2
See Werner (2000) for an argument explaining the strategic demands made by
challengers who wish to avoid outside intervention on behalf of their targets.
2
alliance partners.
We argue that there are distinctive characteristics of democracies that affect alliance
politics. These characteristics include the transparency of their policymaking processes and
political debate, accountability to a broad section of the citizenry who can remove the leader
from office at low cost, and constraint on executive policymaking. Accountability and constraint
lead democracies to form alliances selectively, making most democratic alliances highly credible.
At the same time, the transparency of democratic politics allows potential challengers to exploit
targets whose democratic allies are likely to abrogate their commitments. Democratic alliances
should be challenged rarely, but unreliable democratic alliances should be challenged
disproportionately.
We evaluate the empirical reliability of democracies in a study of the decisions of allies to
fulfill or violate their alliances when invoked by war. The sample covers all alliance-war
combinations during the years 1816 through 1991. We find that democratic states are
infrequently faced with the decision to fulfill or violate an alliance due to invocation by war.
When they are faced with this decision, however, democratic leaders are no more nor less likely
to violate alliances than leaders of nondemocracies once we control for other factors influencing
alliance reliability. We also find evidence that challengers can successfully identify targets with
unreliable democratic allies. It appears that the transparency of democratic systems makes it
easier for challengers to exploit opportunities to gain at the expense of proteges who will be
abandoned by their democratic allies.
2
While many of these causal arguments will need to be
Convention