Never Say Never: Wishful Thinking on Democracy and War
Article Summary and Author Biography
Spencer R. Weart's new book insists that democracies will never fight one another, but his slanted reading of the past is of little help in crafting a future without wars.
Stephen M. Walt is Professor of Political Science and Master of the Social Science Collegiate Division at the University of Chicago. His books include The Origins of Alliances.
Since the mid-1980s, scholars of international politics have debated whether democratic states are strongly inclined to keep peace with one another. Apart from its academic interest, the "democratic peace" thesis has the greatest possible policy relevance. If democracies are in fact hardwired to treat each other benignly and if we can devise nonviolent means of encouraging democratic rule, we may have finally discovered a recipe for lasting peace.
The idea that democracies do not fight one another is undeniably attractive for those who happen to live in them. It would be wonderful if spreading our preferred form of government were also a reliable means of promoting peace, and one can hardly imagine a stronger justification for exporting republican ideals. Since war between the major democratic powers is extremely unlikely at present, the democratic peace is also intuitively plausible.
Yet the inherent attractiveness of this proposition is precisely why Americans should view it with some caution. Because the idea of a democratic peace is so flattering to our own values, we may embrace it even when the evidence is ambiguous and its long-term validity uncertain. Since many scholarly works have cast doubt on the hypothesis, a healthy sense of skepticism seems warranted.
GIVE PEACE A CHANCE?
The latest entrant into this burgeoning debate is Spencer R. Weart. Drawing a critical distinction between "democratic" and "oligarchic" republics, he argues in Never at War that well-established republics of the same type almost never fight one another. Although history offers up a number of near misses and potential exceptions, Weart concludes that none of them seriously damages his basic claim. For Weart, therefore, spreading democracy remains the most promising path to world peace.
Weart's central argument rests on two empirical propositions. First, truly democratic republics -- which he defines as states where at least two-thirds of the citizens enjoy full political rights -- have simply never fought one another. Second, so-called oligarchic republics -- states where less than a third of adult males hold full political rights -- have almost never fought one another. Wars do occur
between democracies and oligarchies and between republics and dictatorships, but they do not occur between republics of the same type. This claim does not apply if a republic is brand new, but Weart argues that it is virtually 100 percent reliable once a republic has been consolidated over at least three years.
For Weart, the key to the "republican peace" lies in a broad conception of political culture. A state's political culture consists of "the beliefs that a group's members hold about how people ideally ought to deal with another, and their beliefs about how people actually do deal with one another in practice, when groups are in conflict." He suggests that tolerance and compromise are central to republican political culture and argues that political elites will apply lessons learned at home to foreign policy. As a result, republican diplomats will prefer negotiated settlements and eschew the use of force, especially when dealing with one another.
Most importantly, Weart believes that republican states "draw the crucial boundary around one's in-group to include everyone, even foreigners, who shares one's political culture." Political culture thus forms the critical dividing line between those who are part of the "in-group" and those outside it. Democratic republics regard other democracies as part of their own "in-group" and reject the use of force against them, but see oligarchies and dictatorships as illegitimate outsiders who do not merit the same restraint. Similarly, while oligarchic republics view democracies as a source of subversive ideas and readily use force against them, they refrain from attacking other oligarchies.
Weart bases these sweeping claims on a survey of the Greek and Italian city-state systems, the Swiss Confederation, the Hanseatic League, and more recent cases such as the American Civil War, the Anglo-Boer War, and World War I. Although his historical treatments are brief and his supporting documentation seems intended more to dazzle than persuade, the pattern of evidence is at least suggestive. Wars between similar types of republics appear to have been relatively rare, and Weart argues that virtually all the apparent exceptions occurred either because the antagonists were not really the same sort of republic or because the level of violence was trivial.
Weart lays out his case in clear, readable prose and livens his narrative with entertaining anecdotes. His distinction between democratic and oligarchic republics and his emphasis on their being "well-established" is a useful qualification to the democratic-peace hypothesis, helping to account for several historical anomalies. Weart also acknowledges that the spread of democratic principles is not an unalloyed good -- both because democracies are prone to using force to export their ideals and because autocrats' fear of democratic rule is itself a potent source of insecurity and conflict. For these reasons, Never at War is in many ways the most accessible and comprehensive brief for the democratic peace available. But by limiting his discussion primarily to evidence that supports the democratic-peace hypothesis, Weart tells only one side of the story.
REASONABLE DOUBTS
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