WEEK 8 READING: Democratic Peace - Russett and O'Neal

Geography

• the farther states are, the less liekly they are to fight one another

• two reasons; (1) hard to exert great power at a distance, (2) interstate conflict is unlikely between widely seperated states because they usually have lesser reasons to fight

Power

• deterrence has been seen as a way to increase the odds of a neighbour attacking you but is the probability that states will fisght the lowest when there is an equal balance of power between them, or when one side has more power than another

• some say it is when there is a balance of power, but tpthers say that wars are to test what the balnce is so disputes are most likely to happen when states have different expectations on who will win the fight

Alliances

• another type of contraint

• states from alliances for protection or to make sure that a country will not join an opposing coalition

• this sometimes makes conflict contagious by dragging states into ongoing wars that could have been avoided

Kantian influences

• Russett adn Oneal are comingin realist and liberal principles - THEY ARENT ANTIETHETICAL but they point out that Kant and Hobbes belived that anarchy leads to continued war

• positive peace must rest on three Kantian supports → democracy, interdependence, nd international law and organizations

The Data

• based on paris and dyads of counties

• they limit their analysis to the years 1885-1914, 1921-39, and 1950-92 because they aruge that the omission of the other years, if anything, biases their findings against finding evedence to support democratic peace, beucase during the world wars, peace between democracies was teh strongest

Militarized Disputes

• militarized interstate disputes → includes threats, demonstrations, and uses of force

• analysis is focused on dyads, like contigous states and those involving majour powers because they are most prone to going to war

Democracy - influences and constraints

their position: democracy is a key factor in reducing the likelihood of militarized disputes

• to measure the level of democracy in states they focus on three characteristics of national governments

1. competitiveness of political participation

2. the openness and competitiveness of executive recruitment

3. the level of institutional constraints on the chief executive

• Results show that the more democratic the least democratic state in a dyad is, the lower the likelihood of conflict - also pairs of democracies are less likely to engage in disputes

Realist constraints

realist factors like contiguity, distance, power ratio, and alliances are analyzed for their impact on interstate conflict

• contiguity increases the chances of conflict, where distance reduces it

• preponderance of power is more likely to deter conflict than a balance of power

• alliances reduce the likelihood of disputes, though thier effectiveness varies

Are political transitions dangerous?

results show that transitions themselves do not affect the risk fo disputes. the level of democracy achieved by a state is more important than the timing of its transition

More democracy and more peace

• Oneal and Russett highlight the benefits of democracy, economic interdependence, and international organizations

• democracies are more peaceful, interdependence reduces the chance of conflict, and shared memberships in intergovt organizations also contribute to the peace

• combined effects of these Kantian influences significantly lower the risk of militarized disputes

evidence for a Kantian peace - key findings

1. two democracies are 33% less likely than the average dyad to become involved in a militarized dispute

2. two states with high levels of bilateral trade aer 33 perceent less likely to involve in a dispute than those with an average level of interdependence - all other things being equal.

   1. the use of force does affect states commercial relations; it reduces the levels of bilateral trade. also asymmetry in the economic importance of trade, does not reduce the benefits of trade or provoke military conflict, likely many fear - states that are open to the global economy are more peaceful than average

3. the likelihood of a dispute drops by 71% if all the Kantian influences are increased simultaneously