The Interaction of Polities

Thus far, we have shown that political institutions help shape war-fighting incentives. We found that a large winning coalition has two effects: It makes states try harder if there is a war, and it makes leaders more selective about the disputes they are prepared to escalate to warfare. We now explore how these effects shape the possibility of conflict between different com- binations of polities.

Case 1: A is autocratic and so is B. Neither tries hard if there is a war. The leader of A attacks if she believes that on average she can get more from conflict than negotiations. She may believe, for instance, that the expected settlement through negotiations underesti- mates A’s relative war-fighting ability. B’s leader, pre- sumably, does not share this belief. If she did, then the negotiated settlement proffered by B would reflect that fact. As the war’s outcome is not critical to A’s (or B’s) political survival, the decision to fight is more easily influenced by secondary factors not assessed in our model.

Case 2: A is autocratic, but B is democratic. Despite the fact that A’s institutions place few constraints on the decision to fight, A’s leader is generally reluctant to attack a democracy because democracies try hard. Therefore, she knows that her state is likely to lose the war. This reduces the expected utility from fighting as compared to the expected utility from negotiations, which makes war initiated by an autocrat against a democrat less likely, all else being equal, than war initiated by an autocrat against another autocracy.

Case 3: A is democratic, but B is an autocrat. The political institutions of A make its leader reluctant to attack B unless military victory is highly likely. Yet, the incumbent in A is prepared to put more effort into the war (if there is one) than will the autocratic B. Hence, A is more likely to win the conflict than, for instance, the prewar military balance atone suggests. Thus, de- mocracies are willing to fight autocrats so long as the prewar military balance plus the democracy’s addi- tional effort give A a substantial probability of victory. Autocrats are willing to fight back under these condi- tions because victory is not essential for their political survival.

Case 4: A is democratic and so is B. A will attack B

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only if B is substantially weaker than A, taking both the prewar military balance and effort levels into account. Since B will try hard, A must have a great prewar military advantage or a great advantage in overall resource endowments that can be put to use in the war effort. Aside from such asymmetric conflicts as charac- terize imperialism and wars of colonial expansion, wars between democracies are unlikely.

We have now established that autocracies fight each other provided either one believes it has a consequen- tial advantage; autocracies are more reluctant to initi- ate wars against democracies because of the difference in levels of effort, although they are not precluded from doing so when the conditions in the model are right; and democracies target autocratic states just under those circumstances when the democracy expects to win, although this occurs more often than we might suppose because of the effort advantage induced by democratic institutions. The latter two results suggest an explanation for Benoit’s (1996) finding that democ- racies are overall more pacific than other systems. They also explain Bennett and Stam’s (1998) finding that democracies are more likely to initiate war against autocracies than vice versa. We now move to the heart of the democratic peace and explain why pairs of democracies have such a low propensity to fight.

The institutional arrangements within democracies mean that the leader’s survival depends more upon policy success than upon the provision of private goods to supporters. Once engaged in a war, democratic leaders typically make every effort to win. A war between two democracies is likely to be bloody and hard fought, with both sides using every available resource. Democratic leaders are reluctant to engage in a war unless they are extremely confident of winning. Against an autocrat, victory often is almost assured because of the democrat’s willingness to try hard. A democratic opponent, however, is also prepared to go the extra mile for policy success. Victory has to be a near certainty in order for a democracy to fight rather than negotiate, and it is unlikely that either democracy will have a sufficiently large advantage to prefer war to negotiation. Consequently, democracies are more likely to negotiate a resolution of their mutual disputes rather than fight. Only democratic leaders who do not highly value retaining office are willing to fight when the perceived odds of victory are not extremely high.

Our model supports the claim that democracies tend not to fight one another but do tend to initiate wars against autocracies, provided the democrat has a sub- stantial probability of victory. The model also indicates that autocracies can readily fight one another and are less inclined to negotiate than are democrats. We began with eight observed empirical regularities of interest, and we have shown how institutional arrange- ments explain the first five. Although the other three have not been explicitly discussed thus far, the model can readily address these patterns, too.

It is commonly assumed, and has been demonstrated empirically, that the costs a nation endures in war and the length of time it takes to win are inversely related

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American Political Science Review Vol. 93, No. 4

to its military dominance (Bennett and Stam 1996; Bueno de Mesquita 1983). If this is so, then nations that overwhelm their opponents are likely to win quickly and suffer fewer causalities in the process. As we have shown, democracies tend to make the greater effort. Therefore, on average, we should expect them to win quickly and to have lower casualties than autocra- cies. Although the relationship between costs and relative military dominance is outside the formal framework of our model, it reinforces our findings. Democracies find it hard to overwhelm other democ- racies because both sides are prepared to make an all-out war effort. Hence, a war between democracies is likely to be long and costly. Since the survival of democratic leaders depends upon public policy success, they typically want to avoid long and costly wars.

Mansfield and Snyder (1995) suggest that transi- tional democracies are not bound by the democratic peace. Instead, they are more war prone than older democracies or autocracies. Our model may shed some light on the regularity they have advanced. Elsewhere we report on the endogenous selection of institutions (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 1998) using a variation of the model discussed here. We found a larger set of conditions under which there are incentives to expand the size of the selectorate rather than the size of the winning coalition. If states in transition to democracy expand their selectorate faster than they expand their winning coalition, then the latter falls below its optimal size. In that case, the model suggests the existing government is highly susceptible to overthrow by for- eign or domestic rivals, which makes it highly unstable. This seems compatible with the view advanced by Mansfield and Snyder (1995) and reinforced by Ward and Gleditsch (1998), who maintain that not all tran- sitional democracies are war prone; those undergoing reversal in the democratization process are most apt to

fight. That is an avenue 4of research we will continue to pursue, mindful that current results are consistent with but inconclusive at this stage regarding the hypothesis about transitional democracies.

As stated at the outset, we cannot systematically evaluate Morgan and Campbell’s (1991) monadic ob- servation that large democracies appear particularly constrained, but we can indicate how it might be consistent with our theory. We bear in mind that they do not address the resources or institutional con- straints of the adversary in war. Major power democ- racies typically have a significant advantage over their opponents in terms of the military balance, which enhances their bargaining position relative to the bar- gaining position of smaller, less powerful democracies. Since an advantageous bargaining position allows lead- ers to obtain nearly everything they want anyway, even if certain of victory, the small additional gains made through military victory are likely to be offset by the costs of fighting. Therefore, powerful democracies should strongly manifest the expected behavior of democracies in a manner consistent with the Morgan and Campbell monadic results.

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