Probing the Democratic Peace Argument Using Linguistic Fuzzy Logic

Badredine Arfi

International Interactions, 2009, vol. 35, issue 1, 30-57

Abstract: Why have the numerous debates on the “democratic peace” remained inconclusive? In addressing this question, the paper examines causality in social sciences by using propositional calculus in the framework of linguistic fuzzy logic. The paper does this by taking into account the possibility that some causal relations might be more or less of a sufficient type while others might be more or less of a necessary type, and while still others might be of both types to a lesser or greater degree of truth. The paper shows that depending on how much more or less democratic the two states are, and depending on how much more or less they feel threatened by one another, this more or less sufficiently causes a more or less possibility of fighting between the two states. Therefore, the lack of agreement on the possibility of a democratic peace is strictly speaking neither a problem of empirical validation, nor one of theoretical explanation, although these are still important issues. Instead, the lack of agreement has much to do with taking for granted a Boolean logic approach as a framework for validating the democratic peace argument. A linguistic fuzzy-logic framework predicts a much more diverse set of conclusions than just whether or not two democracies go to war.

Date: 2009
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DOI: 10.1080/03050620902743838

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