162 CHAPTER FivE ■ The STaTe
Po liti cal scientists have developed an extensive research agenda related to the
democratic- peace theory. Are democracies more peaceful than nondemocracies are?
Do democracies fight each other less than nondemocracies do? Do democracies fight
nondemocracies more than they fight each other? Or is there a “cap i tal ist peace”?
Does capitalism explain the pacifying effects of democracy on interstate conflict?
Gathering data on diff er ent kinds of warfare over several centuries, researchers have
addressed these questions. One study has confirmed the hypothesis that democracies
do not go to war against each other: since 1789, no wars have been fought strictly
between in de pen dent states with demo cratically elected governments. Another study
has found that wars involving democracies have tended to be less bloody but more pro-
tracted, although between 1816 and 1965, demo cratic governments were not notice-
ably more peaceable or passive. Other studies have shown that socioeconomic factors
and globalization have a more impor tant pacifying effect than that of democracy or
economic interdependence.^20 But the evidence is not that clear- cut, and explanations are
partial. Why are states in the middle of transitions to democracy more susceptible to
conflict? How can we explain when demo cratic states have not gone to war? The choice
not to go to war, after all, may have had little to do with their demo cratic character.
Why have some of the findings on the demo cratic peace been so divergent? Schol-
ars who use the behavioral approach themselves point to some of the difficulties. Some
researchers analyzing the demo cratic peace use diff er ent definitions of the key vari-
ables, democracy and war. Some researchers distinguish between liberal democracies
(for example, the United States and Germany) and illiberal democracies (Yugo slavia in
the late 1990s). Also, the data for war would be diff er ent if wars with fewer than 1,000
deaths were included, as they are in some studies. And other studies of the demo cratic
peace examine diff er ent time periods. Such differences in research protocols might well
lead to diff er ent research findings. Yet even with these qualifications, the basic finding
from the research is that democracies do not engage in militarized disputes against each
other. That finding is statistically significant— that is, it does not occur by random
chance. Overall, democracies are not more pacific than nondemocracies are; democracies
simply do not fight each other. In fact, autocracies are just as peaceful with each other as
are democracies. State structure— whether a state is demo cratic or authoritarian— matters
in its se lection of foreign policy instruments only some of the time.
Models of foreign Policy Decision Making
How do states actually make specific foreign policy decisions? Do democracies make
foreign policy choices differently from the way nondemocracies do? How do the dif-
fer ent theories view the decision- making pro cess? Differences depend in large part on