POL208Y5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Democratic Peace Theory, Liberal Democracy, Regime Theory
24 May 2016
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2 explanations for inter-liberal peace (some overlap between them: political culture values, customs, habits, etc within political group. Many democratic states will have a high regard for a rule of law (rules created and enforced as fairly as possible), share in political values and beliefs. Law is neither arbitrary nor malicious; there is a judiciary to settle disputes. However if they are not part of a democracy, you don"t have those shared values and will find other ways to settle (ex force: political structures. Something about the structure of the democratic system that makes it difficult for leaders to go to war with another democracy. Key variables are poorly operationalized (poorly defined) Germany was definitely not democratic between 1933-1945 but has for sure been a liberal democracy since 1955. Countries like britain took centuries for this change (in contrast to. Therefore many scholars believe you should judge based on the context of time.
