, will foster a sense of futility towards initiating conflicts that cannot be won without exacting a high cost.
The question of whether there indeed exists meaningful peace between democracies has lent itself to three interpretations: firstly, that democracies are inherently more peaceful than non-democracies; secondly, that this is only true of relations between different democracies; and thirdly that democracies are in fact no more peaceful than non-democracies. It is thus an endeavour of proponents of democratic peace theory to demonstrate that there are no historical cases where two democracies have gone to war with one another, for to admit of just one instance of where this is the case would be sufficient to disconfirm totally their hypothesis. Opponents would on the other hand not only seek to demonstrate that this has been the case, but further to adopt a second line of attack by arguing that if there has existed peace between democracies, this is a mere historical contingency. The consensus that has emerged among supporters of democratic peace theory is that although democracies are not generally less warlike than non-democracies, they rarely (if ever) fight one another. Owen has examined several instances where democracies have come close to war over disputes, but have restrained themselves and their actions so as to avoid general conflict; he believes that the liberal ideals that were present in these cases produced an aversion to conflict through the causal process as was explained above. Layne also examines some of the same crises, and adopts a different interpretation as to why they did not proliferate into full-scale wars, arguing instead that traditional realist security and national interest calculations can explain the outcomes. However, this critique fails to take into account the subtleties of perception as explained by Owen, whereby wars may arise between democracies because one fails to recognise the other as such. Layne’s assertion that “[I]f democratic public opinion really had the effect ascribed to it, democracies would be peaceful in their relations with all states, whether democratic or not” reveals this. It is surely the case that public opinion with regard to different countries can differ, and that being peace-loving does not have to be an absolute – to maintain this outlook in the face of the rise of an illiberal aggressor would be to invite disaster for the country in question. Thus this can further be used to explain – along with traditional balance-of-power theory why liberal democracies appear to act inconsistently with liberal ideas in regard to their dealings with illiberal countries. Layne’s critique fails to appreciate this important part of the democratic peace camp’s argument, and thus fails to achieve a significant victory. Indeed, it is this assumption of mutual incompatibility between liberalism and realism that is apparent in the realist responses to democratic peace theory – for as has been pointed out above, foreign policy towards different countries can be dictated be the two different approaches simultaneously. Secondly, to address the issue that the lack of conflict could merely be coincidence as at any particular moment, the probability of two named states being at war with one another is remote, new research has been conducted to show that the standard systemic realist variables that would account for lack of conflict – such as geographical distance, alliances against common enemies, and a prudent desire to avoid unnecessary wars – have been controlled for, and thus show that the absence of conflict between democracies is therefore statistically significant.
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