James Lee Ray

Democracy and international conflict : an evaluation of the democratic peace proposition

In Democracy and International Conflict James Lee Ray defends the idea, so optimistically advanced by diplomats in the wake of the Soviet Unions demise and so hotly debated by international relations scholars, that democratic states do not initiate war against one another and therefore offer an avenue to universal peace. Arguing that advocates of the democratic peace proposition have not adequately evaluated the impact of regime transition on democratization, Ray reviews every regime transition of the past 170 years and traces the extent to which democracy has prevailed in the global political system since 1825. His analysis reveals the important roles played by the international environment and by domestic factors in determining global movements toward or away from democracy. Ray also provides a simple, precise, and operational definition of democracy that serves as a basis for addressing the controversy surrounding the issue of whether democratic states have ever waged war against one another. He concludes that it is possible to defend the assertion that there has never been an international war between democratic states. Finally, Ray contends that because the number of wars eliminated by democracys pacifying effect has been small, scholars must supplement quantitative analysis of a great number of cases with evidence generated by the intensive study of individual cases. He examines the relationship between these two types of analyses and demonstrates how they may be integrated to exploit their complementary virtues.

Wars between democracies: Rare, or nonexistent?

It is often asserted that democratic states never fight wars against each other, but there is a rather lengthy list of exceptions to that rule that are consistently or prominently mentioned in the literature on the democratic peace phenomenon. The controversy regarding whether democratic states never, or only rarely fight wears against each other is unlikely to move in the direction of satisfactory resolution unless an attempt is made to evaluate controversial cases based on a threshold of democracy that is simple, operational, theoretically informed, and intuitively appealing. If a political regime is categorized as democratic only if the identities of the leaders of its executive branch and the members of its national legislature are determined in elections in which at least two independent political parties participate, in which at least half the adult population are eligible to vote, and if the fairness of elections has been established by at least one peaceful transfer of power between opposing polit...

Constructing Multivariate Analyses (of Dangerous Dyads)

Most multivariate models aimed at evaluating the impact of democracy on interstate conflict contain a set of control variables sufficiently large to have a confusing impact. Partly for that reason, the potentially confounding impacts of such variables as wealth, political stability, and political similarity on the relationship of democracy to conflict have still not been evaluated in a definitive manner. In other cases, multivariate models contain intervening variables that are likely to produce misleading results. Multivariate analyses aimed specifically at uncovering spurious relationships in a more straightforward and incremental manner are better able to produce clear and informative results.

The abolition of slavery and the end of international war

Slavery and war have both historically been considered inevitable consequences of human nature. Yet slavery has been abolished, and moral progress may have contributed to slaverys disappearance. Both realists and Marxists are skeptical about the impact of ethical constraints on political decisions, while idealists as well as at least some regime analysts emphasize the role of those constraints. However, elements of all of these approaches support the proposition that moral progress may bring an end to international war.

The Future as Arbiter of Theoretical Controversies: Predictions, Explanations and the End of the Cold War

Some analysts assert that a failure by the discipline of international relations to predict the end of the Cold War reinforces their conviction that predominant theories as well as systematic empirical analyses of international politics have proved fruitless. Accurate predictions are an important product of useful theory, partly because predictions cannot be modified in order to accommodate the events upon which they focus, since the outcomes to be accounted for are unknown. But predictions are contingent statements about the future, not unconditional assertions, which might more accurately be labelled prophecies. Three related streams of work - a political forecasting model that relies on rational choice theory, insights and information provided by traditional area specialists, and democratic peace theory - together constitute an emerging basis for making accurate predictions about the political future, and deserve attention in any evaluation of the utility of systematic empirical analyses of politics. Moreover, the systematic empirical approach is not entirely bereft of potential to provide a better understanding of the end of the Cold War. The democratic peace proposition suggests that if the autocratic protagonist in a confrontation becomes more democratic, tensions should be significantly reduced. This implication of democratic peace did not go unnoticed in the years before the Cold War ended.

Beginners and Winners: The Fate of Initiators of Interstate Wars Involving Great Powers Since 1495

All interstate wars involving Great Powers from 1495 to 1991 are analyzed in order to investigate a controversy about the success rate of war initiators and factors that might have an impact on that success rate. We find that the initiators of wars involving Great Powers won only slightly more than half the time in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, whereas they have been about twice as likely to win as targets in the 19th and 20th centuries. The difference in success rates can apparently be accounted for in part by factors such as intervention on behalf of targets and the duration of wars, although these factors have their clearest impact only on wars in which Great Powers fight against minor powers. Wars involving Great Powers on both sides were more common in the earlier centuries, and the initiators of the increasingly uncommon wars between Great Powers have won only rarely in the most recent two centuries. The absence of wars between Great Powers in the last 50 years might suggest that Great Powers have “learned” over time to avoid becoming involved in wars against each other.

Symposium on Replication in International Studies Research

The following symposium tackles an important debate in the field of international studies research and in social science research more broadly. Originating as presentations at the 2002 International Studies Association meetings in New Orleans, the following set of papers examines issues concerning the potential replication of research results from a number of different conceptual and technical perspectives. It also spans an array of journals and journal editors in our field that confront issues of replication on a regular basis. The interactions generated by this symposium have already led to the agreement, detailed at the end of the symposium among the four leading internations relations journals to adopt a single common replication policy. The editors of these journals challenge others to follow their lead. The Editors of ISP hope that this symposium begins a larger discussion on these issues and invites commentary from interested scholars. Lastly, I want to thank Nils Petter Gleditsch for soliciting, organizing, and coordinating the contributions to this symposium. Without his work, this project would not have come to fruition as quickly or in as insightful a fashion. Three anonymous reviewers also provided detailed comments on the entire set of articles in this symposium. We are indebted to the care and effort they gave to the project. Mark A. Boyer For the Editors of ISP

Global Trends, State-Specific Factors and Regime Transitions, 1825-1993

If democratic states are significantly less conflict prone in their relationships with each other than are pairs of states involving at least one autocratic regime, then global trends in regime transitions have important implications for international politics. Analysts of international politics, then, might fruitfully pay increased attention to such global trends. Predominant approaches to regime transitions emphasize differences between regime changes, and the impact of internal factors specific to the states in which they take place. An alternative approach focuses on similarities in transitions, connections between them, and their possibly common origins in the global environment. The relative strengths of state-specific factors and systemic environmental forces can be inferred from a comprehensive empirical analysis of regime transitions at the global level. Such an analysis of the average level of democracy in all the states in the international system over the last 170 years suggests that the balance of system level forces has had an important impact on global trends in regime transitions. However, a partitioning of variance in data on regime transitions in each of the states of the international system from 1825 to 1993 also reveals that simultaneous similar changes in the levels of democracy have been much less common than dissimilar changes toward or away from democracy.

Dependency and Economic Growth in Latin America

Several prior empirical analyses have revealed a negative relationship between dependency and the economic performance of developing nations. However, two recent articles focusing on Latin American states report apparently contradictory findings. Kaufman, Geller, and Chernotsky (1975) found that more dependent Latin American states grow more rapidly in terms of changes in GNP, while Alschuler (1976)—analyzing virtually the same states, but a shorter time period—found that more dependent states experience slower economic growth. A comparison of the data and the indices used in the two studies reveals that there are a number of possible explanations for the differences in these findings. Scatter plots of several relationships also show that both sets of findings may have been substantially affected by extreme “outliers.” Finally, the application of panel regression analysis to the different (but overlapping) time periods analyzed in the two previous studies uncovers similar relationships between dependency and economic growth in Latin America.

Power disparities and paradoxical conflict outcomes

The “paradox of unrealized power” arises when weaker states defeat more powerful states in military conflicts. Such conflict outcomes can be accounted for by stressing the lack of will or skill on the part of the apparently more powerful states, or by focusing on the extent to which power resources effective within some polity‐contingency frameworks are relatively useless in others. The fact that the former type of explanation can be unfalsifiable has led some analysts to prefer the latter. However, recent research has shown that such activation, or conversion process models are not necessarily invulnerable to evidence. Finally, the principle of parsimony offers useful guidelines when theoretical arguments and empirical evidence have contributed all they can to a resolution of controversies regarding the relative impact of alternative factors on paradoxical conflict outcomes. For example, that principle (and some empirical evidence) suggests that “smaller battalions” often win because they receive help in...