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Democratizing for Peace
Abstract
The argument that democratization can bring about war is a powerful critique suggesting limits to the linkage between democracy and peace. This research examines this claim. Our findings demonstrate that democratizing polities are substantially less war prone than previously argued. By focusing on the characteristics of the transition process, we show that as contemporary polities become more democratic they reduce their overall chances of being involved in war by approximately half. We also find that rocky or especially rapid transitions or reversals are associated with a countervailing effect; namely, they increase the risk of being involved in warfare. Both in the long term and while societies undergo democratic change, the risks of war are reduced by democratization and exacerbated by reversals in the democratization process. To reach these conclusions, we developed and applied a logit model linking authority characteristics and war involvement using Polity III and Correlates of War databases.
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Citations
Cited by
Toward a Democratic Civil Peace? Democracy, Political Change, and Civil War, 1816–1992
Hegre, H. (2001) · American Political Science Review · doi:10.1017/s0003055401000119 · Cited by 1,619
An Institutional Explanation of the Democratic Peace
de Mesquita, B. B., Morrow, J. D., Siverson, R. M., & Smith, A. (1999) · American Political Science Review · doi:10.2307/2586113 · Cited by 1,044
The Invisible Hand of Democracy: Political Control and the Provision of Public Services
LAKE, D. A., & BAUM, M. A. (2001) · Comparative Political Studies · doi:10.1177/0010414001034006001 · Cited by 910
Gartzke, E. (2007) · American Journal of Political Science · doi:10.1111/j.1540-5907.2007.00244.x · Cited by 744
Sometimes You Just Have to Leave: Domestic Threats and Forced Migration, 1964-1989
Davenport, C., Moore, W., & Poe, S. (2003) · International Interactions · doi:10.1080/03050620304597 · Cited by 373
Metadata
- Authors
- Ward, M. D., & Gleditsch, K. S.
- Venue
- American Political Science Review
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 1998-03
- Volume
- 92
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 51-61
- ISSN
- 0003-0554 (ISSN-L)
- 1537-5943
- OpenAlex
- W2116430815
- Cited by
- 232
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 64.63
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
