PSC 116G Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Rationality
Document Summary
Political institutions make war between democracies much less likely (cautious) Democratic leaders more sensitive to costs of losing. Assumption: leaders want to stay in office. Institutions are in place to throw them out for failing (elections!) Democracies are more likely to win their wars. Citizens more likely to support war efforts. Democracies are hard to defeat and are afraid to defeat. Leaders" caution makes them unwilling to fight over other democracies. Not many democracies in the world before wwii. All democracies allied against greater soviet threat and their allies. If democracies are truly more peaceful, then promoting democracy can be equated to promoting peace. Understand and predict behavior in terms of actors and processes at the domestic level. Three main approaches from different levels of analysis. Process of state decision making (state level) Mostly focused on leaders and executive branch legislatures : power of pure, authorization force. Compares actual decisions to an abstraction of how decisions should be made.
