Are Democracies Really More Peaceful?

[Thom Little]

In his second inaugural address, President George W. Bush proclaimed that "the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world." Behind these lofty words lies one of the most powerful ideas in international relations. Neoconservative pundits like William Kristol and Lawrence F. Kaplan put the point plainly when they called for toppling Saddam Hussein because of "a truth of international politics: democracies rarely, if ever, wage war against one another."

.......

Yet for all its influence, the theory of the democratic peace carries a crucial caveat. In a series of studies culminating in their new book, "Electing to Fight," the political scientists Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder argue that new democracies are often unstable and thus particularly warlike. Mansfield and Snyder note that democratizing countries often lack the rule of law, organized political parties and professional news media. Without those restraining institutions firmly in place, empowering the public can mean empowering bellicose nationalists. As communism crumbled in Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia and Franjo Tudjman in Croatia used populist nationalism to fuel their rise to power - and to start a blood bath.

Mansfield and Snyder try to prove that young democracies without fully formed domestic institutions are especially aggressive; their examples range from France's disastrous 1870 attack on Prussia to Turkey's 1974 invasion of Cyprus to Vladimir Putin's continuing brutal clampdown in Chechnya. At best, scholars agree, the democratic peace exists only when established liberal democracies face one another. Confronting nondemocracies, established democracies are about as warlike as normal dictatorships. Think of Britain, France and Israel's attacking Egypt in 1956, or Bush's invasion of Iraq. When a democratic government squabbles with a dictator, it often doesn't trust the dictator enough for serious negotiations, and war is a likely result. Elihu Root, who'd been Theodore Roosevelt's secretary of state, said in 1917: "To be safe, democracy must kill its enemy when it can and where it can. The world. . . must be all democratic or all Prussian."

The Bush administration might applaud Root's statement, but it's no small task to make the world "all democratic." Mansfield and Snyder cite writers like Samuel P. Huntington, who gingerly emphasizes that democratization works best in proper sequence: first establishing functioning institutions - political parties, courts - and then allowing widespread elections. Poland and Chile democratized successfully, Mansfield and Snyder say, but Iraq, it seems, has not. They warn that "unleashing Islamic mass opinion through a sudden democratization could only raise the likelihood of war." China, too, proves worrisome, lacking as it does political pluralism, a reliable rule of law or a professional free press. Greater political freedom - a longstanding American goal - could at worst empower more aggressive leaders in a nuclear-armed economic powerhouse.




http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/01/magazine/01wwln_essay.html

[neweurope]

1. Are the US a democracy?

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Remember Fallujah

Bush to The Hague!

[julianer]

2. Pre 1914 the very idea

that 'civilised countries' would fight each other after nearly fifty years of peace was practically unthinkable.

Also what this piece of right wing dogma never informs us is how often 'democracies' organise subversion and fund rebellion in other countries, thereby preventing or destroying democracy (Chile, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Egypt....ad virtual infinitum). Nor does it tend to mention 'democratic' support for racist regimes (South Africa, Israel) that have restrictive rights and laws based on race. Or even how often 'democracies' fund 'democratic revolutions' which always seem to open up the lucky recipients' markets to 'foreign investment' and the replacement of one bunch of crooks in state power with another.

And the other possibility is that it allows these criminals to say things like '...never before have two democracies fought each other, but the actions of (insert enemy of the moment, say France) show the need to....'.

All a scam by criminals...

[Coastie for Truth]

3. The model fits the data

The model fits the data - given the caveats,

In the 1980's, political scientists began looking for empirical evidence that Kant's prophecy had come true. Michael W. Doyle wrote that a separate "zone of peace" existed among liberal states, underpinning America's alliances with NATO and Japan. Although the notion has been subjected to fierce scrutiny, most scholars agree that a liberal peace exists - and that it offers a way to end the age-old scourge of war. The theory has been endorsed by leaders like Margaret Thatcher and Boutros Boutros-Ghali, and it played a role in the Clinton administration's efforts to create a worldwide "community of democracies."

Yet for all its influence, the theory of the democratic peace carries a crucial caveat. In a series of studies culminating in their new book, "Electing to Fight," the political scientists Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder argue that new democracies are often unstable and thus particularly warlike. Mansfield and Snyder note that democratizing countries often lack the rule of law, organized political parties and professional news media. Without those restraining institutions firmly in place, empowering the public can mean empowering bellicose nationalists. As communism crumbled in Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia and Franjo Tudjman in Croatia used populist nationalism to fuel their rise to power - and to start a blood bath.

Mansfield and Snyder try to prove that young democracies without fully formed domestic institutions are especially aggressive; their examples range from France's disastrous 1870 attack on Prussia to Turkey's 1974 invasion of Cyprus to Vladimir Putin's continuing brutal clampdown in Chechnya. At best, scholars agree, the democratic peace exists only when established liberal democracies face one another. Confronting nondemocracies, established democracies are about as warlike as normal dictatorships.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/01/magazine/01wwln_essay.html>

One has to consider whether Bush and Blair have subverted the "restraining institutions" of

1. the rule of law (Patriot Act, warrantless eavesdropping, "sneak and peek", undeclared wars of aggression),
2. organized political parties (Florida in 2000, 2004; Ohio in 2004; Diebold scandal; DeLay's gerrymandering of Texas, and on and on and on...)
3. professional news media (Faux News, Bill O'Leilly, Judith Miller...)

and also whether we are moving towards a mini-theocracy where "gay marriage" and "abortion-stem cell research" and "intelligent design" and "war on Christmas" and "public prayer" and "religious tests for public office" can swing elections?

[CrazyAtheist]

4. Democracy is far from perfect

Its foolish to think that in a nation such as Iraq the majority won't ram its views down on a minority, especially since the minority was abusing the power for so long. Only a democracy that ensures minorities can't be oppressed is truly free, of course, thats a problem if the majority wants to use those same institutions, as you point out, to do the oppressing.