Calling all IR scholars!!! We’ve got a coding problem in the Middle East!!
Guest-posting for Instapundit, Michael Totten makes a provocative statement about democratic peace theory: This war in the Middle East nearly demolishes the theory that democracies don’t go to war with each other. Lebanon, aside from Hezbollah’s state-within-a-state, is a democracy. At least it’s an almost-democracy. Aside from my personal affection for Lebanon, the country where ...
Guest-posting for Instapundit, Michael Totten makes a provocative statement about democratic peace theory: This war in the Middle East nearly demolishes the theory that democracies don't go to war with each other. Lebanon, aside from Hezbollah's state-within-a-state, is a democracy. At least it's an almost-democracy. Aside from my personal affection for Lebanon, the country where I recently lived, the only country other than the US where I've ever lived, this is what anguishes me the most: The Arab world's only democracy is being torn to pieces by another democracy. Question to the IR types in the audience: is Totten right? The "aside from Hezbollah" is an awfully big aside. It suggests that Lebanon might better be coded as a "democratizing" state rather than a stable democracy -- and Ed Mansfield and Jack Snyder have demonstrated that democratizing states are the most violent regime type. That said, one can argue that it is Israel, the established democracy, that expanded what had been a low-level border skirmish (by IR standards) into a war. Given Hezbollah's role as instigator, and the failure of the Lebanese army to engage the IDF, it seems hard to code this as a violation of the democratic peace proposition. And yet, labeling this case as an exception carries the whiff of fitting the data to match the hypothesis. Let the debate commence!!
Guest-posting for Instapundit, Michael Totten makes a provocative statement about democratic peace theory:
This war in the Middle East nearly demolishes the theory that democracies don’t go to war with each other. Lebanon, aside from Hezbollah’s state-within-a-state, is a democracy. At least it’s an almost-democracy. Aside from my personal affection for Lebanon, the country where I recently lived, the only country other than the US where I’ve ever lived, this is what anguishes me the most: The Arab world’s only democracy is being torn to pieces by another democracy.
Question to the IR types in the audience: is Totten right? The “aside from Hezbollah” is an awfully big aside. It suggests that Lebanon might better be coded as a “democratizing” state rather than a stable democracy — and Ed Mansfield and Jack Snyder have demonstrated that democratizing states are the most violent regime type. That said, one can argue that it is Israel, the established democracy, that expanded what had been a low-level border skirmish (by IR standards) into a war. Given Hezbollah’s role as instigator, and the failure of the Lebanese army to engage the IDF, it seems hard to code this as a violation of the democratic peace proposition. And yet, labeling this case as an exception carries the whiff of fitting the data to match the hypothesis. Let the debate commence!!
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
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