Democratic peace

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The term democratic peace comes from political science and creates the hypothesis that wars between democratic states do not take place (or statistically significantly less often than between non-democratic or mixed pairs of states). The theory, supported by empirical evidence, is sometimes referred to as the only empirical law of international relations . However, possible counter-evidence or exceptions are cited for this theory, such as the Kargil War or the 2006 Lebanon War .

The theory can be subdivided into a normative postulate and an analytical research program: Normatively, the idea of ​​democratic peace develops a postulate for a global increase in democratic states through democratization, on the grounds that it will contribute to the pacification of international relations. In analytical terms, science deals with the elaboration, specification and verification or falsification of the hypothesis and also illuminates in detail the contradictions of the democratic peace theory: While states of purely democratic groups of states actually seem to interact peacefully with one another, they apparently also pursue aggressive behavior towards non-democracies Foreign policy; - up to war. There is therefore an ambiguous “double finding”: democratic peace and “democratic wars” exist side by side.

Research history

State theoretical and philosophical foundations

With his work On Eternal Peace, Immanuel Kant laid a philosophical basis for democratic peace

Niccolò Machiavelli and Montesquieu already discussed the connection between the form of rule and peace . Both saw the equal distribution of values ​​as a reason that republics would not emanate violence. In contrast to this (monadic) argument based on the individual state, the Abbé de Saint-Pierre pursued an approach based on the interaction of several states in his Plan of Perpetual Peace, published by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in 1761 : an international organization should provide the framework for reciprocal ones Offer security guarantees to all states.

Immanuel Kant's book On Eternal Peace is usually used as the main philosophical basis of democratic peace theory . Kant developed the idea that wars may be in the interests of political rulers who are not subject to any justification obligation (Kant: "princes"), but not in the interests of citizens who risk far more expensive resources, for example their lives or property, in the event of war would have to. From this it follows for him that a state in which the foreign policy decisions could be influenced by the majority of citizens according to their interests would tend to pursue a peaceful foreign policy that avoids war out of the self-interest of the citizens. As a second necessary condition for perpetual peace, Kant postulated a peace alliance ( foedus pacificum ) as a permanent interstate treaty system between the republican states.

Empirical research

The first to combine Kant's train of thought with theory-testing empirical research was the American criminologist Dean Babst . In 1963 he published a six-page article in the rather little-known social science journal The Wisconsin Sociologist , in which he advanced the thesis that freely elected governments of independent states would not wage wars against one another. His claim was based on data on wars and warring nations taken from Quincy Wright's A Study of War (1941); his explanation is based on the theory of Immanuel Kant. In addition to a few borderline cases, Bapst went into the two world wars in particular in order to prove the statistical significance of his thesis. This essay, like a slightly modified new edition in 1972, was initially hardly noticed.

In the course of various empirical research work, however, the finding received widespread attention and in 1988 the political scientist Jack Levy described it for the first time as an "empirical law in international relations". It became the starting point for numerous research work and an extensive discussion, which is far from being completed to this day and which has become a “field of research that can hardly be surveyed”.

Definitions

In order to be able to empirically test the theory of democratic peace, the terms “democracy” and “peace” (or “war”) used must be operationalized . The operationalizations differ considerably depending on the author. A main point of criticism by representatives of realism is therefore the accusation that the terms are coded in such a way that only the desired result can be expected.

Democracy and peace

Countries highlighted in blue areclassifiedas “ voter democracies ”by Freedom House - based on the 2006 annual report

To measure the independent variable democracy , dichotomous and scale-based indices are used. Examples are Freedom House and the Polity I-IV studies.

The data sets of the Correlates-of-War project are often used to define wars and military conflicts .

Explanatory approaches

The original Kantian explanation is opposed to the empirical finding that democracies do start wars against non-democracies. The term “democratic peace” therefore generally does not claim a general and one-sided peacefulness of democracies - there are only a few representatives of this “ monadic ” view of democratic peace in political science . The democratic peace theory, on the other hand, predominantly emphasizes that democracies only display a special and peaceful behavior “dyadically” (ie: with one another), but not in dealings with non-democratic states.

Science is therefore faced with the challenge of explaining this empirical double finding of peace only between democracies, combined with democratic wars against non-democracies. In general, at least three separate strands of explanation are given for this “paradoxical” behavior: structural-institutional attempts at explanation, cultural-normative and social-constructivist explanation.

Structural-institutional interpretations

Structural-institutional explanations assume that the time-consuming decision-making procedures within democratically constituted states delay a rapid escalation, so that peaceful solutions to a conflict remain in the focus of the actors for a longer time and are ultimately chosen.

This approach can be supplemented with the idea that international institutions still help to de-escalate conflicts. The internationally extended decision-making paths make it possible to absorb and dampen ill-considered wrong decisions, so that a peaceful solution can be found through communication and the involvement of various internal societal actors and political fields.

In the slowness and complexity of the decision-making processes, this line of explanation also includes the institutionalized political participation of the citizens, who, as Kant already emphasized, would usually decide against a war and whose participation therefore has the effect of delaying escalation.

Cultural-normative interpretations

The second line of explanation, namely the cultural-normative one, emphasizes, however, that democracies externalized their democratic norms and their modes of conflict resolution and that they therefore treat their counterparts with respect and trust. However, this line of explanation also proves to be deficient, as it - like the structural-institutional one - can only explain a genuine peacefulness of democracies. Neither of them can explain the double empirical finding, namely that democracies interact peacefully with one another, but at the same time they are just as inclined to violence towards non-democracies as non-democracies themselves.

Social-constructivist interpretations

Constructivist interpretations do not see the peacefulness of democracies among one another as being based on the democratic quality of democratic states and their routines or citizens willing to make peace, but on their mutual - partially arbitrary - perception as similar or similar. Democracies perceive some states as other democracies and thus as part of an in-group, while in turn they “constructed” other states as fundamentally different non-democracies and thus ordered the world for themselves through images of enemies and friends.

In this constructivist creation of perception lies a potentially dangerous ambiguity and arbitrariness - beyond Kantian optimism. “Democratic wars” can be explained psychologically through the perception processes of states that classify themselves as democratic but classify others as non-democratic.

Possible combinations and other approaches

The explanatory strands shown can be combined - in order to reduce deficits in the individual declarations through their "interaction" with one another.

There are also within the liberal research paradigm not to seek approaches that actual explanation for the Democratic Peace in democracy itself but in its regular contact with economic interdependence and capitalist market order. This idea of ​​a capitalist peace even goes beyond the approach of the democratic peace theory, since for its representatives economic interlocking between market societies can have peace-promoting effects even if these are not (or only partially) democratic.

Location in the theoretical landscape

The theorem of democratic peace is assigned to the paradigm of liberalism as a subsystemic approach within the theories of international relations . In contrast to classical realism or neorealism , liberal approaches are characterized by the fact that they do not seek causality for peace or war primarily at the intergovernmental level, but rather focus on the domestic constitution of the conflicting parties. They explain political results at the international level with the internal systemic constitution of the respective participating states. In the case of democratic peace, the peaceful foreign policy of constellations can be explained liberally with reference to the democratization quality achieved by the political systems.

Political declarations of democratic peace can use two basic logics of action: the model of homo oeconomicus and that of homo sociologicus . In the first case, authors explain democratic peace on the basis of the rational choice model (citizens who reject war for reasons of cost, politicians who make the option of voting citizens the basis for maintaining power and therefore forego wars out of self-interest), in the second case institutionalized and automatically running values ​​and action routines within democratic states.

Research in Germany

In German political science, the Hessian Foundation for Peace and Conflict Research (PRIF) in Frankfurt am Main is particularly concerned with the topic of democratic peace. In addition, political scientist Andreas Hasenclever from Tübingen and Christopher Daase are working on the topic within the framework of the “Formation of Normative Orders” cluster of excellence at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main .

The Historic Peace Research deals with the study of this theory.

literature

  • Babst, Dean V .: Elective Governments - A force for Peace . In: The Wisconsin Sociologist, Vol. 3, No. 1, 1964, pp. 9-14.
  • Daase, Christopher: Democratic Peace - Democratic War. Three reasons why democracies are unsettled . In: Schweizer, Christine / Aust, Björn / Schlotter, Peter: Democracies in War, 2004, ISBN 9783832907549 , pp. 53–71.
  • Anna Geis : Diagnosis: double findings - cause unexplained? The controversy about "democratic peace" . In: Politische Vierteljahresschrift , Vol. 42, No. 2, 2001, pp. 282–298
  • Hasenclever, Andreas: Liberal approaches to "democratic peace" . in: Schieder, Siegfried u. Spindler, Manuela (Ed.): Theories of International Relations, Opladen 2003, pp. 199ff.
  • Risse-Kappen, Thomas : Democratic Peace - Warlike Democracies? A Social Constructivist Interpretation of the Liberal Argument. in: European Journal of International Relations. Vol. 1 (4), 1995, 491-517.

Representative of the structural-institutional approach

  • Oneal, John R. / Russett, Bruce , 1999: The Kantian Peace: The Pacific Benefits of Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations, In: World Politics. A Quarterly Journal of International Relations, Vol. 52, No. 1, 1 - 37.
  • Russett, Bruce : Grasping the Democratic Peace. Principles for a Post-Cold War World. New Jersey : Princeton University Press , 1993.

Representative of the constructivist approach

  • Oren, Ido, 1995: The Subjectivity of the "Democratic" Peace. Changing US Perceptions of Imperial Germany. In: International Security, Vol. 20, No. 2, 147-184.
  • Peceny, Mark, 1997: A Constructivist Interpretation of the Liberal Peace: The Ambiguous Case of the Spanish-American War. In: Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 34, No. 4, 415-430.
  • Hermann, Margaret G / Kegley, Charles, Jr., 1995: Rethinking Democracy and International Peace: Perspectives from Political Psychology. In: International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 39, No. 4,511-533.
  • Kegley, Charles W. / Hermann, Margaret G., 1995: The Political Psychology of "Peace through Democratization". In: Cooperation and Conflict, Vol. 30, No. 1, 5 - 30.

Critic of Democratic Peace

  • Layne, Christopher, 1994: Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace. In: International Security, Vol. 19., No. 2, 5 - 49.
  • Rosato, Sebastian, 2003: The Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory. In: American Political Science Review, Vol. 97, No. 4, 585-602.
  • Spiro, David E., 1994: The Insignificance of the Liberal Peace. In: International Security, Vol. 19, No. 2, 50-86.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Anna Geis : Diagnosis: Double finding - cause unexplained? The controversy about the "democratic peace" In: Politische Vierteljahresschrift , Vol. 42, No. 2, p. 282.
  2. ↑ on the latter cf. Christian Wagner, Democratic Peace in South Asia? , in: Heidelberg Papers in South Asian and Comparative Politics , No. 16, 2003
  3. ↑ Emanuel Deutschmann, The Second Lebanon War and the Dyadic Hypothesis of the Theory of Democratic Peace - a Contradiction ?, Working Papers on International Politics and Foreign Policy , AIPA 2/2012 .
  4. ↑ Anna Geis ; Harald Muller ; Niklas Schörnig: Liberal Democracies and War, in: Journal for International Relations (ZIB), 17. Vol. (2010) Issue 2, pp. 171-202; and Geis, Anna: Diagnosis: Double finding - cause unexplained? The controversy about the "democratic peace" In: Politische Vierteljahresschrift , Vol. 42, No. 2, 2001
  5. ^ Lothar Brock; Anna Geis; Harald Müller (ed.): Democratic Wars. Looking at the Dark Side of Democratic Peace, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006
  6. ↑ Anna Geis; Harald Muller; Niklas Schörnig: Liberal Democracies and War, in: Journal for International Relations (ZIB), 17. Vol. (2010) Issue 2, pp. 171-202; and Geis, Anna: Diagnosis: Double finding - cause unexplained? The controversy about the "democratic peace" In: Politische Vierteljahresschrift , Vol. 42, No. 2, 2001
  7. ^ Czempiel, Ernst-Otto : Kant's theorem and the contemporary theory of international relations. P. 301.
  8. ^ Czempiel, Ernst-Otto: Kant's theorem and the contemporary theory of international relations. P. 316.
  9. ^ Babst, Dean V .: Elective Governments - A force for Peace. In: The Wisconsin Sociologist, Vol. 3, No. 1, 1964
  10. ^ Levy, Jack S., 1988: Domestic Politics and War . In: Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 18, No. 4, pp. 653-673, here p. 662.
  11. ↑ see Gert Krell , Weltbilder und Weltordnung. Introduction to the theory of international relations, 4th edition, Nomos : Baden-Baden , 2009, pp. 188–216.
  12. ↑ Johannes Schwehm: Peace, democratic; in: Dieter Nohlen , Rainer Olaf Schultze (eds.), Lexicon of Political Science, Vol. 1 AM, 4.A, Munich : Beck, 2010, p. 284
  13. ↑ cf. Johannes Schwehm: Peace, more democratic; in: Dieter Nohlen, Rainer Olaf Schultze (eds.), Lexicon of Political Science, Vol. 1 AM, 4.A, Munich: Beck, 2010, p. 284
  14. ↑ cf. Andreas Hasenclever: The Democratic Peace Meets International Institutions - Reflections on the International Organization of Democratic Peace, in: Journal for International Relations 9 (2002) 1, 75–111
  15. ↑ cf. Johannes Schwehm: Peace, more democratic; in: Dieter Nohlen, Rainer Olaf Schultze (eds.), Lexicon of Political Science, Vol. 1 AM, 4.A, Munich: Beck, 2010, p. 284
  16. ↑ Erich Weede: Peace through Capitalism. A supplement and alternative to democratic peace in: Internationale Politik , No. 7, 2005.
  17. ↑ See e.g. B. Holger Nehring: Conference Report Peace through Democracy? Genesis, effect and criticism of an interpretation pattern. 6-8 November 2009, Berlin . In: H-Soz-u-Kult , January 15, 2010.