The Democratic Peace and a Sequential, Reciprocal, Causal Arrow Hypothesis

Rasler, Karen; Thompson, William R.

doi:10.1177/0010414004267980

Cited by 51 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…Employing vector auto regression analysis, they find that these variables do indeed influence one another, but the strengths of their effects change across time and space. Rasler and Thompson (2000) argue both that states perceiving high external threats will be less democratic, and that democracies are less likely to have MIDs with one another. Focusing on nine major powers from 1816 to 1992, they estimate two equations separately.…”

Section: Previous Empirical Studies Of Conflict–democracy Simultaneitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Joint Democracy-Dyadic Conflict Nexus: A Simultaneous Equations Model

Reuveny

2003

Int Studies Q

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Many statistical studies in international relations investigate the claim that democracies do not fight one another. Virtually all of these studies employ a single-equation design, where the dependent variable measures the presence or absence of a dyadic militarized interstate dispute (MID). A separate group of studies argues that conflict affects democracy and that its effect could be positive or negative. By and large, these two bodies of literature have not incorporated one another's insights. We argue that democracy and dyadic conflict affect each other significantly and that statistical models that ignore the reciprocal nature of these effects may make incorrect inferences. To test this argument, we develop a simultaneous equations model of democracy and dyadic conflict. Our sample includes all the politically relevant dyads from 1950 to 1992. We find that dyadic military disputes reduce joint democracy and joint democracy reduces the probability of MIDs. Compared with the single-equation estimates in the literature, the absolute effect of joint democracy in our paper is smaller while in relative terms, the effect is similar in size. The effect of joint democracy on MID involvement is considerably smaller for noncontiguous countries than for contiguous ones. The effects of a number of control variables in the MID equation are also found to differ from those reported previously in singleequation-based studies.The claim that democracies do not fight one another has received wide attention over the past decade. Statistical studies investigating this claim share similar designs, employing a dyadic level of analysis and estimating single-equation models. The dependent variable is typically dichotomous, measuring the presence or absence of a militarized interstate dispute (MID). The set of independent variables includes a measure of joint (dyadic) democracy and more or less the same collection of control variables. The vast majority of studies report that the probability of a MID occurring within a dyad declines as joint democracy increases. There are, however, a number of studies that reject this argument (see Section 2). 1 three anonymous referees, Patrick James and other ISQ editors for their helpful comments and suggestions. We also thank Alex Braithwaite, Rhonda Butts, and Andrea Bartuski for editorial assistance. The usual disclaimer applies. 1 A smaller group of studies argues that democracies are more peaceful in general, not only toward other democracies. This claim has received less empirical support. In this paper, we focus on the dyadic version of the democratic peace argument.

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Section: Previous Empirical Studies Of Conflict–democracy Simultaneitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Joint Democracy-Dyadic Conflict Nexus: A Simultaneous Equations Model

Reuveny

2003

Int Studies Q

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“…Karen Rasler and Bill Thompson provide a regional test of the external threat/ democracy arguments developed previously in Thompson (1996), Rasler and Thompson (2004), and Gibler (2007). Focusing on Europe over the last two centuries, they find that both rivalry and unstable boundaries predict international conflict, but regime type has no independent effect once controls for external threat are included in the model.…”

Section: Contents Of Special Issuementioning

confidence: 93%

The Politics of Territorial Threat and Rivalry: An Introduction to this Special Issue

Gibler

2011

Conflict Management and Peace Science

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“…Rasler and Thompson (2004), however, single out strategic rivalry as another example of external threat. Gibler prefers disputed boundaries.…”

Section: Threat Democracy and Conflictmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some of our earlier work (Thompson, 1996;Rasler and Thompson, 2004) has been motivated by the assertion that democratization and pacification processes are also influenced by external threat environments. Scholars who study democratization tend to focus on domestic processes.…”

Section: Threat Democracy and Conflictmentioning

confidence: 99%

Borders, Rivalry, Democracy, and Conflict in the European Region, 1816-1994

Rasler

Thompson

2011

Conflict Management and Peace Science

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Should peace be attributed mainly to democracy or to some intervening variable that influences both democracy and conflict? A second, perhaps related question is whether or to what extent democratization is driven by external drivers of threat. If regime type helps explain external conflict, does external conflict also help explain regime type? By examining the relationships among strategic rivalry, unstable boundaries, democracy, and interstate conflict in a regional context, we find that rivalry and unstable boundaries are alternative manifestations of external threat. Both have significant, if not identical effects on stimulating interstate conflict. Regime type does not appear to have an independent effect on interstate conflict when we take either rivalries or unstable boundaries into consideration. At the same time, we also find that external threat indicators negatively predict changes in democratization. In short, greater threat is associated with less democratization.Explaining why states become involved in conflict is a core concern in the study of international relations. Explaining why states become more democratic is a core interest in the comparative study of politics. While we remain reluctant to combine these foci, we know much more today than we did 25-30 years ago about the factors encouraging or discouraging conflict and democracy. Yet there is always the possibility that some of what we think we know is not quite accurate. For instance, contentions about the democratic peace have been important drivers in improving our collective understanding of conflict processes. The focus has largely been placed on how democratic political systems and their decision-makers supposedly do things differently than autocratic political systems and their respective decision-makers. We can generate long lists of how regime types differ in international politics but we still don't agree on why regime type should make so much difference. One possibility at UNIV OF PITTSBURGH on June 19, 2015 cmp.sagepub.com Downloaded from 1 Crescenzi and Enterline (1999: 93) conduct a time series investigation of the relationships between democracy, democratization, and interstate war from 1816 to 1992. They find that the statistical strength and sign of the relationships among these variables reflect strong spatial and temporal heterogeneity. Hence, they conclude that the regional level, rather than the global level, holds more promise for understanding the interrelationships between democratization and interstate conflict.

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The Democratic Peace and a Sequential, Reciprocal, Causal Arrow Hypothesis

Cited by 51 publications

References 55 publications

The Joint Democracy-Dyadic Conflict Nexus: A Simultaneous Equations Model

The Joint Democracy-Dyadic Conflict Nexus: A Simultaneous Equations Model

The Politics of Territorial Threat and Rivalry: An Introduction to this Special Issue

Borders, Rivalry, Democracy, and Conflict in the European Region, 1816-1994

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