Democratic Peace Theory - Possible Exceptions

Possible Exceptions

Many scholars support the democratic peace on probabilistic grounds: since many wars have been fought since democracies first arose, we might expect a proportionate number of wars to have occurred between democracies, if democracies fought each other as freely as other pairs of states; but the number is much less than might be expected.

Historically, cases commonly cited as exceptions include the Sicilian Expedition, the Spanish-American War, the Continuation War and more recently the Kargil War. Doyle (1983) cites the Paquisha War and the Lebanese air force's intervention in the Six Day War. The data set Bremer (1993) was using showed one exception, the French-Thai War of 1940; Gleditsch (1995) sees the (somewhat technical) state of war between Finland and UK during World War II, as a special case, which should probably be treated separately: an incidental state of war between democracies during large multi-polar wars. (Gowa 1999) (Maoz 1997, p. 165). Page Fortna (2004) discusses the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus and the Kargil War as exceptions, finding the latter to be the most significant. However, the status of these countries as being truly democratic is a matter of debate.

One advocate of the democratic peace explains that his reason to choose a definition of democracy sufficiently restrictive to exclude all wars between democracies are what "might be disparagingly termed public relations": students and politicians will be more impressed by such a claim than by claims that wars between democracies are less likely. (Ray 1998, p. 89)