Democracy and War: Choice, Learning and Security Communities

Harvey Starr
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Harvey Starr: Department of Government and International Studies, University of South Carolina

Journal of Peace Research, 1992, vol. 29, issue 2, 207-213

Abstract: The growing literature on the relationship between democracy and war has focused on two questions-Whether democracies are more pacific than other types of government, and why democracies do not seem to go to war against each other. In the spirit of Lakatosian cumulativeness - looking for explanations with excess empirical content - this commentary supports one explanation of the `why democracies do not fight democracies' question. The model supported is an expected utility formulation by Bueno de Mesquita & Lalman based on the logical relationships between states which are `doves' and `non-doves'. The same explanation for democracy-to-democracy peace provided by the Bueno de Mesquita-Lalman analytics, based on the ability to `separate' states into doves and non-doves, can be used to explain the linkages between integration and the Deutschian concept of `security community'.

Date: 1992
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:joupea:v:29:y:1992:i:2:p:207-213

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