DEMOCRATIC-STATES AND INTERNATIONAL DISPUTES

A growing literature in international relations concludes that democratic states pursue distinctive foreign policies. Specifically, democracies do not engage each other in war and only rarefy engage each other in serious disputes short of war. Scholars have offered three basic explanations to support these findings. Each of the three invokes a different explanatory variable: norms, checks and balances, and trade. None of the three, however, provides a convincing explanation of the peace that is said to prevail between democratic polities: the distinction between norms and interests is unclear; substitutes for checks and balances exists in nondemocracies; and trade can deter conflict only under restrictive conditions.