Regime Type, the Fate of Leaders, and War

2010 ◽  
Vol 104 (3) ◽  
pp. 430-445 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALEXANDRE DEBS ◽  
H.E. GOEMANS
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Formal Model ◽  
Regime Type ◽  
Democratic Peace ◽  
Regime Types ◽  
International Interaction ◽  
The Relationship

We propose and test a formal model of war and domestic politics, building on recent evidence on the relationship between regime type, the effect of war on the probability of losing office, and the consequences of losing office. The less the outcome of international interaction affects a leader's tenure and the less punitive are the consequences of losing office, the more a leader is willing to make concessions to strike a peaceful bargain. We demonstrate that our theory successfully predicts war involvement among nondemocratic regime types. Moreover, our theory offers an intuitive explanation for the democratic peace. Compared to nondemocratic leaders, the tenure of democratic leaders depends relatively little on the war outcome, and democratic leaders fare relatively well after losing office. Thus, democratic leaders should be more willing and able to avoid war, especially with other democrats.

Great Powers, Hierarchy, and Endogenous Regimes: Rethinking the Domestic Causes of Peace

2015 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 557-588 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick J. McDonald
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Regime Type ◽  
Statistical Relationship ◽  
Military Conflict ◽  
Design Changes ◽  
New States ◽  
Regime Types ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis paper blends recent research on hierarchy and democratization to examine the theoretical and empirical costs of treating regime type exogenously in the literature most identified with studying its impact on international politics. It argues that the apparent peace among democratic states that emerges in the aftermath of World War I is not caused by domestic institutional attributes normally associated with democracy. Instead, this peace is an artifact of historically specific great power settlements. These settlements shape subsequent aggregate patterns of military conflict by altering the organizational configuration of the system in three critical ways—by creating new states, by altering hierarchical orders, and by influencing regime type in states. These claims are defended with a series of tests that show first how the statistical relationship between democracy and peace has exhibited substantial variation across great power orders; second, that this statistical relationship breaks down with theoretically motivated research design changes; and third, that great powers foster peace and similar regime types within their hierarchical orders. In short, the relationship between democracy and peace is spurious. The international political order is still built and managed by great powers.

Democracies, Territory, and Negotiated Compromises

2011 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 261-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven V. Miller ◽  
Douglas M. Gibler
Keyword(s):  
Regime Type ◽  
Democratic Peace ◽  
Militarized Disputes ◽  
Democratic Peace Theory ◽  
Regime Types ◽  
Empirical Regularities ◽  
Militarized Interstate Dispute

Multiple studies have confirmed that democracies are more likely than other regime types to resolve their militarized disputes through negotiation and compromise. We argue that these findings have not controlled for the types of disputes that are most likely to involve democracies. States have often resolved their most dangerous disputes, involving territorial issues with neighbors, prior to becoming democratic. Thus, the issues involving democracies are of less salience and are more easily negotiated with compromise. Using Militarized Interstate Dispute data from Correlates of War Project, 1816 to 2001, we confirm this explanation. The pacifying effect of regime type disappears once controls are added for proximity and issue type. We find that territorial issues among contiguous states are among the most difficult issues to resolve, and democracies are unlikely to be involved in these disputes. Our findings are an advancement of the territorial peace argument and present a first step in a re-examination of the broader empirical regularities associated with democratic peace theory.

scholarly journals Democratic peace and the norms of the public: a multilevel analysis of the relationship between regime type and citizens’ bellicosity, 1981–2008

2016 ◽  
Vol 42 (5) ◽  
pp. 968-991 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jo Jakobsen ◽  
Tor G. Jakobsen ◽  
Eirin Rande Ekevold
Keyword(s):  
Multilevel Analysis ◽  
Regime Type ◽  
Democratic Peace ◽  
The Public ◽  
Special Support ◽  
Multilevel Research ◽  
Interstate Conflicts ◽  
Attitudes Toward War ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Relevant Factors

AbstractThe democratic peace literature has convincingly shown that democracies do not fight other democracies. Theoretical explanations of this empirical phenomenon often claim that the citizenry in democracies prefers peaceful resolution of interstate conflicts. Still, there is a dearth of studies exploring the public’s preferences and values directly. We seek to rectify this by investigating, in a novel way, the relationship between regime type and citizens’ bellicosity. A comprehensive multilevel research design is employed, with data spanning 72 countries over the period of 1981–2008. This enables us to test one of the theoretical mainstays of the democratic peace thesis, viz., that regime type helps shape individuals’ attitudes toward war-fighting. Our results lend special support to normative democratic peace theory: Citizens of democracies are significantly more pacifistic than citizens of non-democracies. This result upholds when we rigorously control for other relevant factors, including specific characteristics of individuals and rival theoretical explanations.

Regime Type, Foreign Policy, and International Relations

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joe D. Hagan
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
War Literature ◽  
Regime Type ◽  
Political Regime ◽  
Democratic Peace ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
Foreign Policies

One of the most prevalent ideas in the literature of international relations (IR) is that domestic political patterns are linked to foreign policy via the concept of political regime (democracy, anocracy, and autocracy). Since the beginning of the 21st century, the regime-type foreign policy nexus has gained ample theoretical and empirical credibility in IR theory. There are four areas of research on regime type and foreign policy: the first considers democratic peace literature focused on authoritarian and democratic foreign policies; the second deals with democratization and war literature that highlights the foreign policies of anocracies; the third uses the common large-N data sets and research design and unpacks democratic and authoritarian regimes (separately) to identify subtypes of each regime type; and the fourth is the so-called politics and war literature. The politics and war literature is fragmented, with authors pursuing separate and evidently incomplete lines of argument. There are three steps for integrating the key insights of the politics and war literature: First is the intensification of domestic opposition to established elites; second, the adoption of new ruling strategies as a means for leaders to cope with rising domestic political crises and to control their hold over the regime; and third, the occurrence of international crises, in which larger aspects of domestic politics persist or emerge and affect decisions involving the threat of war.

Free to Trade: Democracies, Autocracies, and International Trade

2000 ◽  
Vol 94 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-321 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward D. Mansfield ◽  
Helen V. Milner ◽  
B. Peter Rosendorff
Keyword(s):  
International Trade ◽  
Trade Policy ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Formal Model ◽  
Regime Type ◽  
Trade Barriers ◽  
Commercial Policy ◽  
Trade Relations ◽  
Open Trade ◽  
The Relationship

Relatively little research has focused on whether countries' political institutions affect their international trade relations. We address this issue by analyzing the relationship between regime type and trade policy. In a formal model of commercial policy, we establish that the ratification responsibility of the legislature in democratic states leads pairs of democracies to set trade barriers at a lower level than mixed country-pairs (composed of an autocracy and a democracy). We test this hypothesis by analyzing the effects of regime type on trade during the period from 1960 to 1990. The results of this analysis accord with our argument: Democratic pairs have had much more open trade relations than mixed pairs.

Mixed regimes and political violence in Africa

2010 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 413-433 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur A. Goldsmith
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Regime Type ◽  
Democratic Peace ◽  
Violent Behaviour ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
The Relationship

ABSTRACTPolitical violence in sub-Saharan Africa is down. The number of military dictatorships and one-party states is also down. Are the two trends related? Conventional democratic peace theory says the answer is yes, because the relationship between democracy and peace is linear and positive. A revisionist view, however, raises questions. The majority of Africa's new regimes are not full democracies but mixed regimes that some studies find to have the greatest propensity to violent behaviour. Using statistical analysis of a trichotomous classification of African regimes from 1960 to 2008, this article suggests that neither argument fits the facts. Autocracies and partial democracies in this region appear to have similar exposure to conflict, with both types of systems suffering more conflict than full democracies. Variables other than regime type appear to be the driving forces behind these trends.

Liberalism and the democratic peace

2004 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
John MacMillan
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Democratic Peace ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
Political Spectrum ◽  
The Right ◽  
Liberal Imperialism ◽  
The Relationship

Recent trends in Democratic Peace theory have called into question the orthodox ‘separate democratic peace’ position that liberal states are peace-prone only in relations with other liberal states. This article seeks to recast the bases and scope (or parameters) of the relationship between liberalism – primarily left-liberalism – in domestic politics and peace-proneness in foreign affairs, to the effect that whilst this is manifest more broadly than conventionally understood, it is far from universal or undifferentiated. Whilst liberal ‘norms’ – as indicators of the legitimacy of force – are an important factor in determining when liberals will and will not support the use of force, liberals are also shown to have a higher threshold for the use of force than other groups on the mainstream domestic political spectrum (usually to the Right), indicating greater unwillingness to use force. The cases examined are reasonably neutral, not cherry-picked, in that they are drawn from the three major conflicts of the twentieth century and, as a starting point for the examination of liberal imperialism, Gladstone's Second Ministry (1880–1885).Whilst the above findings are presented as highly significant for understanding the character of liberal peace-proneness and an advance on the separate democratic peace position, the argument is necessarily qualified in an effort to reflect the political complexities of the phenomenon and the limitations of liberal norms as an explanatory factor. It is, however, these very qualifications that put the politics back into the research agenda and connect the knowledge claims to a wider body of academic scrutiny which, ultimately, should lead to a fuller understanding of the relationship between liberalism, democracy and peace.

scholarly journals Do Democracies Possess the Wisdom of Crowds? Decision Group Size, Regime Type, and Strategic Effectiveness

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 1192-1195 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Blagden
Keyword(s):  
Continuous Variable ◽  
Accurate Estimate ◽  
Regime Type ◽  
Democratic Peace ◽  
International Studies ◽  
Wisdom Of Crowds ◽  
Crowd Wisdom ◽  
Regime Types ◽  
Decision Group ◽  
Better Than

Abstract What is it about democracies—if anything—that enables them to avoid war with each other while navigating conflictual international politics in pursuit of their own interests? Recent research in International Studies Quarterly by Brad LeVeck and Neil Narang (2017) provides an elegant new answer to this longstanding question. Drawing on “wisdom of crowds” logic—the insight that a large-enough group of inexpert judges is more likely to average towards an accurate estimate of a continuous variable than a smaller group, even when the smaller group contains relevant experts—supported by experimental evidence, they suggest that democracies’ strategic advantages lie in their large, diverse decision-making communities. If such crowd wisdom equips democracies to accurately assess others’ capabilities and intentions, so the argument goes, then they should be better than alternative regime types at maximizing their own interests while still avoiding the bargaining failure that is resort to war. Unfortunately, however, the politics of democratic foreign policy-making compromise the crowd-wisdom mechanism. This response article thus elucidates key flaws in the argument that crowd wisdom underpins democratic peace, before progressing to explain how the crowd-wisdom insight nonetheless carries important implications—irrespective of regime type—for strategic effectiveness.

The United States and the Iranian Nuclear Programme

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Hurst
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nixon Administration ◽  
Comprehensive Plan ◽  
The Us ◽  
Nuclear Issue ◽  
The Relationship

The United States, Iran and the Bomb provides the first comprehensive analysis of the US-Iranian nuclear relationship from its origins through to the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015. Starting with the Nixon administration in the 1970s, it analyses the policies of successive US administrations toward the Iranian nuclear programme. Emphasizing the centrality of domestic politics to decision-making on both sides, it offers both an explanation of the evolution of the relationship and a critique of successive US administrations' efforts to halt the Iranian nuclear programme, with neither coercive measures nor inducements effectively applied. The book further argues that factional politics inside Iran played a crucial role in Iranian nuclear decision-making and that American policy tended to reinforce the position of Iranian hardliners and undermine that of those who were prepared to compromise on the nuclear issue. In the final chapter it demonstrates how President Obama's alterations to American strategy, accompanied by shifts in Iranian domestic politics, finally brought about the signing of the JCPOA in 2015.

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