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Saving Kant from Democratic Peace Theorists
I. The Democratic Peace
There is little agreement among democratic peace scholars today: there is little
agreement on what constitutes a democracy,
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there is little agreement on what constitutes
war and peace,
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there is little agreement on how to study it,
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and there is little agreement
on what the democratic peace even is.
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According to many democratic peace theorists
the democratic peace holds the potential for ending global conflict.
Why is there so little agreement among democratic peace scholars? There is so
little agreement partly because there is not one democratic peace theory. There is the
dyadic finding which states that democracies – this included liberal states (Owen 1997)
and similarly constituted republics (Weart, 1998) – do not go to war (however defined)
with one another. There are also different reasons these theorists give to explain this
phenomena. Russett (1993) argues that both institutional and normative factors – but
especially normative factors – cause the peace. Weart (1998) limits his discussion to
normative factors. Along with institutions, Owen (1997) believes that liberalism itself
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Theorists have never agreed on what a democracy is. This is partly due to the contingent nature the
concept of democracy. For an explanation see Russell Hanson (1989). For a criticism of democratic peace
theorist’s definition of democracy see Himadeep Muppidi (2001). There may be some agreement among
international relations scholars but there is no good reason to limits one’s understanding of the subject to
what international relations scholars agree upon.
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Bruce Russett (1993) and most others follow the Correlates of War definition of a war as constituting
1000 battle deaths. Spencer Weart (1998) only considers 200 battle deaths necessary for a war. For a
constructivist criticism of democratic peace theorist’s definition of war see Martin Shaw (2001, 174-176).
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Russett (1993), Bueno de Mesquita et al. (1999) and Richard Stoll (1983) study it using quantitative data.
Miriam Elman et. al. (1997) study it using qualitative methods. James D. Fearon (1994) studies the
democratic peace using formal modeling.
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Bruce Russett (1993) argues that democracies do not fight one another. John Owen (1997) argues that
liberal states do not fight one another, but do fight non-liberal states. Spencer Weart (1998) argues that
similarly organized republics do not fight one another. Randall Schweller (1992) argues that democracies
are more pacific than non-democracies.
Convention