Last Friday (January 27), NPR broadcast a piece about a new study, Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War, which purports to show that emerging democracies are more likely than other countries to become involved in wars. The study, authored by Professors Edward Mansfield of the University of Pennsylvania and Jack Snyder of Columbia University, uses qualitative and quantitative analysis to “show that emerging democracies with weak political institutions are especially likely to go to war.”
The crux of the matter is really contained in the key phrase — “emerging democracies with weak political institutions.” I have not read the full book although I have read the first chapter. However, I do not think it is breaking new ground to posit that nascent “democracies”, especially those with extremely weak political and civil society institutions and countries so defined merely because an election was held, are going to find their transitions replete with obstacles and periodic setbacks. It is similarly not ground breaking to suggest that in many instances leaders of nascent democracies may seek to consolidate their hold on power by marshalling nationalist zeal on behalf of a military conflict with another country and in the process truncate or co-opt democratic processes or institutions designed to support it.
Lest there be any doubt about the real positions of the authors, let me quote several sentences from Chapter One of “Electing to Fight”:
No mature democracies have ever fought a war against each other. Consequently, conventional wisdom holds that promoting the spread of democracy will promote world peace and security…. Indeed, over the long run, it is probably true that the further spread of democracy will promote global peace and stability. In the short run, however, the beginning stages of transitions to democracy often give rise to war rather than peace…. Not all democratic transitions are dangerous; as we explain in this book, the chance of war arises mainly in those transitional states that lack the strong political institutions needed to make democracy work (such as an effective state, the rule of law, organized political parties that compete in fair elections, and professional news media).
So, it appears, even the authors accept that the axiom is in fact true – promoting democracy will, in the long run, help to create peace and stability in the world. So, one might ask, what is at issue then? The real thrust of the book, it strikes me, is two-fold. First, it reinforces the accurate postulation that elections are a necessary condition for achieving democracy but not a sufficient condition. Since the communist countries during the Cold War all held “elections,” I would have thought this was not a dramatic discovery. However, from the standpoint of maintaining public support in the mature democracies for continued support of efforts to promote democratic institutions and processes in transitional countries (especially after the first elections are held), it is a useful exercise. Similarly, it is important to remind the leaders and the populace in such countries striving to achieve democracy that merely holding that first real election is not the end of the transition but rather the beginning.
Second, clearly more emphasis has to be placed on establishing the proper foundations within nascent democracies to support credible governmental and civic institutions in order to prevent “backsliding” or to limit the ability of corrupt leaders to thwart democratic processes and institutions in the future – whether to aggrandize power to themselves or to commit the nation to reckless actions abroad.
To this end, the authors do examine “the process and sequence of democratization to identify when and how it leads to peace or may instead increase the risks of war.” While it would be useful to know which democratic institutions and reforms make success more likely in the short run – and to help cement democracy in the country over the long run – one cannot escape feeling that such ideal circumstances will rarely present themselves, and the failure of them to exist can certainly not mean that we will not side with those who genuinely seek democracy and wish to act on their aspirations by pushing for elections.
Perhaps, if they are correct, this could serve to temper the desire of our policy makers to push countries that are already in the process of reforming to jump too quickly to the desired end result of holding elections and instead give them a little more breathing room to arrive their at their own pace. But, as we have seen in Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia (after the collapse of the Soviet Union), and others countries, it is extremely difficult — and arguably foolhardy — to justify postponing a democratic electoral process once it has been demanded by the population.
Published Date: January 31, 2006