The Fact of Democratic Peace Summary: From Grasping the Democratic Peace by Bruce Russett
Chapter 1: The Fact of Democratic Peace
Democracies
almost never fight because they have other means of resolving conflicts between
them and therefore do not need to fight each other
The more
democracies there are in the world, the fewer potential adversaries democracies
will have and the wider the zone of peace
The feeling of
common liberal and democratic values played its part in moderating power
conflicts between the US, and Britain and Britain and France.
Since relatively
few democracies bordered each other in the 1920s and 1930s they generally
avoided war with each other
Most states or
great powers with “global reach” could exert power only against contiguous
states or near neighboring states
The willingness
of states to fight each other depend on conflicts of interests such as
territorial disputes over borders or rights of ethnic groups, which is rare in
the absence of proximity
Democratic
political systems operate under restraints that make them more peaceful in
their relations with other democracies; democracies are not necessarily
peaceful in their relations with other political systems
Democracies are
less likely to use lethal violence toward other democracies that toward autocracies
or autocracies toward each other
There are no
clear cases of sovereign stable democracies waging war with each other in the
modern international system
The relationship
of relative peace among democracies is a result of some features of democracies
rather than geopolitical or economic characteristics related with democracies
Interstate war:
war between sovereign states internationally recognized by other states
including major powers whose recognition of a government confers de facto
statehood
Democracy is
usually identified with a voting franchise for a substantial fraction of
citizens, a government brought to power in contested elections, and an
executive either popularly elected or responsible to an elected legislature,
often also with requirements for civil liberties such as free speech
As twentieth century
politics unfold, the phenomenon of war between democracies becomes impossible
or almost impossible to find
Even the kind of
crisis bargaining that uses military force in a threatening manner becomes rare
between democracies, even if not quite absent; if there is a crisis bargaining,
it does not escalate to the point of war
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