New Tests of the Democratic Peace: Controlling for Economic Interdependence, 1950-85

Abstract

1993) reported that democratic states after World War II were unlikely to engage in militarized disputes with one another, but their continuous measure of joint democracy is problematic. It can decrease if one of a pair of states becomes more democratic, even if the political regime of the other does not change. Thus, results using this index are difficult to interpret. In this study we estimate the likelihood of dyadic conflict using more straightforward indices of joint democracy As in Oneal, Oneal, Maoz, and Russett (1996), we control for economic interdependence and several other theoretically interesting, potentially confounding influences. Our analyses indicate that the more democratic a pair of states, the less likely they are to become involved in a militarized dispute; but a high level of democracy in one state can not compensate for less democracy in a strategic partner. The political distance separating states along the democracy-autocracy continuum is an important indicator of the likelihood of dyadic conflict: democracies are unlikely to fight other democracies, but democracies and autocracies are conflict-prone. These results indicate that, ceteris paribus, democratic states are more peaceful than autocracies at the national level of analysis.The debate between realists and liberals (or neo-realists and neo-liberals)is not fully resolved, as several recent articles attest (Cohen 1994;Layne 1994; NOTE: The authors would like to thank Bruce Russett for organizing the Yale Workshop on Interdependence, Democracy, and Conflict, April 1995, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for its financial support of this meeting. We are indebted to the other participants for stimulating our thinking on these topics. This research was completed while John Oneal was the recipient of a grant from the National Science Foundation (SBER-9507975).

Geographic Proximity, Trade, and International Conflict/Cooperation

“…On the other side, numerous studies have found that trade reduces dyadic conflict (Polachek, 1980;Oneal, et al 1996;Oneal and Ray, 1997;Oneal and Russett, 1997, 1999a, 1999b. Several studies have attempted to reconcile the disparate findings in the literature (Gartzke and Li, 2003b), but the debate continues (see Gartzke and Li, 2003c;Oneal, 2003;Barbieri and Peters, 2003).…”

“…difference between the values of democracy (0 to 10) and autocracy (0 to -10) from the Polity III data. Oneal and Ray (1997) argue that the two democracy scores, DEMHI and DEMLO, better capture the political distance between countries than a single additive or multiplicative democracy score. All standardizing variables are also lagged to reduce potential endogeneity.…”

Social Purpose and Militarized Disputes

“…It is not appropriate to assume that what is true at the monadic level should be doubly true at the dyadic level. Care must be taken when operationalizing variables that are meant to capture shared or joint dyadic characteristics (Oneal & Ray, 1997). Nevertheless, our work at the monadic level gives us confidence to proceed to test the dyadic part of Ruggie's argument.…”

To Conquer or Compel: War, Peace, and Economic Development

“…A large and sophisticated literature explores the related question of cross-border economic linkages and their effects on interstate conflict (Bliss & Russett 1998;Keohane & Nye 1989;Oneal & Ray 1997;Oneal et al 1996;Oneal & Russett 1997Polachek 1980Polachek , 1997Polachek et al 1999). 10 Yet, here too the magnitude (Morrow 1999) and/or robustness (Beck, et al 1998) of these relationships has been called into question.…”