This dissertation consists of three related but distinct essays on the second-wave debates on the democratic peace. I explore three important caveats remaining in the extensive democratic peace literature: the potential confounding effect of the Cold War, the lack of contentious issues between democracies to manage peacefully, and fallible democracies only choosing weak enemies in crises. The first essay seeks to help resolve the ongoing debate concerning whether the democratic peace was purely a Cold War (CW) Phenomenon. Realists have attributed the democratic peace to common interests induced by the CW, but so far nothing has been directly tested against this claim. I use more direct measures of CW preferences to test if the effect of joint democracy is rendered statistically insignificant by introducing these measures. Conversely, liberals have suggested that the pacifying effect of democracy would be strengthened over time. I also test this claim by incorporating newly available post-CW data. Against realist expectations, the results show that joint democracy promotes peace independently of the CW security interests. Furthermore, the effect for democracy is estimated to be larger in the post-CW era although the difference between the consistently negative effects across the two periods is not itself significant in the main analysis. But all of the alternative analyses for robustness checks produce the significant results.In the second essay, I probe the possibility that the effects of territory and democracy are contingent upon each other. While the contingent effect is theoretically plausible, no study looks directly at the interaction between these two variables in affecting armed conflict. I conduct two kinds of statistical analyses. One is a replication analysis of Gibler's (2007) work on stable border peace, where Gibler argues that democracy and peace are both symptoms, not causes, of the removal of unstable borders from the agenda of issues between neighbors. Questioning both his theory and empirics, I show that Gibler's results are not replicable. Instead, I find that even controlling for border variables, joint democracy continues to be an important factor in reducing armed conflict, while Gibler's border variables lack robust independent effects. The other is based on MID data and the Huth and Allee's territorial claim list. The results from the interactive models are consistent with the conclusion that the pacifying effect of democracy holds for both territorial dyads and nonterritorial ones, and the effect gets stronger in the territorial context in spite of the imperatives toward militarization created by territorial conflict. The third essay studies how democracies select their foes in interstate military conflicts. Focusing on war outcomes, existing studies provide only indirect tests. I directly look at factors that effect selective initiation of conflict in the first stage of military conflict. Reframing democratic selection of conflict in terms of winnability and justifiability, I theorize that democratic accountability motivates leaders to choose armed conflict with justifiable causes as well as high probability of victory. The argument is tested by considering target countries' relative military capabilities, geographical constraints, comparative human rights conduct and level of democracy, and commercial relations. The results show that democracies tend to attack weaker foes to a greater degree than do autocracies, countries with bad human rights and undemocratic practices, and those without important economic relations.
Read
