Charles W. Kegley

Rethinking Democracy and International Peace: Perspectives from Political Psychology

The intent of this article is to expand our understanding of the “zone of peace” that appears to surround democracies by proposing several explanations derived from psychological theories. These explanations, in contrast to those considered conventionally, explicitly incorporate leaders, leaders perceptions, and their leadership styles. The first builds on social identity theory and focuses on leaders images and beliefs about the enemy. The second examines leaders responsiveness to normative and institutional constraints and the effect this sensitivity exerts on their leadership style, suggesting how the latter can shape governments security strategies. The explanations embed research on the democratic peace into the theoretical context of decision making and encompass autocratic as well as democratic political systems in the process.

Ballots, a Barrier against the Use of Bullets and Bombs Democratization and Military Intervention

Numerous empirical investigations have demonstrated that democracies are prone to cooperate with one another and that they almost never wage war against one another. Such research has inspired hope that so-called democratic peace might be achieved in the post-cold-war era, especially in light of the rapid diffusion of democracy worldwide since the mid-1970s. This article collates two streams of previously unexamined evidence that speak to the promise of this hope. Looking cross-nationally at the incidence of overt military intervention between 1975 and 1991, the study discovers that democracies were unlikely to be the targets of this form of coercive diplomacy. Both democracies and nondemocracies intervened in the internal affairs of democracies less than would be expected by chance. After exploring several contending explanations for this finding, this article advances some hypotheses about why being a democracy may shelter such states from foreign attack and considers the contribution democratization can make to national security.

Putting Military Intervention into the Democratic Peace A Research Note

Although many empirical investigations have demonstrated that democracies almost never wage war against one another, there remains some doubt whether this empirical law applies to other kinds of armed conflict. The present research note combines two streams of evidence that speak to this question. Looking cross-nationally at the incidence of overt military intervention between 1974 and 1991, an inventory of 225 discrete cases is produced with the distributions disaggregated by regime type. Comparing initiators and targets dyadically, the study uncovers 51 instances in which democracies have used this form of coercive diplomacy to influence the policies and practices within other democratic states. Presenting the trends exhibited in these indicators and juxtaposing them with an alternative measure of intervention, this research communication advances some observations about the obstacles to convergence among research findings in the study of the democratic peace, and some hypotheses about the kinds of research questions that warrant investigation with the inventory of cases generated.

The Political Psychology of `Peace through Democratization'

Many scholars and policy-makers have pinned their hopes on the expectation that in the post-Cold War world peace will be preserved if the diffusion of democracy continues. This hope is grounded on the demonstrable evidence that historically democracies have rarely, if ever, waged large-scale war to resolve their disputes with one another. Yet explanations as to why this propensity is exhibited have been unsatisfactory, and debate about the causes of `the democratic peace as well as about the domain to which it applies have not resulted in consensus. Reviewing the empirical findings in this genre of research, this article examines a deviant case — the Reagan Administrations covert military interventions in the 1980s against established governments — to generate propositions about the heretofore neglected influence of democratic leaders perceptions and beliefs on the linkage between democracy and peace. The implications for subsequent theory-building are probed to suggest how explanations and descriptions of the democratic peace might be improved by taking an expanded view of its preconditions.

A Peace Dividend? Democracies' Military Interventions and Their External Political Consequences:

Numerous empirical investigations have found that democracies do not wage war against one another. This finding has inspired hope that the rapid worldwide dispersion of democracy since the mid-1970s will produce an era of pacific relations and has encouraged the active promotion of democratization. This paper inspects democracies use of overt military intervention between 1974 and 1988 and shows that democratic states targeted military activity toward other free or partly free countries 141 times during this time period. Exploring the purposes for and the consequences of these interventions, the study concludes that under some conditions military interventions can affect transitions to democracy. However, it finds that more of democracies interventionary activity is directed toward maintaining democratic identity and the liberal democratic community than toward its expansion. The inquiry ends by assessing the implications of the use of interventionism as a policy tool for democratization in the post-Cold War era.

Structural Characteristics of International Influence Relationships

This study replicates Steven J. Bramss previous empirical investigation of influence relationships between pairs of nations in the international system. Bramss diagraph model is applied to international visit data (between heads-of-state and governmental officials) for the 1966–1967 period, thereby extending for two years the time frame originally investigated. As a verification test of the stability, generalizability, and reliability of Bramss original findings, the replication confirms many of Bramss empirically derived generalizations about the hierarchical structure of influence relationships in the international system. Principal among these is that the international system is highly stratified and that influence tends to be pyramidally concentrated in the hands of a relatively small group of major nations. The replication study also provides evidence about temporal variation in the structure of influence relationships, including, for example, the discovery that Soviet influence relationships underwent a marked deterioration in the observation period, while U.S. relationships manifested relative stability, thereby providing additional hypotheses about the structure of internation influence.