Editing Democratic peace theory (section)

===Criticism of definitions, methodology and data===
Some authors criticize the definition of democracy by arguing that states continually reinterpret other states' regime types as a consequence of their own objective interests and motives, such as economic and security concerns.{{sfn|Rosato|2003}} For example, one study reports that Germany was considered a democratic state by Western opinion leaders at the end of the 19th century; yet in the years preceding World War I, when its relations with the United States, France and Britain started deteriorating, Germany was gradually reinterpreted as an autocratic state, in absence of any actual regime change.{{sfn|Oren|1995}}{{sfn|Joas|Knöbl|2013|p=226}} Shimmin moves a similar criticism regarding the western perception of Milosevic's Serbia between 1989 and 1999.{{sfn|Shimmin|1999}} Rummel replies to this criticism by stating that, in general, studies on democratic peace do not focus on other countries' perceptions of democracy; and in the specific case of Serbia, by arguing that the limited credit accorded by western democracies to Milosevic in the early 1990s did not amount to a recognition of democracy, but only to the perception that possible alternative leaders could be even worse.{{sfn|Rummel|1999}}

Some democratic peace researchers have been criticized for ''post hoc'' reclassifying some specific conflicts as non-wars or political systems as non-democracies without checking and correcting the whole data set used similarly. Supporters and opponents of the democratic peace agree that this is bad use of statistics, even if a plausible case can be made for the correction.{{sfn|Bremer|1992}}{{sfn|Gleditsch|1995}}{{sfn|Gowa|1999}} A military affairs columnist of the newspaper ''Asia Times'' has summarized the above criticism in a journalist's fashion describing the theory as subject to the [[no true Scotsman]] problem: exceptions are explained away as not being between "real" democracies or "real" wars.{{sfn|''Asia Times''|2006}}

Some democratic peace researchers require that the executive result from a substantively contested election. This may be a restrictive definition: For example, the National Archives of the United States notes that "For all intents and purposes, [[George Washington]] was unopposed for election as President, both in 1789 and 1792". (Under the original provisions for the [[United States Electoral College|Electoral College]], there was no distinction between votes for president and Vice-president: each elector was required to vote for two distinct candidates, with the runner-up to be vice-president. Every elector cast one of his votes for Washington,{{sfn|National Archives and Records Administration|n.d.}} John Adams received a majority of the other votes; there were several other candidates: so the election for vice president was contested.)

Spiro made several other criticisms of the statistical methods used.{{sfn|Spiro|1994}} Russett and a series of papers described by Ray responded to this, for example with different methodology.{{sfn|Russett|Layne|Spiro|Doyle|1995}}{{sfn|Ray|2003}}

Sometimes the datasets used have also been criticized. For example, some authors have criticized the Correlates of War data for not including civilian deaths in the battle deaths count, especially in civil wars.{{Citation needed|date=January 2023}} Cohen and Weeks argue that most fishing disputes, which include no deaths and generally very limited threats of violence, should be excluded even from the list of military disputes.{{sfn|Cohen|Weeks|2006}} Gleditsch made several criticisms to the Correlates of War data set, and produced a revised set of data.{{sfn|Gleditsch|Christiansen|Hegre|2004}} Maoz and Russett made several criticisms to the Polity I and II data sets, which have mostly been addressed in later versions.{{sfn|Maoz|Russett|1993}}

The most comprehensive critique points out that "democracy" is rarely defined, never refers to substantive democracy, is unclear about causation, has been refuted in more than 100 studies, fails to account for some 200 deviant cases, and has been promoted ideologically to justify one country seeking to expand democracy abroad.{{sfn|Haas|2014}} Most studies treat the complex concept of "democracy" as a bivariate variable rather than attempting to dimensionalize the concept. Studies also fail to take into account the fact that there are dozens of types of democracy, so the results are meaningless unless articulated to a particular type of democracy or claimed to be true for all types, such as consociational or economic democracy, with disparate datasets.