2004/03/01 by Gilat Levy, Ronny Razin · 2 citations
Social Sciences · Decision Sciences · #Political Conflict and Governance #Game Theory and Applications #International Relations and Foreign Policy
paper · doi:10.1162/154247604323015463
openalex publication_date 2004/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
This paper provides a theoretical explanation for the democratic peace hypothesis (i.e., the observation that democracies rarely fight one another). We show that, when information asymmetries and strategic complements are present in the conflict resolution game, the strategic interaction between two democracies differs from that of any other dyad. In our model, the interaction of two democracies produces the highest probability that a conflict will be peacefully resolved. But, it takes two democracies for peace; a conflict involving only one democracy will not be resolved in a peaceful way more often than a conflict involving two nondemocratic regimes.