The Study of Democratic Peace and Progress in International Relations

2004/03/01 by Fred Chernoff · 6 citations
Social Sciences · Mathematics · #International Relations and Foreign Policy #Political Conflict and Governance #Global Peace and Security Dynamics #Democracy #International relations #Epistemology #Field (mathematics) #Political science #Natural science #Sociology #Social science #Philosophy #Law #Mathematics #Politics

paper · doi:10.1111/j.1079-1760.2004.00372.x

openalex publication_date 2004/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02

Abstract

This essay argues that the field of international relations has exhibited “progress” of the sort found in the natural sciences. Several well-known accounts of “science” and “progress” are adumbrated; four offer positive accounts of progress (those of Peirce, Duhem, Popper, and Lakatos) and one evidences a negative assessment (Kuhn). Recent studies of the democratic peace—both supporting and opposing—are analyzed to show that they satisfy the terms of each of the definitions of scientific progress.

Citations

• The Rise of Illiberal Democracy
• The Classical Liberals Were Right: Democracy, Interdependence, and Conflict, 1950-1985
• Science and Hypothesis
• Hypotheses on Nationalism and War
• An Institutional Explanation of the Democratic Peace
• Tracking Democracy's Third Wave with the Polity III Data
• The poverty of neorealism
• Liberalism and World Politics
• Observation Reconsidered

Cited by

• Bushwhacking the Democratic Peace
• No Rest for the Democratic Peace
• Democratic Peace: Progress and Crisis
• Thucydides, Ancient Greece, and the Democratic Peace
• The democratic peace research program and system-level analysis
• Democratic peace theory [wikipedia]