International relation

Department of British studiesFaculty of World studies

University of Tehran

Course:international relations theories

Dr. vaez zadehBy:parisa abbasian

Democratic peace theory

Democratic peace theory

is a theory which posits that democracies are hesitant to engage in armed conflict with other identified democracies. In contrast to theories explaining war engagement, it is a "Theory of Peace" .

Some theorists prefer terms such as "mutual democratic pacifism" or "inter-democracy nonaggression hypothesis

Democratic peace theory

is the theory that liberal democracies don't go to war with one another. This is predicated on the theory that a large group of voters, many of whom are eligible for conscription, are less keen to go to war than one monarch or dictator who is likely to stay in the capital city ordering troops to the front, an effect that, with two democracies involved, is thought to be cumulative. Moreover, democracies have a tendency to bureaucracy, and when forms must be signed in triplicates, declaring war seems a little less heroic. Another contributing factor is that democracies tend to ally against non-democracies, and even democracies with no official ties beyond basic diplomatic relations are more likely to think of one another as friendly.

Among proponents of the Democratic Peace Theory, several factors are held as motivating peace between liberal states:

Democratic leaders are forced to accept culpability for war losses to a voting public;

Publicly accountable statesmen are more inclined to establish diplomatic institutions for resolving international tensions;

Democracies are less inclined to view countries with adjacent policy and governing doctrine as hostile;

Democracies tend to possess greater public wealth than other states, and therefore eschew war to preserve infrastructure and resources.

Immanuel Kant

History

the basic principles of the concept had been argued as early as the 1700s in the works of philosopher Immanuel Kant and political theorist Thomas Paine. Kant foreshadowed the theory in his essay Perpetual Peace written in 1795, although he thought that a world with only constitutional republics was only one of several necessary conditions for a perpetual peace. Kant's theory was that a majority of the people would never vote to go to war, unless in self-defense. Therefore, if all nations were republics, it would end war, because there would be no aggressors.

The idea that global democracy would provide a solid foundation for global peace was restated in 1917 by Woodrow Wilson as a justification for American entry into World War I and then as part of his vision for a new world order. Modern political science first observed the dyadic democratic peace—that democracies tend not to fight each other—in the 1970s. The observation enjoyed greater attention in the 1980s in particular in two pathbreaking 1983 essays by Michael Doyle.

Defining democracy

Democracy is a form of government in which all eligible citizens participate equally—either directly or indirectly through elected representatives—in the proposal, development, and creation of laws. It encompasses social, religious, cultural, ethnic and racial equality, justice, liberty and fraternity.

Defining war

War is an organized and often prolonged conflict that is carried out by states or non-state actors. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, social disruption and economic destruction. War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political communities, and therefore is defined as a form of political violence or intervention.

Possible exceptionsList of wars between democracies

The American Revolution including the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War, the French Revolutionary Wars, the War of 1812, the Belgian Revolution, the Sonderbund War, the war of 1849 between the Roman Republic and the Second French Republic, the American Civil War, the Spanish American War, the Second Philippine War, the Second Boer War, World War I, World War II (as a whole, and also the Continuation War by itself), the Israeli War of Independence, the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947–1948, the Six-Day War, the Yugoslav Wars, and the Armenia-Azerbaijan War. Most Native American tribes also had democratic forms of government, and they often fought each other up until the late 19th century, as did most tribes of Norsemen during the Middle Ages.

Criticism of the Theory Realists argue that it is not common polities but rather common

interests that can best explain the low incidence of wars between democracies. Beginning with the Cold War, they point out that democratic states have been far more likely to formally align themselves with other democracies than in the century before, suggesting that common strategic interests are a more important factor than domestic political processes. Thus, the particular structure of the international political system is the key factor determining how states will act.