The Democratic Peace Controversy. A Critical Survey
Abstract
The central idea of “democratic peace” theory (DP) is that democracies do not
go to war with another. Since the 1960s this theory has been extremely popular
among political scientists, but there are a number of methodological problems
attached to the exploration of DP theory. Quantitative tests with few variables
raise the question of validity. How to distinguish between war and peace, and
how to define democracy are but a few of the problems “democratic peace”
theorists must encounter. This study discusses several different concepts of democracy,
showing that there has been a huge variety of more or less democratic
systems through history; a point which is often lost when using cases spanning
over a highly diversified universe in terms of space and time.
Another problematic aspect of the theory is that of democratisation as
such. Democratisation has proven to be a potentially dangerous transformation
process with the capacity of breeding lethal nationalism and intolerance. In spite
of all these problems, there are regions in the world where democracies have
been peaceful neighbours for decades. However, the idea of “democratic peace”
does not satisfactorily explain these phenomena, and there is a need for further
historical research into this field.