Peace and Conflict Studies - Spring 2014

Peace and Conflict Studies Volume 21, Number 1 86 peace arguments through statistical analysis of the militarized interstate disputes in the developing world between 1951 and 2000. In the remainder of this paper, I first provide a brief summary of the literature on democratic and capitalist peace. Then, I make a case for the need for separate statistical analysis of interstate conflict in the developing world. Subsequently, using logistic regression, I test democratic and capitalist arguments for peace through analyzing the dyadic militarized interstate disputes of developing countries between 1951 and 2000. Finally, I conclude with a summary of my findings and highlight their importance for future research. Democratic vs. Capitalist Peace Since Small and Singer (1976) reported that democracies have not fought each other in the modern era, numerous empirical studies have been published in influential political science journals to confirm this “democratic peace”. By mid 1990s, some proponents of the democratic peace had already awarded the phenomenon a “law-like status” (Levy, 1994, p. 352). Even the critics of the democratic peace theory conceded that democratic peace has been the “preeminent nontrivial fact of international relations” (Mousseau, 2002, p. 137) and the democratic peace theory has been “probably the most powerful liberal contribution to the debate on the causes of war and peace” (Rosato, 2003, p. 585). The “Kantian liberals” have introduced two alternative explanations for the relative peace among democracies: one institutional and the other normative . The institutional account of the democratic peace argued that the institutional structure of democratic countries restrains them from waging costly wars, in particular against other democracies, thereby leading the decision-makers to settle their international disputes peacefully (Bueno de Mesquita, Morrow, Siverson, & Smith, 1999; Lake, 1992; Russett, 1993). As Maoz and Russett explain it, due to the complexity of the democratic process and the requirement of securing a broad base of support for risky policies, democratic leaders are reluctant to wage wars, except in cases wherein war seems a necessity or when the war aims are seen as justifying the mobilization costs. (Maoz & Russett, 1993, p. 626) The normative account, on the other hand, argued that democratic countries perceive each other as friends sharing common values and norms, and this mutual perception results in the peaceful resolution of conflicts (Maoz & Russett, 1992, 1993; Owen, 1994). In Owen’s words, “once liberals accept a foreign state as a democracy, they adamantly oppose war against that state” (Owen, 1994, p. 95).