An Institutional Explanation of the Democratic Peace

1999/12/01 by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, James D. Morrow, Randolph M. Siverson +1 · 23 citations
Social Sciences · #Political Conflict and Governance #International Relations and Foreign Policy #Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East #Democracy #Politics #Context (archaeology) #Political economy #Political science #Law and economics #Law #Sociology

paper · doi:10.2307/2586113

openalex publication_date 1999/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/15

Abstract

We examine formally the link between domestic political institutions and policy choices in the context of eight empirical regularities that constitute the democratic peace. We demonstrate that democratic leaders, when faced with war, are more inclined to shift extra resources into the war effort than are autocrats. This follows because the survival of political leaders with larger winning coalitions hinges on successful policy. The extra effort made by democrats provides a military advantage over autocrats. This makes democrats unattractive targets, since their institutional constraints cause them to mobilize resources for the war effort. In addition to trying harder, democrats are more selective in their choice of targets. Because defeat is more likely to lead to domestic replacement for democrats than for autocrats, democrats only initiate wars they expect to win. These two factors lead to the interaction between polities that is often referred to as the democratic peace.

Citations

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• Rationalist explanations for war
• Polities and Peace
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• Domestic Structure, Decisional Constraints, and War
• Making the Most of Statistical Analyses: Improving Interpretation and Presentation

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• The Capitalist Peace
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• Liberalism
• The Kantian Peace: The Pacific Benefits of Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations, 1885–1992
• No Rest for the Democratic Peace
• The Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory
• Comparing New Theory with Prior Beliefs: Market Civilization and the Democratic Peace
• The democratic peace and the new evolution of an old idea
• The Nexus of Market Society, Liberal Preferences, and Democratic Peace: Interdisciplinary Theory and Evidence
• The Joint Democracy-Dyadic Conflict Nexus: A Simultaneous Equations Model
• Market Prosperity, Democratic Consolidation, and Democratic Peace
• How the Wealth of Nations Conditions the Liberal Peace
• Theories of War in an Era of Leading-Power PeacePresidential Address, American Political Science Association, 2001
• Back to Kant: Reinterpreting the Democratic Peace as a Macrohistorical Learning Process
• Institutional Similarity and Interstate Conflict
• The democratic peace research program and system-level analysis
• Dictatorial Peace?
• Identifying the Culprit: Democracy, Dictatorship, and Dispute Initiation
• Conclusion and Outlook
• Democratic peace theory [wikipedia]