Realism and the democratic peace the primacy of state security in new democracies

Millennial Reflections on International Studies

Volumn , Issue , 2009, Pages 107-130

  Midlarsky, Manus I ^a  

^a RUTGERS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 85059588477     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: None     Document Type: Chapter

References (120)

1. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, James D. Morrow, Randolph M. Siverson, and Alastair Smith, “An Institutional Explanation of the Democratic Peace,” American Political Science Review 93 (December 1999): 791–807.
2. Manus I. Midlarsky, “Mature Theories, Second Order Properties, and Other Matters,” in What Do We Know about War? ed. John A. Vasquez (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), 329–34.
3. Robert Jervis, “Realism in the Study of World Politics,” International Organization 52 (autumn 1998): 972.
4. In an operational sense, a significant domain refers to a nontrivial percentage of the variance explained in a systematic quantitative analysis. But even more important can be the added inclusiveness and expansion of the theory achieved by incorporating elements of more than one paradigm and setting.
5. John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (1861; New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 103.
6. John Gray, “The Light of Other Minds,” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5054, February 11, 2000, p. 12.
7. It appears that Mill’s concern for human security is consistent with his overall desire to maximize happiness, as Kant’s peace between republics is consistent with his emphasis on rules, here expressed as rules of government. As a major moral philosopher put it, “Kant’s view of morality, then, is quite different from those of both Aristotle and Mill. Rather than basing it on the virtues, or on the maximization of happiness, Kant sees morality as constituted by certain rules.
8. ” Roger Crisp, editor’s introduction to Utilitarianism, by John Stuart Mill (1861; New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 7; emphasis in original.
9. Although this certainly has been true in the development of international relations theory, analytically it does not have to be the case. A concern for security, a major property of realist thought, can emerge from the domestic environment. Armaments manufactured or procured by an autocratic government to maintain its security against domestic democratic opposition may trigger the security dilemma with neighboring countries that suspect the armaments are for international use. This problem would be especially severe in Third World environments where offensive and defensive weapons are not easily distinguishable from each other because of their relatively unsophisticated levels. To this extent, the two axes of realism-liberalism and domestic-international to be introduced in figures 1 through 3 can be considered to be orthogonal.
10. The place of national or state security at the heart of realism cannot be doubted. For developments of this concept in relation to realism see, for example, John H. Herz, “Idealist Internationalism and the Security Dilemma,” World Politics 2 (January 1950): 157–80.
11. Robert Jervis, “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma,” World Politics 30 (January 1978): 167–213.
12. Jack L. Snyder, “Perceptions of the Security Dilemma in 1914,” in Psychology and Deterrence, ed. Robert Jervis, Richard N. Lebow, and Janice Gross Stein (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 153–79.
13. Charles L. Glaser, “The Security Dilemma Revisited,” World Politics 50 (October 1997): 171–201.
14. Jeffrey W. Legro and Andrew Moravcsik, “Is Anybody Still a Realist?” International Security 24 (fall 1999): 5–55.
15. John A. Vasquez, “The Realist Paradigm and Degenerative versus Progressive Research Programs: An Appraisal of Neotraditional Research on Waltz’s Balancing Proposition,” American Political Science Review 91 (December 1997): 899–912.
16. Thomas J. Christensen and Jack L. Snyder, “Progressive Research on Degenerate Alliances,” American Political Science Review 91 (December 1997): 919–22.
17. Colin Elman and Miriam F. Elman, “Lakatos and Neorealism: A Reply to Vasquez,” American Political Science Review 91 (December 1997): 923–26.
18. Jervis, “Realism in the Study of World Politics”.
19. John J. Mearsheimer, Great Power Politics (New York: Norton, 2001).
20. Randall L. Schweller, “New Realist Research on Alliances: Refining, Not Refuting, Waltz’s Balancing Proposition,” American Political Science Review 91 (December 1997): 927–30.
21. Stephen M. Walt, “The Progressive Power of Realism,” American Political Science Review 91 (December 1997): 931–35.
22. Kenneth N. Waltz, “Evaluating Theories,” American Political Science Review 91 (December 1997): 913–17.
23. Michael W. Doyle, “Liberalism and World Politics,” American Political Science Review 80 (December 1986): 1151–69.
24. Bruce M. Russett and Harvey Starr, “From Democratic Peace to Kantian Peace: Democracy and Conflict in the International System,” in Handbook of War Studies II, ed. Manus I. Midlarsky (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 93–128.
25. Joseph M. Grieco, “Anarchy and the Limits of Cooperation: A Realist Critique of Neoliberal Institutionalism,” International Organization 42 (summer 1988): 485–507.
26. Ole R. Holsti, “Theories of International Relations and Foreign Policy: Realism and Its Challengers,” in Controversies in International Relations Theory: Realism and the Neoliberal Challenge, ed. Charles W. Kegley Jr. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 35–65.
27. Andrew Moravcsik, “Taking Preferences Seriously: A Liberal Theory of International Politics,” International Organization 51 (autumn 1997): 513–53.
28. Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987).
29. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979).
30. Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984).
31. Manus I. Midlarsky, “Environmental Influences on Democracy: Aridity, Warfare, and a Reversal of the Causal Arrow,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 39 (June 1995): 224–62.
32. Joanne Gowa, “Democratic States and International Disputes,” International Organization 49 (summer 1995): 511–22.
33. William R. Thompson, “Democracy and Peace: Putting the Cart before the Horse?” International Organization 50 (winter 1996): 141–74.
34. Patrick James, Eric Solbert, and Murray Wolfson, “An Identified Systemic Model of the Democracy-Peace Nexus,” Defence and Peace Economics 10, no. 1 (1999): 1–37.
35. Murray Wolfson, Patrick James, and Eric Solberg, “In a World of Cannibals Everyone Votes for War: Democracy and Peace Reconsidered”, in The Political Economy of War and Peace, ed. Murray Wolfson (Boston: Kluwer, 1998), 155–76.
36. For debate on the precedence of democracy or peace, see John R. Oneal and Bruce Russett, “Comment: Why ‘An Identified Systemic Model of the Democracy-Peace Nexus’ Does Not Persuade,” Defence and Peace Economics 11, no. 2 (2000): 197–214.
37. Patrick James, Eric Solberg, and Murray Wolfson, “Democracy and Peace: Reply to Oneal and Russett,” Defence and Peace Economics 11, no. 2 (2000): 215–29.
38. A. F. K. Organski, World Politics (New York: Knopf, 1958).
39. Here we see a role for liberalism in understanding elements of the power transition; hence it is not positioned at the extreme right of the liberalism-realism continuum. It was economic liberalism of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that was associated with the rise of industrialization, not initially as a base for the power transition but as a way of satisfying the human need for labor-saving devices and ultimately a more comfortable work environment. Only later when the industrialization process was well under way could there be the direct application to increasing force capability and the threats to other powers indicated in the power transition. Interestingly, the major challengers in the power transition have been challengers of the liberal economic order established by the British and French (challenger: Germany) and later by the United States and its allies (challenger: Soviet Union and perhaps now China). One may interpret President Clinton’s policies toward China as efforts to incorporate China into that economic order as a means of avoiding another potential challenge. Although Kim found power transition theory to apply to alliances prior to the industrial period, this finding does not reflect on the domestic economic and political changes posited in the theory’s original formulation.
40. See Kim Woosang, “Power Transitions and Great Power War from Westphalia to Waterloo”, World Politics 45 (October 1992): 153–72.
41. For example, A. F. K. Organski and Jacek Kugler, The War Ledger (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).
42. Kim, “Power Transitions and Great Power War”. For a recent review of this literature.
43. see Jacek Kugler and Douglas Lemke, “The Power Transition Research Program: Assessing Theoretical and Empirical Advances,” in Midlarsky, Handbook of War Studies II, 129–63.
44. A mobilizing leader here refers to a leader with the capacity for military mobilization, not social mobilization. Thus, present or former military leaders are probably the best candidates to usurp democratic authority.
45. Midlarsky, “Environmental Influences on Democracy”.
46. Manus I. Midlarsky, “Democracy and Islam: Implications for Civilizational Conflict and the Democratic Peace,” International Studies Quarterly 42 (September 1998): 485–511.
47. Manus I. Midlarsky, The Evolution of Inequality: War, State Survival, and Democracy in Comparative Perspective (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999).
48. The demise of Polish democracy in 1926 even after the victory over the Bolsheviks in 1920 might seem to belie this conclusion. Although it is a counterillustration, the Polish case suggests that if there is sufficient threat, as in two great powers simultaneously threatening Poland on her borders—Germany and the USSR—and with no strong allies in the vicinity, even prior success in war by a democracy may not be sufficient to prevent a military coup. For evidence on the positive effect of war on democratization.
49. see Michael Mousseau and Yuhang Shi, “A Test for Reverse Causality in the Democratic Peace Relationship,” Journal of Peace Research 36 (November 1999): 639–63.
50. Sara M. Mitchell, Scott Gates, and Havard Hegre, “Evolution in Democracy–War Dynamics,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 43 (December 1999): 771–92.
51. Richard Clogg, A Short History of Modern Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 179.
52. Yorgos A. Kourvetaris and Betty A. Dobratz, A Profile of Modern Greece in Search of Identity (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987), 112, emphasis added.
53. Erik Gartzke, “Kant We All Just Get Along? Opportunity, Willingness, and the Origins of the Democratic Peace,” American Journal of Political Science 42 (January 1998): 1–27.
54. Erik Gartzke, “Preferences and the Democratic Peace,” International Studies Quarterly 44 (June 2000): 191–212.
55. For comprehensive treatments of substitutability in foreign policy, see the special issue of the Journal of Conflict Resolution 44 (February 2000) devoted to that subject.
56. See also Benjamin A. Most and Harvey Starr, “International Relations Theory, Foreign Policy Substitutability, and ‘Nice’ Laws,” World Politics 36 (September 1984): 383–406.
57. The year 1934 was chosen because it is the last year prior to the recognition by the international community of Germany’s potentially growing military might. In 1935, for example, the Anglo-German Naval Agreement was signed limiting German naval tonnage to 35 percent of the British, thus signaling efforts to contain and ultimately appease German expansionism. After this time, Germany’s military development proceeded apace leading to substantial changes in European and ultimately global international relations. Prior to this time, the European interstate system is without major discontinuities.
58. See Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 5th ed. (New York: Knopf, 1973), 391.
59. For the domestic sources of Czechoslovak democracy, see Edward Táborský, “The Roots of Czechoslovak Democracy,” in Czechoslovakia Past and Present, vol. 1, Political, International, Social, and Economic Aspects, ed. Miloslav Rechcigl Jr. (The Hague: Mouton, 1968), 117–23.
60. Thomas G. Masaryk, The Making of a State: Memories and Observations, 1914–1918 (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1927), 463.
61. Emil Ludwig, Defender of Democracy: Masaryk of Czechoslovakia (New York: McBride, 1936), 149.
62. Toivo U. Raun, Estonia and the Estonians (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1987).
63. Edvard Beneš, Masaryk’s Path and Legacy (New York: Arno Press and The New York Times, 1971), 27, emphasis in original.
64. As Beneš stated, “On the one side, we were always at work in the interest of peace—ready to co-operate with our adversaries, to come to terms with them in a friendly manner and, where it was necessary, to make such concessions as occasion demanded to the defeated, so that they could be reconciled with the new international order. On the other side, we made all efforts to build up guarantees of collective security, and to strengthen the League of Nations, but at the same time, we prepared for defence in case of a conflict”.
65. Edvard Beneš, Memoirs of Dr. Eduard Beneš: From Munich to New War and New Victory, trans. Godfrey Lias (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1954), 3.
66. See Piotr S. Wandycz, “Foreign Policy of Edvard Beneš, 1918–1938,” in A History of the Czechoslovak Republic: 1918–1948, ed. Victor S. Mamatey and Radomir Luža (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1973), 216–38.
67. See Piotr S. Wandycz, “Foreign Policy of Edvard Beneš, 1918–1938,” in A History of the Czechoslovak Republic: 1918–1948, ed. Victor S. Mamatey and Radomir Luža (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1973), 224.
68. Věra Olivová, The Doomed Democracy: Czechoslovakia in a Disrupted Europe, 1914–38, trans. George Theiner (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1972), 145.
69. See Victor S. Mamatey, “The Development of Czechoslovak Democracy, 1920–1938”, in Mamatey and Luža, A History of the Czechoslovak Republic, 9–166.
70. One can ask why Czechoslovak democracy did not break down in 1938–39 when it was under extreme stress due to threats of German expansion. Two answers present themselves. First, the twenty-year period of democracy may have adequately socialized the Czechoslovak public in the democratic ethos.
71. But likely far more important is the fact that Masaryk, the Czech president until 1935, had been the titular head of the Czech Legion in Siberia at the end of World War I that successfully fought its way across Russia against Bolshevik opposition. Further, later under Beneš, Czechoslovakia had two million men under arms. Its defense budget was more than one-third of the total government expenditure.
72. Antonin Basch, “Economic and Financial Policy of Czechoslovakia, 1918–1938,” in Rechcigl Jr., Czechoslovakia Past and Present, vol. 1, 168.
73. In other words, the democratic leadership had successfully mobilized the polity to face the eventuality of war. No replacement by an autocracy therefore was perceived to be necessary.
74. Norman Davies, God’s Playground: A History of Poland, vol. 2, 1795 to the Present (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 421.
75. Piotr S. Wandycz, Polish Diplomacy, 1914–1945: Aims and Achievements (London: Orbis Books for the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, 1988), 8.
76. R. F. Leslie, Antony Polonsky, Jan M. Ciechanowski, and Z. A. Pelczynski, The History of Poland since 1863 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 161.
77. R. F. Leslie, Antony Polonsky, Jan M. Ciechanowski, and Z. A. Pelczynski, The History of Poland since 1863 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 159.
78. For example, Davies, God’s Playground, 421.
79. Leslie et al., The History of Poland since 1863.
80. Wandycz, Polish Diplomacy, 1914–1945, 20.
81. Also see Anna M. Cienciala and Titus Komarnicki, From Versailles to Locarno: Keys to Polish Foreign Policy, 1919–25 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1984), 271.
82. Wandycz, Polish Diplomacy, 1914–1945, 18.
83. Quoted in Wandycz, “Foreign Policy of Edvard Beneš, 1918–1938”, 225.
84. Because of the 1921 Peace of Riga recognizing Polish borders, the Soviet Union had no formal claim on Polish territory. However, much of the territory in the East had Ukrainian majorities that had been conquered by Poland in the 1919–20 war with the Soviet Union. That territory was later incorporated into the Soviet Union at the end of World War II.
85. Alfonsas Eidintas, “The Nation Creates Its State,” in Lithuania in European Politics: The Years of the First Republic, 1918–1940, ed. Alfonsas Eidintas, Vytautas Zalys, Alfred E. Senn, and Edvardas Tuskenis (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 53.
86. V. Stanley Vardys and Judith B. Sedaitis, Lithuania: The Rebel Nation (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1997), 36.
87. D. G. Kirby, Finland in the Twentieth Century (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979), 114.
88. Anatole G. Mazour, Finland: Between East and West (Princeton, N.J.: Van Nostrand, 1956), 84.
89. Anatole G. Mazour, Finland: Between East and West (Princeton, N.J.: Van Nostrand, 1956), 87.
90. Raun, Estonia and the Estonians, 62.
91. Raun, Estonia and the Estonians, 123.
92. Juris Dreifelds, Latvia in Transition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
93. Kirby, Finland in the Twentieth Century, 111.
94. Tom Garvin, 1922: The Birth of Irish Democracy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 31.
95. Charles Townshend, “The First Peace Process,” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5049, January 7, 2000, p. 22.
96. Eunan O’Halpin, Defending Ireland: The Irish State and Its Enemies since 1922 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
97. Fritz Fellner, “Introduction: The Genesis of the Austrian Republic,” in Modern Austria, ed. Kurt Steiner, Fritz Fellner, and Hubert Feichtlbauer (Palo Alto, Calif.: Society for the Promotion of Science and Scholarship, 1981), 9.
98. Rendering a more contemporary view, “‘We convinced ourselves we’d won freedom by being the first victims,’ says Oscar Bronner, the publisher of Der Standard, a Vienna daily, ‘But we loved the German occupation. In fact, the real occupation here is widely seen as having ended in 1955, when the Allies left!’”.
99. Roger Cohen, “A Haider in Their Future,” New York Times Magazine, April 30, 2000, sec. 6, p. 57.
100. Seymour M. Lipset, “Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy,” American Political Science Review 53 (March 1959): 69–105.
101. Robert A. Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1971).
102. Raun, Estonia and the Estonians, 132.
103. Dreifelds, Latvia in Transition, 27.
104. His source for this statement is broad-scale economic data (but not real product) for the Baltics and Finland.
105. Juris Dreifelds, “Belorussia and the Baltic Republics”, in Economics of Soviet Regions, ed. I. S. Korpeckyj and Gertrude E. Schroeder (New York: Praeger, 1981), 364.
106. Adam Przeworski and Fernando Limongi, “Modernization: Theories and Facts,” World Politics 49 (October 1997): 155–83.
107. Other scholars also find the depression alone insufficient in explaining polity revival or collapse. See, for example, Ekkart Zimmermann and Thomas Saalfeld, “Economic and Political Reactions to the World Economic Crisis of the 1930s in Six European Countries,” International Studies Quarterly 32 (September 1988): 305–34.
108. Czechoslovakia, an industrial state, was especially vulnerable to the great depression yet persisted as a democracy. Industrial exports, a key basis of economic productivity, were particularly hard hit by the slump in international trade.
109. Zora P. Pryor, “Czechoslovak Economic Development in the Interwar Period,” in Mamatey and Luža, A History of the Czechoslovak Republic, 189, 204.
110. Robert D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993).
111. Kirby, Finland in the Twentieth Century, 23.
112. Kirby, Finland in the Twentieth Century, 19.
113. Eino Jutikkala, A History of Finland, trans. Paul Sjöblom (New York: Praeger, 1962).
114. Eric Solsten and Sandra W. Meditz, Finland: A Country Study (Washington, D.C.: Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, 1990), 30.
115. As in the case of Czechoslovakia, one can ask why Finnish democracy survived the later threat of war that would ultimately become the Soviet-Finnish Winter War of 1939–40.
116. Here too, similar arguments are applicable, especially prior success in war as a democracy—the Finnish Civil War of 1918 involving Finnish nationalist Whites against Soviet-supported Reds.
117. Donald L. Horowitz, “Democracy in Divided Societies,” in Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict, and Democracy, ed. Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 35–55.
118. John Coakley, “Independence Movements and National Minorities: Some Parallels in the European Experience,” European Journal for Political Research 8 (June 1980): 215–48.
119. Joseph M. Grieco, “Repetitive Military Challenges and Enduring Interstate Rivalries, 1918–1994” (paper presented at the annual convention of the International Studies Association, Los Angeles, Calif., March 2000), 19.
120. Joseph M. Grieco, “Repetitive Military Challenges and Enduring Interstate Rivalries, 1918–1994” (paper presented at the annual convention of the International Studies Association, Los Angeles, Calif., March 2000), 19.