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Democratic peace theory
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===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>
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