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By Root 820 0

researchers over results and methods have often been sharp, it is clear that work on this subject by numerous scholars using several methods has achieved a progressively better understanding of when and how democracies use force, and the differences between their behavior and that of other types of regimes. Statistical methods, case studies, and formal models have all made important contributions to this cumulation of knowledge, and typological theories have been useful in synthesizing the literature on this topic, and in creating useful case study research designs.

This chapter analyzes the methodological lessons of the democratic peace research program, rather than directly engaging theoretical arguments about whether we should or should not expect democracies to be-have differently from other kinds of regimes. One challenge in carrying out such an analysis is that the democratic peace research program has grown to encompass many different propositions. There is some evidence, for example, that democracies are more likely than other kinds of governments to ally with one another, trade with one another, form long-lasting intergovernmental organizations, accept mediation in disputes with one another, obey international law, avoid militarized disputes with one another short of war, and win the wars in which they choose to participate.80 As the literature on these questions is vast and includes hypotheses with varying degrees of support, we focus on the hypothesis that democracies rarely if ever make war upon one another. We use the term “interdemocratic peace” to distinguish this hypothesis from the related argument, for which the evidence is more ambiguous, that democracies are generally less prone to war. The interdemocratic peace hypothesis is one of the earliest, most familiar, and best substantiated claims of the research program, and it has thus arguably generated the most methodologically diverse and sophisticated research.81 This chapter assesses three methodological strands of the literature on this question that roughly succeeded one another.

The first generation of empirical research on the democratic peace, from the early 1960s through the late 1980s, for the most part utilized statistical methods to assess correlations between regime types and war. This research sought to establish whether democracies have been more peaceful generally or toward one another, and it attempted to determine whether correlations to this effect were spurious. The result was a fairly robust, but not unanimous consensus that democracies have rarely if ever fought wars against one another, but that they have engaged in war in general with about the same frequency as have other types of regime.

Yet adequate causal explanations must include two things: correlational or probabilistic statements associating purported causes with observed effects, and logically coherent and consistent assertions on the underlying causal mechanisms through which purported causes affect outcomes. As the focus of the research program began to shift from the “whether” to the “why” of the democratic peace, a second generation of research began to use case studies to test purported causal mechanisms more directly, develop more finely differentiated variables and typological theories, and identify new variables. This research was more cognizant of the possibility that the democratic peace might manifest the phenomenon of equifinality. In other words, as in the title of a book edited by Miriam Fendius Elman, there might be Paths to Peace, rather than one single path to peace among democracies.82

The third and most recent generation of literature on the interdemocratic peace has used formal models to refine theories on this phenomenon and has tested these revised theories with both statistical and case study research. Formal models have helped clarify the logic of how democratic institutions might both constrain democracies’ foreign policy behaviors and inform other states of the credibility of commitments democratic leaders make regarding the possible use of force.