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Democratic states and international disputes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Joanne Gowa
Joanne Gowa
Affiliation:
Professor in the Department of Politics at Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey.
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Abstract

A growing literature in international relations concludes that democratic states pursue distinctive foreign policies. Specifically, democracies do not engage each other in war and only rarely engage each other in serious disputes short of war. Scholars have offered three basic explanations to support these findings. Each of the three invokes a different explanatory variable: norms, checks and balances, and trade. None of the three, however, provides a convincing explanation of the peace that is said to prevail between democratic polities: the distinction between norms and interests is unclear; substitutes for checks and balances exists in nondemocracies; and trade can deter conflict only under restrictive conditions.

Type
Articles
Information
International Organization , Volume 49 , Issue 3 , Summer 1995 , pp. 511 - 522
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1995

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References

For comments on earlier versions of this paper, I am grateful to Robert J. Art, Benjamin J. Cohen, Henry S. Farber, Robert G. Gilpin, Jr., Peter Gourevitch, Miles Kahler, Robert O. Keohane, Lisa Martin, John S. Odell, and four International Organization referees. I also appreciate the research assistance of Matthias Kaelberer and the financial support of the Center of International Studies at Princeton University.

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