POLI 244 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Democratic Peace Theory, Liberal Democracy, Liberal Wars
11 Dec 2017
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Document Summary
An evaluation of democratic peace theory rests on two questions: does the data support the claim that democracies rarely fight each other? o. According to the institutional logic, democratic institutions and processes make leaders accountable to a wide range of social groups: these groups may oppose war, accountability derives from the fact that political elites want to remain in office. Freedom of speech and open political processes make it fairly easy for voters to rate a government"s performance. There will be some situation in which ostensibly democratic states do not perceive each other to be democratic and therefore fight one another: a democracy may not be recognized in the early stages of democratization. This logic also explains why democracies have often been prepared to go to war with non democracies: they aren"t trusted or respected. Five causal mechanisms flow from elite accountability and the need to mobilize social groups for war.
