It takes two: an explanation of the democratic peace

Gilat Levy and Ronny Razin

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: In this paper, we provide an explanation of the democratic peace hypothesis, i.e., the observation that democracies rarely fight one another. We show that in the presence of information asymmetries and strategic complements, the strategic interaction between two democracies differs from any other dyad. In our model, two democracies induce the highest probability of peaceful resolution of conflicts. But it takes two for peace; one democracy involved in a conflict does not necessarily increases the probability of a peaceful resolution compared to a conflict between two non-democratic regimes.

JEL-codes: J1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-03
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (47)

Published in Journal of the European Economic Association, March, 2004, 2(1), pp. 1-29. ISSN: 1542-4774

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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/539/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: It Takes Two: An Explanation for the Democratic Peace (2004)
Working Paper: It Takes Two: An Explanation of the Democratic Peace (2003)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:539

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