Editing Democratic peace theory (section)

==Academic relevance and derived studies==
Democratic peace theory is a well established research field with more than a hundred authors having published articles about it.{{sfn|Rummel|n.d.}} Several [[peer-reviewed]] studies mention in their introduction that most researchers accept the theory as an empirical fact.{{sfn|Kinsella|2005}}{{sfn|Owen|2004}}{{sfn|Levy|Razin|2004}}{{sfn|Mousseau|Shi|1999}}{{sfn|Gelpi|Griesdorf|2001}} According to a 2021 study by Kosuke Imai and James Lo, "overturning the negative association between democracy and conflict would require a confounder that is forty-seven times more prevalent in democratic dyads than in other dyads. To put this number in context, the relationship between democracy and peace is at least five times as robust as that between smoking and lung cancer. To explain away the democratic peace, therefore, scholars would have to find far more powerful confounders than those already identified in the literature."{{sfn|Imai|Lo|2021}}

[[Imre Lakatos]] suggested that what he called a "progressive research program" is better than a "degenerative" one when it can explain the same phenomena as the "degenerative" one, but is also characterized by growth of its research field and the discovery of important novel facts. In contrast, the supporters of the "degenerative" program do not make important new empirical discoveries, but instead mostly apply adjustments to their theory in order to defend it from competitors. Some researchers argue that democratic peace theory is now the "progressive" program in international relations. According to these authors, the theory can explain the empirical phenomena previously explained by the earlier dominant research program, [[realism in international relations]]; in addition, the initial statement that democracies do not, or rarely, wage war on one another, has been followed by a rapidly growing literature on novel empirical regularities.{{sfn|Ray|2003}}{{sfn|Chernoff|2004}}{{sfn|Harrison|2010}}

Other examples are several studies finding that democracies are more likely to ally with one another than with other states, forming alliances which are likely to last longer than alliances involving non-democracies;{{sfn|Ray|2003}} several studies{{quantify|date=January 2021}} showing that democracies conduct diplomacy differently and in a more conciliatory way compared to non-democracies;{{sfn|Weart|1998}} one study finding that democracies with [[proportional representation]] are in general more peaceful regardless of the nature of the other party involved in a relationship;{{sfn|Leblang|Chan|2003}} and another study reporting that proportional representation system and decentralized territorial autonomy is positively associated with lasting peace in postconflict societies.{{sfn|Binningsbø|2005}}