regime type and war

Question 1

what are the Sources of Thought on Democratic Regime Behavior

Answer 1

• Liberal Imperialism:* Liberal Internationalism: * Liberal Pacifism:

Question 2

what is Liberal Imperialism:*

Answer 2

Classical Greeks & Northern Italian City States (Machiavelli): mixed-republics (liberty) are effectively warlike. No democratic peace phenomenon in this system.

Question 3

what is liberal internationalism

Answer 3

o Would Contain Three Definite articles:
 (I). State have a republican constitution: moral autonomy, individualism, social order.
 (II). Republics create pacific union.
 (III). Cosmopolitan Law: laws apply to locals and foreign (permits commerce).
o Peace follows from international trade by taking it away from state policy.
o War outside the Union to protect freedom, property, or support liberal allies.

Question 4

what is the definition of democracy

Answer 4

Democracies are states with a liberal ideology that includes: free speech, regular competitive elections, almost universal suffrage, have had at least one democratic change of government.

Question 5

• Robert Dahl’s Polyarchy:(8)

Answer 5

o (1). Freedom to form and join organizations.
o (2). Freedom of expression.
o (3). Right to Vote.
o (4). Eligibility for Public Office.
o (5). Right of political leaders to compete for support (and votes).
o (6). Alternative sources of information (media).
o (7). Free and fair elections.
o (8). Institutions for making government policies depend on votes and other expressions of preference.

Question 6

what is liberal pacifism

Answer 6

o Joseph Schumpeter: capitalism + democracy creates liberal pacifism.
o Defn “Liberal”:
 (i) individual freedom,
 (ii) political participation,
 (iii) private property,
 (iv) equality of of opportunity.

Question 7

what is one of the problem in regarding democracy

Answer 7

One of the problems is measurement of a democracy. One of the most commonly used datasets, Polity IV, which I have placed on the website, gives the U.S. a score of 9 on 10 as a democracy in 1812 (when slavery was still practised and women lacked legal rights) but gives Peru only a 2 on 10 in 1994, despite having a wider franchise.

Question 8

3 Explanations for the Democratic Peace:

Answer 8

• (1): Normative: social norms.
• (2): Structural: institutional constraints;
• (3): Organizational:

Question 9

what is the normative explanation for democratic peace

Answer 9

o Liberal Ideas: Cosmopolitan; liberty and toleration for life and property. Tyranny over individuals is not democracy.
o Liberal democracies are therefore seen as reasonable, predictable, and trustworthy.
o But democracies are still as warlike as other states, so perception matters:
o Citizens can identify other liberal states and therefore treat them preferentially (Legal zones of law).
o Citizens only support war if it brings peace, and are therefore more likely to support war against illiberal states. Illiberal leaders are therefore selected-out.

Question 10

what is * (2): Structural: institutional constraints;

Answer 10

o The same domestic institutions that encourage peaceful negotiations and compromise, cause democratic states to interact with each other on that same basis.
o The more mature the democracy, the greater is the above tendency.
o Democratic interactions with non-democratic states do not lead to the same restraint: democracies have participated in imperialism and wars of conquest.
o Structural domestic practices are extended to the creation of compatible international organizations.

Question 11

what is * (3): Organizational:

Answer 11

o Assumptions:
 (1). leaders seek policies that will minimize their displacement by other groups;
 (2). Democratic leaders seek a plurality (the largest group) of voters, whereas authoritarian leaders appeal to a smaller number of constituents;
 (3). Democratic leaders are more likely to erode the size of their coalition by alienating minority supporters.
o Therefore: The longer the tenure of an authoritarian leader, the more likely they are to believe they will survive a political gamble, and so they are more likely to risk engaging in war.

Question 12

Problems with those theory:(6)

Answer 12

1. No theoretical foundation: could be a spurious effect (Gibler 2007).
    Gibler’s Argument: Democracies are less likely to fight each other because they have settled their border disputes, and it is this peace which has created democracy (Otto Hintze 1906). Authoritarian political systems are more likely during periods of a danger of war because the presence of a larger military more easily facilitates repression of most of the political constituency. This is why democracies tend to be found on islands and cluster together on continents.
2. Tautological definitions: defns of democracy and war change to protect proposition. For example, property and gender requirements excluded many from voting up to the early twentieth century.
3. DPT is not statistically significant – there are very few opportunities for democracies to fight one another;
4. Problem of subjectivity: desire for peace/war determined democratic/despotic.
    Mutual Perceptions are crucial: Cannot explain War 1812 (UK Monarchy), US Civil War (South had slavery), and Spanish-American War (Spain not democratic). What do you think of these cases? Spain was actually democratic by today’s definition.
5. Problem of illiberal democracies: Iran: vote and assembly, but absence of freedom for the individual.
6. Democracies are very fragile, and so states under wartime threat are rarely democracies.
    Democracy undermines itself if
   * (1) it does not deliver material wealth;
   * (2) it destroys traditional ways of life.

Question 13

List of exceptions:(6)

Answer 13

• H1: Lib state trust lib state and distrust illib state. (US trusted South Africa)
• H2: Lib expect pax with other lib state. (US and India in 1971)
• H3: Lib states share ends with other lib states but not with illib states. (SU in WW2).
• H4: Lib will not change assessment of other states unless change institution. (SU in WW2).
• H5: Lib elites will agitate for their polices during war-threatening crises with other lib states. (India and the US??)
• H6: During crises, lib states follow lib policy. (Serbia; Russia in Chechnya)

Question 14

Alternative explanations:(6)

Answer 14

1). Transnational organizations make peace. All of the hegemons in the post-Napoleonic period were democracies, so they imposed institutions on the international system.
* (2). Distance prevents war.
* (3). Alliances make peace.
* (4). Wealth makes peace.
* (5). Political stability makes peace.
* (6). Common culture causes both peace and democracy (Henderson 2002).

Question 15

Realist counter-argument: where has democracy started?

Answer 15

• Among the most defensible states (UK, US, then to France).
• Discuss the three waves and counter-waves of democracy.

Question 16

Most war prone states are…..

Answer 16

democracies in transition. EG: Serbia.

Question 17

Definition: A military governments is…

Answer 17

typified by a leader with significant experience at the planning level of the military, and whose government is organized along military lines.

Question 18

statistic for military government

Answer 18

o Government: the more centralized the government, including in democracies, the more likely the state is to be involved in an inter-state war. (G&S:53).
o Military executives typically consist of 4 persons or less, as opposed to a cabinet of 15 to 20.
o Alternative Interpretation of the Findings: But, it may simply be that states that are under the threat of war centralize their government.

Question 19

The conventional wisdom that military leaders are….

Answer 19

more aggressive, and it is their belief in the use of force that causes these states to go to war has very little evidence.

Question 20

• The militaries typically took over in coups against civilian government or against other military governments, and did so for one of two reasons:

Answer 20

o (1). The civilian government was viewed as corrupt, incompetent, divisive, or threatening, or:
o (2). There was an external threat to the state that the civilian government was ignoring.

Question 21

(I) The Military Mentality, two key element

Answer 21

• (1). The most important principle of combat that is the core of the military profession is the principle of the concentration of force. o Military planners are therefore preoccupied with obtaining this concentration of force
• (2). Military leaders argue that the danger of war requires increased armaments; they will seldom argue that increased armaments make war practical or desirable. Military leaders prefer not going to war over going to war and losing it, because defeat reduces the security of their state. Consequently, militaries tend to oppose adventurist foreign polices.

Question 22

what is the concentration of force

Answer 22

at the point of attack you always want to maximize the concentration of your force against the weakness of the enemy. The greater the difference in strength, the greater, exponentially, is the difference between the losses of the stronger and the weaker side.

Question 23

move first win???

Answer 23

o Since all militaries want the same goal, you have to be able to do it faster and sooner than the adversary. Hence, the military emphasis on the initiative: the ability to move first, matters because it permits one side to place its forces more favourably to achieve the desired concentration of force.
o This is one major reason why military leaders are often so eager to escalate disputes to war: not because they enjoy the violence, but because to lose the initiative could be fatal: the first move gives tremendous advantage.
o Military leaders therefore prefer to escalate a dispute very rapidly, and in fact to jump straight to attack rather than permitting diplomatic negotiations that enable the enemy to prepare and thereby cause an increase in friendly losses when war does come. More negotiations equate to more friendly dead.

Question 24

(II) Military Organization 3 discrete organizational biases:

Answer 24

• (1). Militaries are highly specialized and rigidly hierarchical organizations designed to survive and execute missions in an extremely lethal, uncertain, and potentially fast-paced combat environment.
• (2). The military’s preoccupation with the state’s security leads it to stress the existence of foreign threats and the likelihood of attack. To appraise these, it relies upon an assessment of combat capabilities because political analysis is beyond its core competence, and because a focus on an opponent’s arsenal is feasible and in line with the military’s reliance on worst-case analysis.
• (3). The military is attuned to changes in the military balance, and is likely, therefore, to exaggerate the benefit of a perceived window of opportunity. States decide to start wars when they believe they are about to be attacked, or when the cost of attacking is less than the cost of the status quo. For militarized states, the thresholds for attack under these circumstances are lower, mainly because their sensitivity to shifts in the military balance increases the shadow of the future and an urgency to respond to expected changes.
• EG: Cuban Missile Crisis, U.S. JCS wanted to attack Cuba before the Cubans consolidated their revolution.

Question 25

(3) Military Government and Cybernetic Decision-Making

Answer 25

• A civilian-run constitutional government has a very un-military organization: it has many branches: legal, police, international affairs, economic, public works, intelligence, military, domestic, media, that are integrated managed through a single administrative body. Authority is decentralized to maximize the specialization of the different components of the government in handling incoming information.

Question 26

Military leaders, when operating within a constitutionally-defined civilian government, are more likely to…

Answer 26

be conservative in their advocacy for war because they are made more fully aware of the political limits within which they must operate.

Question 27

“war is policy by other means.”

Answer 27

Wars don’t happen for their own sake, but because they serve some political goal of the state. Military leaders in a civilian government operate within these political limits.

Question 28

Consequences of military governments: (3)

Answer 28

• (1). Tendency to a rapid escalation of crises and disputes. Military governments avoid diplomatic solutions.
• (2). Tendency to embark into war without careful evaluation of alliance politics. Statistically it has been found that non-democracies are more likely than democracies to fight severe wars: wars with high casualties. In the case of military regimes, the severity of war results from an inability to isolate target states from their allies, or to obtain allies for themselves.
• (3). Military governments are more interested in geostrategic disputes that affect the immediate security of the state than in disputes that originate in domestic politics or are of a symbolic nature. Paradoxically, military regimes are less likely to go to war over a symbolic dispute than a democracy.