Lecture 25: Democratic Peace Language Study

Vocabulary terms and key concepts regarding the Democratic Peace Theory, its empirical definitions, and scholarly caveats.

Democratic Peace

A generally accepted finding that war and lower-level violence are particularly rare among democracies, despite democracies being just as war-prone as non-democracies.

Democracy

A regime type that conceptually includes fair elections held regularly with a large franchise, guarantees of civil liberties, and constraints on executive authority.

POLITY project

A project that tracks political regime characteristics and transitions on a continuum from Autocracy to Anocracy to Democracy.

Anocracy

The middle category on the POLITY project regime type continuum, situated between Autocracy and Democracy.

Snyder & Mansfield

Scholars who argue that while established democracies are peaceful, democratizing states—particularly stalled democratizations—are dangerous and may succumb to diversionary wars.

Mousseau's Finding

The claim that a democratic peace only exists for states with a GDP/capita greater than $8050$.

Contiguity

One of the variables used as a control in large cross-national studies to provide evidence for the democratic peace.

Diversionary wars

Conflicts that leaders without democratic history may resort to in democratizing states, according to Snyder and Mansfield.

Conflict Averse

Refers to the behavior of democracies which, while no more peaceful than non-democracies overall, are exceptionally unwilling to engage in conflict specifically with one another.

Kargil War of 1999

One of the historical examples cited as a possible instance of a war between two democracies.