Owen, M. J. (2005). “Iraq and the democratic peace.Who says democracies don’t fight?” criticizes the use of democratic peace theory by Bush’s administration to attack Iraq. The article finds that even though democratic peace theory does seem to exist, the theory does not have “any practical implications for foreign policy makers”. The article also highlights that democratizing states, especially those with intense party competition, are more likely to start wars. It also brings to our attention that a democratic Iraq is not necessarily one that will be more peaceful with its neighbours, specially if when US troops leave Iraq isn’t a full-fledged democracy. The implications of this article are that before basing their actions on theories policy makers should fully understand them and assess their costs. Another implication is that democratic peace theory can only apply once a certain level of democracy is reached.
Ish-Shalom, P. (2008). “"The Civilization of Clashes": Misapplying the Democratic Peace in the Middle East” is an extensive analysis of how democratic peace theory relates to neoconservatism. The article is divided into four sections. First it outlines the main reasons why neoconservatives ascribe to structural theories of democratic peace. The second one looks at the various theories of democratic peace theory to determine why neoconservatives choose the structural theories and not the normative ones. The third section shows the strategic consequences of implementing policies based on those theories, claiming that it has turned neoconservatism into what Ish-Shalom dubs a civilization of clashes, a never-ending war to spread democracy. The last section critiques neoconservative’s strategy, highlighting two internal incoherencies. It also proposes an alternative theory for world affairs and democracy. The article defends that the neoconservatives used democratic peace theory as a way to find a middle ground between two hugely opposite conservative works. It criticizes neoconservatives for not understanding the essence of democracy and the democratic peace as being an imperial one, that clashes very much with conservative’s fear of social engineering. It also highlights that pushing democracy through violence is futile and leads to resentment and even to the election of fundamentalist groups. The article also defends that democracy should be spread by building a civil society where participation is encouraged and citizens are informed and involved. This, the article states, is a long process and one that if it is forced by an external agent and rushed will fail.
Smith, T. (2011). “Democratic peace theory: From promising theory to dangerous practice” is an in-depth look into how democratic peace theory went from a theory that practically all political scientists ascribed to a theory that has had horrendous consequences. The article can be divided into two sections, the first one which mentions the biggest names in democratic peace theory such as Jack Levy and describes why democratic peace theory was such an attractive theory and a second one that point out the failings of democratic peace theory. According to Smith there are two main failings. Firstly democratic peace theorists failed to give importance to need for a liberal hegemon to protect and keep expanding the peace zone. Secondly theorists in this field overestimated the ease of democratic transition. The article brands democratic peace theory as an imperial peace and just like the Owen, M. J. article finds that policy makers need to be a lot more critical of the theories they use to create policies.
Dalacoura, K. (2005). “US democracy promotion in the Arab Middle East since 11 September 2001: a critique” asseses US attempts to democratize the Middle East and offers suggestions to improve said policy. The article concludes that US attempts to democratize the Middle East has had very mixed results. On one hand it has brought attention to the lack of democracy, as well as starting a debate about reforms and making need for change a necessity. However it has not weakened authoritarian power and the reforms that have been introduced are shallow and actually hinder real change. The article presents three main reasons for why US policy in the region has not been a full success. First the US is widely disliked in the Middle East and its message of democracy is rejected along with the messenger. Secondly Bush’s administration was not critical enough of democratic peace theory and overlooked the difficulties of bringing peace as well as lacking a clear plan of how to bring peace to the region. Lastly democratic promotion by a foreign agent does not work unless reform is already happening due to domestic reasons in the target country. The article provides 8 suggestions for improvement. Making sure that the war on terror does not undermine democratic freedoms and civil liberties. Being more fair in how it applies democratic peace promotion policies on states they consider friends and those they consider enemies. Democracy should be a primary goal not a second thought that must be dealt with after economic and security concerns have been satisfied. Taking a stand when Islamists have their human rights violated. Building coalitions between Islamist non violent opposition and secular opposition. Not publically and conditionally support pro democracy movements. Working towards an equal peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Finally staying in Iraq until a workable democracy has been established, but also announcing plans for withdrawal.
Thompson, R. W. (1996). “Democracy and peace: putting the cart before the horse?” argues that democratic peace theorists have given too much credit to regime type in order to explain why democracies don’t go to war and have neglected historical reasons such like geopolitical context. The article defends the idea that regional primacy has as much of an impact on the creation of peace zones as types of government. It does so by looking at four case studies: Scandinavia, Revolutionary France, North America and Taisho Japan. The piece concludes that while the relationship between peace and democracy is not spurious its explanatory powers suffer from only focusing on regime type. It also concludes that democracy as an explanation of peace may be an illusion as theorists can’t seem to grasp what is it that makes democracies less likely to go to war. The article calls for more focus on geopolitical constraints and how regional primacy may have brought peace in academic writings about democratic peace.
Layne, C. (1994). “Kant or cant: the myth of democratic peace theory” is a critique of how persuasive democratic peace theory’s causal logic is. It assesses the theory’s explanatory powers as well as whether it is a better predictor of future events than realism is. It does so by looking in-depth to the explanations democratic peace theorists provide for why democracies do not fight each other. It divides this explanations into two groups. The first one is that claims democracies do not go to war due to institutional constraints. The second group claims that the lack of wars among democracies is explained by cultural and democratic norms. The article also compares the explanatory powers of democratic peace theory and realism through four case studies of when two democracies almost went to war: the Trent affair 1861, the Venezuela crisis 1895-1896, The Fashoda crisis 1898 and the Ruhr crisis 1923. The article concludes that the institutional constraints argument fails to explain why democracies do not go to war among each other. It also highlights that this theory has led to disastrous military intervention. It also asserts that the zone of peace is an illusion as democracy at the state level does not translate into order in the international system. The political world, according to Layne, is anarchical and self-interested and the pacifying effects of democracy are doubtful and based more on hope than fact. Based on this the implications of this article are to stop basing American policy on democratic peace and to take a more realist approach.
Marschall, S., Dieterich, S. & Hartwig, H. (2014). “Bringing democracy back in: the democratic peace, parliamentary war powers and European participation in the Iraq war” explores Kant’s ideas of perpetual peace and its assumption of citizen’s wishes being directly translated into policy by democratic leaders. The study finds that parliament strength plays a key role in military intervention. Countries with stronger parliaments are less likely to militarily intervene. The study tackles the question of the pacifying effects of parliaments by looking at 25 EU countries and their involvements in the Iraq war. The findings support the study’s hypothesis of stronger parliaments having stronger pacifying effects. Both Austria’s and Italy’s parliaments blocked involvement in Iraq and the EU countries with the highest level of involvement were the UK and Poland, both have weak parliaments. Despite being a non EU country the case of the Turkish parliament’s ability to block coalition troops from attacking from Turkish soil is cited. There are two deviant cases, that of Denmark and that of Lithuania. The authors suggest a closer examination of these cases. They also suggest more research in wars where even strong parliaments could not block involvements such as the Kosovo, Bosnian or Afghanistan wars. As well as a deeper examination of the factors that contribute to parliamentary peace.
Levy, S. J. (1988). “Domestic politics and war” address the gap between theoretical literature on war and historians’ writings on the causes of war. It sets to do so by looking at the relationship between national traits and war behavior, the probability of democratic
and non-democratic regimes to go to war, Marxist and liberal theories about the impact of economy, the influence of nationalism and public opinion, and the scapegoat hypothesis. It also looks at how political scientists and historians treat domestic causes for war differently. The main conclusions of the piece are that the relationship between foreign conflict and internal conflict is more relevant than suggested by empirical political science research. Levy explains this through the narrow boundaries between disciplines and how political scientists are not turning to the expertise of other fields and therefore are missing opportunities to enrich their own findings. The other main conclusion of this paper and possibly the most famous one is Levy’s claim that the lack wars between democracies is the closest we have in political science to an empirical law. This paper is a call for greater use of other fields of study in political science to improve our own research.
The supplementary literature can be divided into the following groups. The idea that democratic peace is an imperial peace. The notion that politicians need to be more critical of the theories they base their policies on. The idea that democratic peace or its misinterpretation has led to terrible consequences. The idea that democracy is not necessarily why democracies do not go to war. And the final group would be the articles that defend democracy as a causer of peace.