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peace. By raising the political costs of continuing to rely on the left to finance public
spending, the war helped to promote fiscal democracy.
Admittedly, this set of mechanisms also provides a stronger explanation for the
emergence of the democratic peace after World War I than for democratic aggression
prior to World War I. However, a focus on fiscal democracy complements and extends
existing claims linking democratization to war, which also some provide direction for
understanding why democratic states were more likely than autocratic regimes to initiate
militarized disputes prior to World War I. Mansfield and Snyder (2002) argue that
underdeveloped state institutions in new democracies tempt new and old political elites to
consolidate their political power in an unstable domestic environment by appealing to
populist nationalism that often contains expansionary rhetoric. While Mansfield and
Snyder also note that privileged elites in transitioning regimes often possess ties to
protectionist and imperialist interests that continue to possess influence over policy, they
do not incorporate the fiscal aspect of democratization that significantly shaped the
decade-long tension building process occurring in Europe prior to World War I.
Demands for greater political participation coincided with demands to alter the
relative burdens of public finance during this period. Government leaders, such as
Bethmann von Hollweg in Germany, shifted their coalitions of support from the right to
the left in response to the external pressures created by the arms race on land. Unable to
rely on debt markets and unable to convince landed interests to shoulder more of the
financial burdens of defense through income or property taxes, Bethmann drew on
Socialist votes to pass the crucial defense appropriation in 1913 (Stevenson, 1996, 297).
Similar dynamics occurred in France to pass the Three-Year Law of 1913 (Herrmann,
Convention