Editing Democratic peace theory (section)

==Explanations==
These theories have traditionally been categorized into two groups: explanations that focus on democratic norms and explanations that focus on democratic political structures.{{sfn|Gelpi|Griesdorf|2001}}{{sfn|Braumoeller|1997}} They usually are meant to be explanations for little violence between democracies, not for a low level of internal violence in democracies.

Several of these mechanisms may also apply to countries of similar systems. The book ''[[Never at War]]'' finds evidence that the oligarchic republics common in ancient Greece and medieval and early modern Europe hardly ever made war on one another. One example is the [[Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth]], in which the [[Sejm of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth|Sejm]] resisted and vetoed most royal proposals for war, like those of [[Władysław IV Vasa]].{{sfn|Frost|2000|pp=9–11, 114, 181, 323}}

A study by [[V-Dem Institute]] found both [[Separation of powers|interbranch constraint]] on the executive and [[civil society]] activism as the mechanism for democratic peace but found accountability provided directly by elections not as crucial.<ref>[https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3144969 Hegre, Håvard, Michael Bernhard, and Jan Teorell. "Reassessing the Democratic Peace: A Novel Test Based on the Varieties of Democracy Data." V-Dem Working Paper 64 (2018).]</ref>

===Democratic norms===
One example from the first group is that liberal democratic culture may make the leaders accustomed to negotiation and compromise. Policy makers who have built their careers within a political culture of non-violent accommodations with domestic rivals, unlike autocrats who typically hold power through the threat of coercion, will be inclined toward non-violent methods abroad. {{sfn|Weart|1998}}{{sfn|Müller|Wolff|2004}} Another that a belief in human rights may make people in democracies reluctant to go to war, especially against other democracies. The decline in colonialism, also by democracies, may be related to a change in perception of non-European peoples and their rights.{{sfn|Ravlo|Gleditsch|2000}}

Bruce Russett also argues that the democratic culture affects the way leaders resolve conflicts. In addition, he holds that a social norm emerged toward the end of the nineteenth century; that democracies should not fight each other, which strengthened when the democratic culture and the degree of democracy increased, for example by widening the franchise. Increasing democratic stability allowed partners in foreign affairs to perceive a nation as reliably democratic. The alliances between democracies during the two World Wars and the Cold War also strengthened the norms. He sees less effective traces of this norm in Greek antiquity.{{sfn|Russett|1993|pp=5–11, 35, 59–62, 73–4}}

[[Hans Köchler]] relates the question of transnational democracy to empowering the individual citizen by involving him, through procedures of [[direct democracy]], in a country's international affairs, and he calls for the restructuring of the United Nations Organization according to democratic norms. He refers in particular to the Swiss practice of [[participatory democracy]].{{sfn|Köchler|1995}}

Mousseau argues that it is market-oriented development that creates the norms and values that explain both democracy and the peace. In less developed countries individuals often depend on social networks that impose conformity to in-group norms and beliefs, and loyalty to group leaders. When jobs are plentiful on the market, in contrast, as in market-oriented developed countries, individuals depend on a strong state that enforces contracts equally. Cognitive routines emerge of abiding by state law rather than group leaders, and, as in contracts, tolerating differences among individuals. Voters in marketplace democracies thus accept only impartial ‘liberal’ governments, and constrain leaders to pursue their interests in securing equal access to global markets and in resisting those who distort such access with force. Marketplace democracies thus share common foreign policy interests in the supremacy—and predictability—of international law over brute power politics, and equal and open global trade over closed trade and imperial preferences. When disputes do originate between marketplace democracies, they are less likely than others to escalate to violence because both states, even the stronger one, perceive greater long-term interests in the supremacy of law over power politics.{{sfn|Mousseau|2000}}{{sfn|Mousseau|2005}}

Braumoeller argues that liberal norms of conflict resolution vary because liberalism takes many forms. By examining survey results from the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union, the author demonstrates that liberalism in that region bears a stronger resemblance to 19th-century liberal nationalism than to the sort of universalist, Wilsonian liberalism described by democratic peace theorists, and that, as a result, liberals in the region are ''more'', not less, aggressive than non-liberals.{{sfn|Braumoeller|1997}}

A 2013 study by [[Jessica L.P. Weeks|Jessica Weeks]] and Michael Tomz found through survey experiments that the public was less supportive of war in cases involving fellow democracies.{{sfn|Tomz|Weeks|2013}}

===Democratic political structures===
The case for institutional constraints goes back to [[Immanuel Kant]], who wrote:{{sfn|Kant|1795}}
{{blockquote|[I]f the consent of the citizens is required in order to decide that war should be declared (and in this constitution it cannot but be the case), 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. Among the latter would be: having to fight, having to pay the costs of war from their own resources, having painfully to repair the devastation war leaves behind, and, to fill up the measure of evils, load themselves with a heavy national debt that would embitter peace itself and that can never be liquidated on account of constant wars in the future.}}

Democracy thus gives influence to those most likely to be killed or wounded in wars, and their relatives and friends (and to those who pay the bulk of the war taxes.){{sfn|Russett|1993|p=30}} This monadic theory must, however, explain why democracies do attack non-democratic states. One explanation is that these democracies were threatened or otherwise were provoked by the non-democratic states. Doyle argued that the absence of a monadic peace is only to be expected: the same ideologies that cause liberal states to be at peace with each other inspire idealistic wars with the illiberal, whether to defend oppressed foreign minorities or avenge countrymen settled abroad.{{sfn|Doyle|1997|p=272}} Doyle also notes liberal states do conduct covert operations against each other; the covert nature of the operation, however, prevents the publicity otherwise characteristic of a free state from applying to the question.{{sfn|Doyle|1997|p=292}}

[[Charles Lipson]] argues that four factors common in democracies give them a "contracting advantage" that leads to a dyadic democratic peace: (1) Greater transparency, (2) Greater continuity, (3) Electoral incentives for leaders to keep promises, and (4) Constitutional governance.{{sfn|Lipson|2003}}

Studies show that democratic states are more likely than autocratic states to win the wars that they start. 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.{{sfn|Ray|1998}}

As described by Gelpi and Griesdorf, several studies have argued that liberal leaders face institutionalized constraints that impede their capacity to mobilize the state's resources for war without the consent of a broad spectrum of interests.{{sfn|Gelpi|Griesdorf|2001}} Survey results that compare the attitudes of citizens and elites in the Soviet successor states are consistent with this argument.{{sfn|Braumoeller|1997}} Moreover, these constraints are readily apparent to other states and cannot be manipulated by leaders. Thus, democracies send credible signals to other states of an aversion to using force. These signals allow democratic states to avoid conflicts with one another, but they may attract aggression from non-democratic states. Democracies may be pressured to respond to such aggression—perhaps even preemptively—through the use of force. Also as described by Gelpi and Griesdorf, studies have argued that when democratic leaders do choose to escalate international crises, their threats are taken as highly credible, since there must be a relatively large public opinion for these actions. In disputes between liberal states, the credibility of their bargaining signals allows them to negotiate a peaceful settlement before mobilization.{{sfn|Gelpi|Griesdorf|2001}} A 2017 study by Jeff Carter found evidence that democratic states are slower to mobilize for war.{{sfn|Carter|2017}}

An explanation based on [[game theory]] similar to the last two above 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 non-democratic 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 non-democracy.{{sfn|Levy|Razin|2004}}

The risk factors for certain types of state have, however, changed since Kant's time. In the quote above, Kant points to the lack of popular support for war – first that the populace will directly or indirectly suffer in the event of war – as a reason why republics will not tend to go to war. The number of American troops killed or maimed versus the number of Iraqi soldiers and civilians maimed and killed in the American-Iraqi conflict is indicative. This may explain the relatively great willingness of democratic states to attack weak opponents: the Iraq war was, initially at least, highly popular in the United States. The case of the [[Vietnam War]] might, nonetheless, indicate a tipping point where publics may no longer accept continuing attrition of their soldiers (even while remaining relatively indifferent to the much higher loss of life on the part of the populations attacked).

Coleman uses economic cost-benefit analysis to reach conclusions similar to Kant's. Coleman examines the polar cases of autocracy and liberal democracy. In both cases, the costs of war are assumed to be borne by the people. In autocracy, the autocrat receives the entire benefits of war, while in a liberal democracy the benefits are dispersed among the people. Since the net benefit to an autocrat exceeds the net benefit to a citizen of a liberal democracy, the autocrat is more likely to go to war. The disparity of benefits and costs can be so high that an autocrat can launch a welfare-destroying war when his net benefit exceeds the total cost of war. Contrarily, the net benefit of the same war to an individual in a liberal democracy can be negative so that he would not choose to go to war. This disincentive to war is increased between liberal democracies through their establishment of linkages, political and economic, that further raise the costs of war between them. Therefore, liberal democracies are less likely to go war, especially against each other. Coleman further distinguishes between offensive and defensive wars and finds that liberal democracies are less likely to fight defensive wars that may have already begun due to excessive discounting of future costs.{{sfn|Coleman|2002}}

Brad LeVeck and Neil Narang argue that democratic states are less likely to produce decision-making errors in crises due to a larger and more diverse set of actors who are involved in the foreign policy decision-making process.{{sfn|LeVeck|Narang|2017}}

Using [[selectorate theory]], Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, James D. Morrow, Randolph M. Siverson and Alastair Smith argue that the democratic peace stems in part from the fact that democratic leaders sustain their power through large winning coalitions, which means that democratic leaders devote more resources to war, have an advantage in war, and choose wars that they are highly likely to win. These leads democratic states to avoid one another, but war with weak non-democratic states.{{sfn|de Mesquita|Morrow|Siverson|Smith|1999}}

===Audience costs===
A prominent rational choice argument for the democratic peace is that democracies carry greater audience costs than authoritarian states, which makes them better at signaling their intentions in interstate disputes.{{sfn|Fearon|1994}}{{sfn|Tomz|2007|loc="The seminal article is Fearon 1994."}} Arguments regarding the credibility of democratic states in disputes has been subject to debate among international relations scholars. Two studies from 2001, using the [[Militarized interstate dispute|MID]] and ICB datasets, provided empirical support for the notion that democracies were more likely to issue effective threats.{{sfn|Schultz|2001}}{{sfn|Gelpi|Griesdorf|2001}} However, a 2012 study by Alexander B. Downes and Todd S. Sechser found that existing datasets were not suitable to draw any conclusions as to whether democratic states issued more effective threats.{{sfn|Downes|Sechser|2012}} They constructed their own dataset specifically for interstate military threats and outcomes, which found no relationship between regime type and effective threats.{{sfn|Downes|Sechser|2012}} A 2017 study which recoded flaws in the MID dataset ultimately conclude, "that there are no regime-based differences in dispute reciprocation, and prior findings may be based largely on poorly coded data."{{sfn|Downes|Sechser|2012}} Other scholars have disputed the democratic credibility argument, questioning its causal logic and empirical validity.{{sfn|Snyder|Borghard|2011}} Research by [[Jessica L.P. Weeks|Jessica Weeks]] argued that some authoritarian regime types have similar audience costs as in democratic states.{{sfn|Weeks|2008}}{{sfn|Weeks|2014}}

A 2021 study found that Americans perceived democracies to be more likely to back down in crises, which contradicts the expectations of the audience costs literature.{{sfn|Kertzer|Renshon|Yarhi-Milo|2021}}

===Democracy differences===
One general criticism motivating research of different explanations is that actually the theory cannot claim that "democracy causes peace", because the evidence for democracies being, in general, more peaceful is very slight or nonexistent; it only can support the claim that "''joint'' democracy causes peace". According to Rosato, this casts doubts on whether democracy is actually the cause because, if so, a monadic effect would be expected.{{sfn|Rosato|2003}}

Perhaps the simplest explanation to such perceived anomaly (but not the one the Realist Rosato prefers, see the section on Realist explanations below) is that democracies are not peaceful to each other because they are democratic, but rather because they are similar in democratic scores. This line of thought started with several independent observations of an "Autocratic Peace" effect, a reduced probability of war (obviously no author claims its absence) between states which are both non-democratic, or both highly so.{{sfn|Raknerud|Hegre|1997}}{{sfn|Beck|Jackman|1998}} This has led to the hypothesis that democratic peace emerges as a particular case when analyzing a subset of states which are, in fact, similar.{{sfn|Werner|2000}} Or, that similarity in general does not solely affect the probability of war, but only coherence of strong political regimes such as full democracies and stark autocracies.

Autocratic peace and the explanation based on democratic similarity. is a relatively recent development, and opinions about its value are varied. Henderson builds a model considering political similarity, geographic distance and economic interdependence as its main variables, and concludes that democratic peace is a statistical artifact which disappears when the above variables are taken into account.{{sfn|Henderson|2002}} Werner finds a conflict reducing effect from political similarity in general, but with democratic dyads being particularly peaceful, and noting some differences in behavior between democratic and autocratic dyads with respect to alliances and power evaluation.{{sfn|Werner|2000}} Beck, King, and Zeng use neural networks to show two distinct low probability zones, corresponding to high democracy and high autocracy.{{sfn|Beck|King|Zeng|2004}}{{efn|Although not discussed in the text, the figure they show (Figure 2) suggests that the democratic peace is stronger.{{Original research inline|date=January 2021}}}} Petersen uses a different statistical model and finds that autocratic peace is not statistically significant, and that the effect attributed to similarity is mostly driven by the pacifying effect of joint democracy.{{sfn|Petersen|2004}} Ray similarly disputes the weight of the argument on logical grounds, claiming that statistical analysis on "political similarity" uses a main variable which is an extension of "joint democracy" by linguistic redefinition, and so it is expected that the war reducing effects are carried on in the new analysis.{{sfn|Ray|2005}} Bennett builds a direct statistical model based on a triadic classification of states into "democratic", "autocratic" and "mixed". He finds that autocratic dyads have a 35% reduced chance of going into any type of armed conflict with respect to a reference mixed dyad. Democratic dyads have a 55% reduced chance. This effect gets stronger when looking at more severe conflicts; for wars (more than 1000 battle deaths), he estimates democratic dyads to have an 82% lower risk than autocratic dyads. He concludes that autocratic peace exists, but democratic peace is clearly stronger. However, he finds no relevant pacifying effect of political similarity, except at the extremes of the scale.{{sfn|Bennett|2006}}

To summarize a rather complex picture, there are no less than four possible stances on the value of this criticism:
#Political similarity, plus some complementary variables, explains everything. Democratic peace is a statistical artifact. Henderson subscribes to this view.
#Political similarity has a pacifying effect, but democracy makes it stronger. Werner would probably subscribe to this view.
#Political similarity in general has little or no effect, except at the extremes of the democracy-autocracy scale: a democratic peace and an autocratic peace exist separately, with the first one being stronger, and may have different explanations. Bennett holds this view, and Kinsella mentions this as a possibility
#Political similarity has little or no effect and there is no evidence for autocratic peace. Petersen and Ray are among defendants of this view.

====Interactive model of democratic peace====
The interactive model of democratic peace is a combination of democratic similarity with the traditional model of democratic peace theory demonstrated on [[V-Dem Democracy Indices]].<ref name="interactive">[https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343319883672 Altman, D., Rojas-de-Galarreta, F., & Urdinez, F. (2021). An interactive model of democratic peace. Journal of Peace Research, 58(3), 384-398.]</ref>