POLSCI 1AA3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Information Overload, Democratic Peace Theory
1 Mar 2017
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Answer: democracy makes a difference in foreign policy; democracy is not going to war with other democracies. According to proponents of this theory, a simple study of the empirical evidence reveals the following pattern: democracies do not go to war against other democracies. Democracies do go to war against non-democracies, but not against each other. There may be a correlation between democratic states and peace but correlation does not prove causation. Modern scholars have posed two different types of explanation for the democratic peace: Democracy reinforces and institutionalizes the norm that conflicts should be resolved peacefully rather than through force: using dialogue, persuasion, and compromise; through bargaining and negotiating. Democratic leaders are socialized into solving disagreements without the use of violence, resolved through conversation socialized leaders externalize their relationship internationally with only democratic states. These leaders are likely to transfer this conflict resolution strategy to the international realm when dealing with other democracies.
