Democratization and War in the Context of Time and Space

Ward and Gleditsch (1998) showed that democratization reduces war proneness; as contemporary polities become more democratic, the probability that they will be involved in interstate war declines. This research reexamines and extends the previous work on the “dangerous democratization” versus “democratizing for peace” hypotheses in two major ways. First, we examine the claim that major powers have differential war proneness. Second, we explore the spatial and temporal contexts of a country’s immediate history and neighbors for clues about whether democratization promotes war or peace. Analyses indicate that the net effect of democratization on war involvement is robust with respect to various cross-sectional controls, such as major power status, and that countries with rocky transitions have higher probabilities of war involvement. When the duration of peace is included, we find that changes in authority structures appear to have weak effects, if any, on the likelihood of war involvement. We find that countries situated in conflict-laden local or regional environments are much more likely to become involved in war. Three forces overwhelm all others in our analyses: the duration of peace is self-stimulating and reduces the war proneness of polities; the war involvement of neighbors and the extent to which democratization is proceeding smoothly each exert a strong upward pressure on the probability of war involvement.