Democracies are Less Warlike Than Other Regimes

Abstract

The clear consensus in the literature is that democracies are no less or more warlike than other types of regimes. But when the core studies upon which this consensus is based are looked at closely, they imply in fact that democracies are less warlike. Regardless of this, these studies, as well as most others on this question, are based on a frequency count of wars, which gives the same count of one for a nation that lost a few dozen killed and for another that lost several million. It is argued that a better theoretical interpretation of a regime's warlikeness is in terms of the severity of war, and that in these terms the degree to which a regime is democratic is inversely correlated with the severity of its wars, 1900-87. A survey of the published research further substantiates that democracies tend to fight less severe wars than other regimes.