Democracies at War

Reiter, Dan; Stam, Allan C.

doi:10.1515/9781400824458

Cited by 566 publications

(505 citation statements)

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“…They hardly suffer any casualties, but they drive the rate of democratic war participation up. However, the lower losses of democracies is also compatible with the notion put forward by Galtung (1996) that democracies are particularly selfrighteous and belligerent, and the fact that democracies tend to win the wars they participate in (Lake, 1992;Reiter & Stam, 2002). However, Rummel's argument about peripheral allies shows an important lead.…”

Section: The Democratic Peacesupporting

confidence: 77%

“…Although democracies rarely participate at the onset of new wars, they frequently join ongoing wars. And when they do go to war, they tend to be on the winning side (Lake, 1992;Reiter & Stam, 2002). In the two major wars of the twentieth century, World Wars I and II, the democracies were on the winning side.…”

Section: Democratic Interventionism?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…But the reluctance to take on the world's largest authoritarian country can also be interpreted in a democratic peace perspective: As Reiter & Stam (2002) argue, democracies tend to win the wars they participate in because they are better than autocracies at calculating their chances, and thus avoid taking on opponents that they cannot be sure to defeat.…”

Section: Democratic Interventionism?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Democratic Jihad ? Military Intervention And Democracy

Gleditsch¹,

Christiansen²,

Hegre³

2007

Policy Research Working Papers

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Democracies rarely if ever fight one another, but they participate in wars as frequently as autocracies. They tend to win the wars in which they participate. Democracies frequently build large alliances in wartime, but not only with other democracies. From time to time democracies intervene militarily in on-going conflicts. The democratic peace may contribute to a normative justification for such interventions, for the purpose of promoting democracy and eventually for the promotion of peace. This is reinforced by an emerging norm of humanitarian intervention. Democracies may have a motivation to intervene in non-democracies, even in the absence of on-going conflict, for the purpose of regime change. The Iraq War may be interpreted in this perspective. A strong version of this type of foreign policy may be interpreted as a democratic crusade. The paper examines the normative and theoretical foundations of democratic interventionism. An empirical investigation of interventions in the period 1960-96 indicates that democracies intervene quite frequently, but rarely against other democracies. In the short term, democratic intervention appears to be successfully promoting democratization, but the target states tend to end up among the unstable semi-democracies. The most widely publicized recent interventions are targeted on poor or resource-dependent countries in non-democratic neighborhoods. Previous research has found these characteristics to reduce the prospects for stable democracy. Thus, forced democratization is unpredictable with regard to achieving long-term democracy and potentially harmful with regard to securing peace. However, short-term military successes may stimulate more interventions until the negative consequences become more visible.

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Section: The Democratic Peacesupporting

confidence: 77%

Section: Democratic Interventionism?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Democratic Interventionism?mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Democratic Jihad ? Military Intervention And Democracy

Gleditsch¹,

Christiansen²,

Hegre³

2007

Policy Research Working Papers

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“…To recap their …ndings on the outbreak, Epstein (1987) demonstrated that the U.S. direct conventional defense could e¤ec-tively deter the Soviet aggression in the Persian Gulf; Mearsheimer (1983) and Reiter (1999) revealed the fragility of conventional deterrence against a britzkrieg or maneuver strategy. Regarding the duration, as Bennett and Stam (1996), Reiter and Stam (2002) and claimed, a maneuver strategy can shorten war, while a punishment strategy tends to make it longer. As for the outcome, Arreguin-Toft (2011) maintained that the combination of direct and indirect strategies matters for asymmetric warfare; Biddle (2004) underscored the superiority of the modern system, or a tightly interrelated complex of various techniques at the tactical and operational levels of war; Carverley (2010/11) attributed the U.S. failure against the Vietcong to its capital-intensive strategy; according to Stam (1998, 2002) and , maneuver and punishment stand valid against attrition.…”

Section: Many Military Strategists and Commanders During Wwii-includimentioning

confidence: 99%

Denial vs. Punishment: Strategies Shape War, But War Itself Affects Strategies

Nakao

2017

SSRN Journal

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Formal models of war termination have been developed along two major approaches: in one, war is interpreted as a series of battles, where belligerents exchange denial campaigns; in the other, war is illustrated as a process of bargaining with mutual punishments. In integrating these two approaches,we build a dynamic model of war, where two belligerents choose to attack each other on either force or value in every period. In the early stage of war when military strength is balanced between the belligerents, they both conduct (counterforce) denial campaigns. However, toward the end when one side has depleted its capabilities of …ghting, the other side switches to (countervalue) punishment campaigns to coerce the opponent into capitulation. Accordingly, while denials largely determine a war's outcome, punishments can in ‡uence its duration. Unlike existing studies, our theory illuminates the two-way causal relationship, where military strategies shape war, while war itself a¤ects the strategies.JEL classi…cations: D74; F51.

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“…For the argument that democracies tend to be more selective in initiating wars, see Reiter and Stam (2002) and Slantchev (2004).…”

Section: Gartner (1997)mentioning

confidence: 99%