Debate: Democracy for Peace,or Peace for Democracy? The Post-Communist Experience

Abstract

In the post-communist world, war appears to set back democracy. But pre-transition, prewar levels of democracy may predict both war and post-communist levels of democracy. After controlling for initial levels of democracy, it might emerge that war has no significant impact on later levels of democracy. These conjectures are supported if the years of regime change are used to measure pre-transition, prewar democracy. However, this measure is inappropriate, because war and other independent variables already had significant impacts on democracy in those years. When earlier years are used - which more appropriately measure pre-transition, prewar democracy - share of time at war is estimated to have a significant adverse impact on post-transition democracy. Moreover, pre-transition, prewar democracy is not a significant predictor of post-transition democracy, either directly, or through war, indirectly. In the post-communist sample, it is not surprising that prewar democracy has little capacity to predict war. Pre-transition levels of democracy were highly constrained by the authoritarian systems run from Moscow and Belgrade. In addition, the post-communist conflicts were inter-ethnic. In such conflicts, one would expect the institutional and normative constraints proposed by the democratic peace literature to be weaker.