In Search of Democratic Peace: Problems and Promise

1997/05/01 by Steve Chan · 11 citations
Social Sciences · #Political Conflict and Governance #Peacebuilding and International Security #International Relations and Foreign Policy #Democracy #Political science #Phenomenon #Positive economics #Epistemology #Political economy #Sociology #Law #Politics #Economics #Philosophy

paper · doi:10.2307/222803

openalex publication_date 1997/05/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/21

Abstract

This essay reviews the growing literature on the democratic peace. It assesses the evidence on whether democracies are more peaceful and, if so, in what ways. This assessment considers the match and mismatch among the data, methods, and theories generally used in exploring these questions. The review also examines the empirical support for several explanations of the democratic peace phenomenon. It concludes with some observations and suggestions for future research.

Citations

• Dangerous Dyads
• Rationalist explanations for war
• The Evolution of Cooperation
• Democracy and Peace
• Democracy and militarized interstate conflict, 1816–1965
• Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes
• Domestic Structure, Decisional Constraints, and War
• Diplomacy and domestic politics: the logic of two-level games

Cited by

• The Capitalist Peace
• The Kantian Peace: The Pacific Benefits of Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations, 1885–1992
• A Test for Reverse Causality in the Democratic Peace Relationship
• The Joint Democracy-Dyadic Conflict Nexus: A Simultaneous Equations Model
• Explaining Wars Fought by Established Democracies: Do Institutional Constraints Matter?
• The Effects of Political Similarity on the Onset of Militarized Disputes, 1816-1985
• How the Wealth of Nations Conditions the Liberal Peace
• Back to Kant: Reinterpreting the Democratic Peace as a Macrohistorical Learning Process
• The democratic peace research program and system-level analysis
• Inequality, Grievances, and Civil War
• Democratic peace theory [wikipedia]