Authoritarian Public Opinion and the Democratic Peace

Abstract

The “democratic peace”—the regularity that democracies rarely (if ever) fight with other democracies but do fight with nondemocracies—is one of the most famous findings in international relations scholarship. There is little agreement, however, about the mechanism that underpins the democratic peace. Recently, scholars have shown that mass publics in liberal democracies are less supportive of using military force against other democracies. This finding has been taken to support the idea that the content of public opinion may provide one mechanism that underpins the democratic peace. Using a large-scale survey experiment, we show that mass publics in an authoritarian regime—China—show the same reluctance to use force against democracies as is found in western democracies. Our findings expand the empirical scope of the claim that mass publics are reluctant to use force against democracies, but force us to rethink how public opinion operates as a causal mechanism underpinning the democratic peace.

Public Opinion and Decisions About Military Force in Democracies

“…The experiment indicated that, 4. Bell and Quek 2018;Chaudoin 2014;Chu 2019;Flores-Macías and Kreps 2017;Gelpi, Feaver, and Reifler 2009;Herrmann 2017;Herrmann, Tetlock, and Visser 1999;Johns andDavies 2012, 2014;Kertzer and Brutger 2016;Kertzer et al 2014;Levendusky and Horowitz 2012;McDermott and Hatemi 2017;Milner and Tingley 2016;Prather 2019;Press, Sagan, and Valentino 2013;Stein 2019;Tingley 2017;Tomz 2007;Tomz and Weeks 2013;Trager and Vavreck 2011;Weiss andDafoe 2019. 5.…”

The microfoundations of normative democratic peace theory. Experiments in the US, Russia and China

“…Both studies show, in contrast to the assumptions of democratic peace theory, that also individuals in autocracies are less willing to go to war with democracies. Bell and Quek (2018) replicated Tomz and Weeks' (2013) experiment on a China sample. Their intriguing finding that also Chinese participants are reluctant to attack democracies made them call for new investigations within autocratic settings.…”

“…A considerable volume of research has explored the empirical validity of this 'normative explanation' for the democratic peace (Bakker 2017;Bell and Quek 2018;Danilovic and Clare 2007;Dixon 1994;Dixon and Senese 2002, 549;Geva, DeRouen, and Mintz 1993;Geva and Hanson 1999;Jakobsen, Jakobsen, and Ekevold 2016;Johns and Davies 2012;Kahl 1998;Maoz and Russett 1993, 625;Mintz and Geva 1993;Mousseau 1997;Owen 1994;Rawls 1999;Ray 1995;Risse-Kappen 1995;Rousseau 2005, 27-28;Rummel 1983;Tomz and Weeks 2013;Van Belle 1997;Weart 1998, 75-93), or what I will call 'democratic peace theory' from here on. Only few of them have used experiments to study the logic of this theory, because its microfoundations rest on a particular set of assumptions about how individuals differ cross-regimes (Bakker 2017;Bell and Quek 2018;Geva, DeRouen, and Mintz 1993;Geva and Hanson 1999;Johns and Davies 2012;Mintz and Geva 1993;Rousseau 2005;Tomz and Weeks 2013). These experimental studies have told us, overall, that individuals within democracies are reluctant to use force towards other democracies, when compared with their willingness to use force towards autocracies.…”

“…In regard to the latter point, there are two studies that do consider autocratic samples and explore the willingness to attack democracies among non-democratic citizens (Bakker 2017;Bell and Quek 2018). Both studies show, in contrast to the assumptions of democratic peace theory, that also individuals in autocracies are less willing to go to war with democracies.…”

“…Their intriguing finding that also Chinese participants are reluctant to attack democracies made them call for new investigations within autocratic settings. However, Bell and Quek (2018) did not measure whether liberal norms were indeed absent, nor did they control for the possible effect of those norms. Although their results offer important new insights, as argued above, when we study autocratic audiences, we need to investigate the assumptions about the absence and possible effect if liberal norms as an empirical question.…”