A Re-assessment of Democratic Pacifism at the Monadic Level of Analysis

Extant studies provide inconsistent evidence that democracies are generally more pacific than nondemocracies. Many scholars have concluded that this question has been answered and work should be concentrated on explaining why democracies rarely fight each other. Yet, previous state level research has been conducted with model specifications that fail to control for spurious relationships, and thus yield biased inferences that have prejudiced scholars to prematurely close the door on this topic. This paper re-examines democracy and conflict at the state level of analysis from 1870-1992 using a broad sample of states and appropriate statistical estimators. The model specifications provided attempt to capture dyadic level processes that affect monadic conflict propensities. The errors of past research designs are rectified by incorporating variables mirroring those in prominent research at the dyadic level such as economic interdependence and geography. This is done by including a similar model specification to Russett & Oneal (2001) along with other variables that tap into non-randomness of conflict prone states associated with multiple neighboring borders and participation in enduring rivalries. The results show that once the statistical models are specified in a similar manner to those in dyadic studies, democracies are in general less likely to participate in, and initiate, militarized conflicts.