According to the peace-facilitates-democracy model, the amount of war-making preparation and activity plays a decisive role in determining whether the military organization of a state dominates a government. Since a military organization is characterized by an executive authority ruling in a coercive, hierarchical fashion (except in primitive societies -- see below), the prospects of a democratic government depend heavily on whether military organization can be put in its proper place, as an appendage of government rather than its foundation.

    In general, conditions of frequent war and unstable peace contribute to the dominance of military organization in a government -- either the army actually assumes control of the government, or the civilian government takes on a military character, with a powerful executive ruling coercively. Long periods of stable peace, on the other hand, permit the development of a government not based predominantly on military organization. Under peaceful conditions, a government is more likely to assume a minimal role of maintaining law and order and basic security, without becoming overbearing or escaping the control of society. The peace-facilitates-democracy model admits to several exceptions to this generalization, which will be discussed below, but the generalization holds for most cases.

    According to Otto Hintze, government type can be regarded as the outcome of a struggle between authoritarian and associative principles of organization. The authoritarian principle is the basis of military organization, whereas the associative principle of organization is reflected in the network of voluntary ties which make up civil society. No state is entirely without either principle of organization, but authoritarian states are clearly cases in which the authoritarian aspect dominates over the associative, whereas democratic states display the reverse. (See Figure 3-1)

    Over time, the early democracy of primitive societies was lost, as war chiefs used their military authority to establish permanent hierarchical structures, setting them apart and above the masses. The first kingships arose, and these kingships later legitimized their authority through the myth of the "divine right" of kings.

    However, the utility of confederacy as a security structure proved to be problematic in the long run. In times of unambiguous external military threat, the separate city-states of a confederacy could usually be counted on to combine forces in time to successfully meet the emergency. However, in other times there was a tendency for important security functions to go unmet because of the lack of a central coercive power to lead, tax, and organize. Worse, the city-states themselves could not be counted on to remain at peace with one another, as the example of the warring Greek republics demonstrated. Ultimately, fighting among the Greeks led to the demise of the Greek republics, while Rome sought ultimate security by building an empire.

    Thus, although some form of democracy was usually favored by early human societies, military pressures virtually dictated authoritarian outcomes in the long run. As late as the eighteenth century, it was widely believed even by proponents of republicanism that free institutions could exist only within a small territory, that a republic could not possibly be built upon an extended territory without degenerating into despotism.

    Today, of course, we know that republics can indeed be built in large states. The question is why? What changed to make large-scale republicanism a real possibility?

    There have, in fact, been a number of significant changes in domestic and international politics in the past several centuries which have worked, in varying degree, to strengthen the associative principle of organization and weaken the authoritarian principle of organization. Most studies of democratization to date have focused on the domestic social factors which have strengthened associative relations. This study will focus on the peace factors which have helped to weaken the authoritarian principle of organization. However, since the domestic social factors have also played a vital role in democratization, they are worth discussing briefly here.

Strengthening Associative Relations:

    However, legitimacy crises may work both ways, undermining democracies and promoting fascist or other authoritarian forms of rule. A lost war, a severe economic crisis, unending terrorist attacks, political paralysis, and corruption can undermine the legitimacy of a democratic government as well as an authoritarian government. Such factors certainly seemed to play a role in the collapse of many European democracies in the 1920s and 1930s, as well as the collapse of a number of Latin American and African democracies in this century.

(2) National Unity.

    Most early states in Europe were authoritarian in good part because of weak associative relations among the citizenry of an extended territory. Early France, for example, possessed great regional diversity and multiple dialects, impeding the creation of the same type of social unity found in city-states.

    Still, national identities and societies in themselves were hardly a guarantee of a transition to democracy. The various forms of totalitarianism, populist authoritarianism, military dictatorship, and other non-democratic forms of government that have arisen even in mature national states are proof of this. In addition, although modern communications and transportation have made a communal political spirit possible even in large states, it is still possible for an authoritarian hierarchy to control and dominate communications and transportation facilities. Nevertheless, national unity must be considered as a significant factor strengthening associative relations.

(3) Wealth/ Economic Development.

    It is important to note that democratization theorists who point to the importance of wealth and economic development in promoting democracy usually caution that wealth in itself does not directly cause democracy, but rather assists other variables which support democracy. For example, a high overall level of wealth in a state allows for the existence of a large middle class (the importance of which is discussed below).

    Overall, then, there is general agreement among political scientists that economic development in itself does not directly cause and sustain democratization. Rather, wealth facilitates the emergence of a civil society which is unified enough to support a consensual rather than dictatorial form of government, and strong enough to demand that the government allow society a say in decision-making. However, it must be noted that the facilitating influence of wealth is not always necessary or sufficient. There are historical cases of unified and strong civil societies which existed despite a relative lack of wealth, as well as cases of relatively wealthy urban societies which nonetheless were taken over by dictators.

(5) Large Middle Class.

    The process of democratization is rarely smooth and it certainly cannot be said to be irreversible. Nevertheless, there does appear to be a ratcheting effect: states which have had some years of experience with democracy find it easier to maintain democracy, or restore democracy if it reverts to dictatorship. Thus, although it would be unwise to announce that any particular state has such firmly established democratic institutions that it can be expected to remain a democracy in perpetuity, it is rare for a national state which has once experienced democracy to lose it forever.

    How do these domestic social variables fit with the model of social power relations presented in Figure 3-1? As stated earlier, domestic social variables address the bottom part of the model in Figure 3-1, strengthening the associative relations which challenge executive power: The spread of liberal ideas inspires individuals to press for political reforms; national unity creates a communal political consciousness (as in the ancient city-states); growing wealth leads to urbanization, education, and advances in communication technology, which makes it easier for individuals to organize for reform; the bourgeoisie employs its economic power to limit governmental power and demand representation; a large middle class facilitates social cohesion; and any previous experience with representative institutions helps to solidify democratic practices over time. Thus, although the war-making/state-making process led to authoritarianism in early modern territorial states, because of the twin processes of increasing executive power and weakening associative relations, new domestic factors re-strengthened associative relations.

    However, changes in domestic variables are not the whole story. The international environment has played a large role in affecting the balance between associative and authoritarian relations in states, with the frequency of war and security threats playing a crucial role in tipping political development in one direction or another. In this way, the creation and maintenance of modern liberal-democratic states can be more easily understood. Granting the importance of domestic social variables, if one follows trends in international peace and compares these trends to the advancement of liberal-democracy, one finds a strong correlation between the development of zones of peace and the subsequent flourishing of democracy.

    Looking broadly at the international system as a whole, as Chapter One noted, there has been a long-term decline in the frequency of inter-state war and an increase in the number of years of peace between states. Moreover, the most peaceful periods -- the nineteenth century (after the Napoleonic Wars) and the post-1945 era -- have been characterized by substantial advances in democracy throughout the world. This correlation is not accidental. In general, it is difficult for democracy to evolve in an environment of frequent inter-state conflict.

    However, this process of resistance and bargaining tends to occur only if long periods of peace are available to prevent the authoritarian principle of organization from dominating. Frequent, extended periods of warfare and inter-state conflict hurt the prospects of liberal-democracy in a number of ways.

    Second, war and war threats invariably result in pressures to restrict civil liberties. Even an established liberal-democracy can tolerate free speech and dissenters only as long as they do not threaten the viability of the political order and/or social fabric. When the political order is under violent attack or threat of attack, from within or without, social divisions tend to weaken both government and society. In addition, in any state, there are likely to be some individuals who actually sympathize with the enemy; such people can usually be tolerated (and watched upon) in times of peace, but not under conditions of war. The suppression of civil liberties also results from the coercive methods governments require to mobilize for war. In time of war, governments need more than support in principle. They require solid, material support in the form of taxes and soldiers willing to die in vast numbers. Such support may be given without coercion, particularly when a country is under extreme threat. However, when it comes to making large personal sacrifices in blood and treasure, even the most enthusiastic hawks tend to waver. Thus the government must resort to close supervision and coercion to get all to do their share.

    Third, war and inter-state conflict tends to promote extreme nationalist and militarist ideologies which destroy the prospects of democracy. Although democracy is commonly regarded as a popular form of government, there are times when there are popular pressures for authoritarianism; people will voluntarily throw their support to a strong leader or military hero. Ideas may move history, but the popularity of certain ideas in certain times and places depends upon specific conditions in those times and places. In environments of high threat or after the experience of defeat, totalitarian and/or militarist ideologies may take root in a country and become the basis for popular movements which subsequently take power and eradicate democracy. According to one analyst of the phenomenon of totalitarianism,

    The pervasivness of inter-state conflict also affects the perceived need for military leaders and heroes. Under conditions of peace, the most important government functions will involve law-making/enforcement and the promotion of prosperity. Consequently, the prominence and prestige of lawyers and businessmen as a leadership class will increase. However, under conditions of inter-state conflict, the prestige and demand for military leadership and its methods will increase.

    Finally, when military campaigns result in the conquest of new lands and peoples, subsequent political conditions in the conquering state are likely to be characterized by a permanent increase in centralization and a decrease in liberty. This is because conquest tends to bring new sources of power and wealth to the conquerer, while the conquering state acquires more people of different cultures, decreasing social cohesion. The victims of conquest are not likely to consent to their new government, so unrelenting coercion is required.

    For these reasons, the process of social resistance and bargaining which leads to liberal-democracy cannot take place when a state is engaged in war on a frequent basis. This is not to say that any war is invariably destructive to the prospects of democracy. However, there must be periods of peace long enough to allow democracy to take root and grow.

    Of course, the mere fact of pacification does not automatically lead to liberalization and democratization. Other variables -- usually the domestic social variables -- play an active role in promoting social resistance and demands for change. Thus peace should be considered a facilitating or permissive cause of democratization. There are several historical examples in which extended periods of peace did not automatically lead to democratization. What a zone of peace does is allow for the process of liberalization and democratization. In this sense, the peace factor is complementary to traditional explanations of democratization. It fills in a vital link of the entire causal change.

    As pointed out in Chapter One, newly emerging states experienced the most warfare, as they fought to establish their borders and achieve recognition as sovereign equals in the international society of states. Once states consolidated and achieved recognition, the incidence of inter-state warfare for that state declined. What I wish to demonstrate in the next section is how the process of global democratization followed the process of pacification which accompanied the consolidation of the modern national state system in international society. In general, those states which were first able to consolidate along relatively defensible borders and avoid further major inter-state conflicts were the first to democratize.

    It is true that most national states in Europe owe their existence to a long series of bloody wars, wars that became even bloodier as the size and capabilities of states increased. It is also true that these wars tended to lead to absolutist monarchical regimes which were not at all friendly to liberty or democracy. However, it must be noted that war and authoritarianism was a temporary phase in the creation of most national states. Once states determined their boundaries, solidified their authority, and built up the institutions necessary to administer their territories, those states which were most secure from attack were able to gradually liberalize their rule over time. As issues of sovereign control and borders became less ambiguous, as economies developed, as states became increasingly able to resist and survive invasion, the necessity and utility of war declined; with this decline, liberalization increased and spread to other states.

    Let us begin by examining the widely-cited table on global democratization by democratic peace advocate Michael Doyle (Table 1-4 in Chapter One). If we look closely at the Doyle table and a map of the world, we see that the development of democracy roughly followed the consolidation of national states along defensible borders, and that where national states had difficulty forming or consolidating along defensible lines, democracy was blocked or otherwise hampered. Far from creating a zone of peace, democracy followed the zones of peace created by the national state system.

    The first eight democratic states in Doyle's table -- Switzerland, the U.S., France, Belgium, Britain, Netherlands, Piedmont, Denmark -- originated in Western Europe (the U.S. as a colonial offshoot). Western Europe was uniquely configured for the development of defensible national states for two basic reasons. First, the region as a whole was bounded on three sides by the seas, shielding the region to some extent from the back and forth sweep of armies and peoples which plagued Central/Eastern Europe and Asia. Second, Western Europe was divided by seas, waterways, mountains, and forests into moderately-sized, defensible territories which could be more easily controlled and protected.

    English settlers subsequently came to colonize and dominate the North American continent, leading to the founding of the United States. The U.S. was largely able to avoid the severe military problems faced by European states, being protected by the oceans, and facing only token opposition from Indian tribes and French and Spanish forces on the North American continent. Moreover, the U.S. possessed far greater linguistic and cultural unity from the beginning than emerging states in Europe. Immigrants were gradually assimilated into the Anglo-Saxon, Protestant core of America, and nowhere did a geographically and culturally distinct group of settlers threaten basic American unity. For these reasons, the U.S. never had to go through a stage of autocratic state-making. Even the American Civil War ended with the successful reintegration of North and South, once the slavery issue was settled. The relative infrequency of major war and the threat of major war on the North American continent resulted in a polity in which the military element never dominated.

    France, like England, achieved the status of a national state at an early date. However, France found it much more difficult to establish defensible borders than did Britain and the U.S., making it still vulnerable to the peril of inter-state war (though not as vulnerable as the states of Central and Eastern Europe). As a result, the transition from French autocracy to democracy was much more gradual and shaky. (The comparative cases of the U.S. and France will be discussed in later chapters.)

    Central and Eastern Europe lagged in consolidating defensible national states, and thus, lagged in the liberalization of state structures. Although Russia achieved great power status and some degree of national unity at an early date, it was never able to stabilize its borders and remained exposed to frequent, high-threat inter-state war on several fronts. Security contingencies demanded expansion across the vast plains of Eurasia in order to protect the Muscovite core. Consequently, Russia retained a militarized, multinational empire and an imperial ruling structure well into the twentieth century.

    Prussia avoided the mistakes of Poland by developing a first-rate army and tightly centralized ruling structure. This provided a survivable nucleus for the eventual development of a German national state. However, the inability of Prussia, and later Germany, to attain truly defensible borders had the effect of bolstering continued military centralism over liberalization. Stable democracy was not obtained in Germany until a U.S.-backed security structure was imposed upon Europe. (The case of Germany will be analyzed in a later chapter).

    A number of small states in Europe -- Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium -- were able to avoid the pressures of autocratic militarization despite their vulnerability to larger powers.

    The Netherlands emerged during the Middle Ages as a major international trading center. Although officially lorded over by a succession of princes during this time, the Netherlands remained a distant province which maintained a good deal of governing autonomy on the local level and a tradition of individual rights. When the Spanish Hapsburgs attempted to impose increased taxes and religious conformity on the region, however, the Dutch revolted, in a war for independence which was to last for eighty years (1568-1648). Upon independence, the Netherlands endured several more wars with both Britain and France. Yet, for all its war-making activities, autocracy never entrenched itself in the Netherlands.

    The Netherlands was briefly overrun by French forces during the Wars of the French Revolution, but the victorious powers of Europe at the Congress of Vienna reestablished the Netherlands as an independent, unitary state with King William I as monarch. Although William centralized a good deal of power in his hands, he was unable to eradicate the republican traditions and institutions of the Netherlands. The 1848 revolutions in Europe prodded William's successor to make a peaceful transition to a liberal constitutional monarchy.

    At one time the southern part of the Netherlands, Belgium became separated from the northern provinces during the Dutch War of Independence. Lacking even the geographical protection of the North, Belgium became a battleground for many of the wars that raged between the European powers over the centuries, resulting in much devastation and hardship for the Belgians. Moreover, Belgium itself lacked national unity, with the northern part of Belgium dominated by the Dutch-speaking Flemings and the southern part dominated by the French-speaking Walloons.

    The evolution of Latin American states followed a pattern roughly similar to that of Western Europe. First came a stage of war-making/ state-making. Numerous wars were fought in Latin America in the nineteenth century, first in order to attain independence from Spain, then to establish state sovereignty and borders. The necessity of employing large amounts of military force to secure these ends led to the elevation of authoritarian military rulers in most early Latin American states. According to one study,

    As more and more states consolidated and borders stabilized, however, the incidence of wars dropped. The continent of South America has been largely free of major inter-state wars for over a century.

    Asia and Africa lagged the furthest in developing national states. To this day, most of Africa has not developed rudimentary national states. Asia, on the other hand, began from a higher level of development and only recently consolidated a number of relatively stable national states.

    Although the central claim of the model proposed here is that peace is a cause of democracy, the exact nature of this causation must be carefully specified, for the relationship is not at all simple and direct. First of all, although peace is a facilitating factor in the rise of liberal-democracy, it is a permissive cause rather than an active cause. It creates a safe space for the emergence of democracy, but does not guarantee it. In fact, there are a number of cases in which autocracy developed as a result of the war-making/state-making process, yet when the autocracy established relatively defensible borders and established peace, democracy did not follow, and autocratic institutions maintained themselves for centuries. Spain and Japan, for example, established themselves in geographic positions as favorable as that of Britain, but did not liberalize until a much later date. China alternated between periods of civil war and periods of peace for thousands of years, but like Japan, retained an autocratic feudal ruling structure even during long periods of peace. Thus, although one can attribute the rise of autocracy in all these countries to the war-making/state-making process, it is clear that autocracy was able to maintain itself even under conditions of peace, an outcome which can be attributed to weaknesses in the domestic social variables for democracy in these countries.

    Second, the model must be qualified by the acknowledgement that particular wars may have the effect of disrupting and undermining entrenched institutions in authoritarian and semi-democratic governments, providing an opening for democratic reforms, particularly if a regime loses a war. Examples of this include Germany after World War One and Argentina after the Falklands War. However, it must be noted that while particular wars may have a positive short-term disruptive effect, the stabilization of a new democratic government usually requires the institution of a long stable peace after that war. Otherwise, there is a strong possibility of a new, more vigorous authoritarianism developing. Thus, while occasional wars are not destructive to democracy, and may in some cases promote it, the peace-facilitates-democracy model is based on the long-term observation that states which experience frequent war and extended security crises will find it difficult or impossible to build stable liberal-democracies.

    Of course, this chapter's brief overview of the impact of war and peace on states cannot provide a rigorous test of the peace-facilitates-democracy model. Such a test will be performed in the second part of this study, which consists of in-depth case studies of the impact of inter-state conflict on democracy in the U.S., France, Germany, and Israel.

2. Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Sociology (New York: D. Appleton, 1890), Vol. 1, 507-36; Vol. 2, 398-441.

3. Ronald M. Glassman, Democracy and Despotism in Primitive Societies, vol. 1 (New York: Associated Faculty Press, 1986), 45-58, 107-09, 193-213. The chief exception to the pervasiveness of democracy in primitive societies lies in horticultural and herding tribes which, because of their more efficient food production, grew in size to the point where military conflict between groups became endemic, resulting in the rise of primitive despotisms. Of course, other economic and cultural factors played a role in shaping primitive governing structures, but it is striking how often military factors impacted.

4. John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, Essays in the History of Liberty, ed. J. Rufus Fears (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Classics, 1985), 30-31.

5. A republic is usually defined as a regime which rests on some degree of popular input, whether it is narrowly based on an aristocracy, or widely based on the citizenry as a whole. Thus all democracies are necessarily republics, but not all republics are democracies. Most of the ancient and medieval city-state republics (Rome, Carthage, Venice, Genoa), for example, while hardly despotisms, restricted voting rights to a select minority. It is important to note that many early "democratic peace" theorists, such as Immanuel Kant, were perfectly satisfied with republics which had a franchise narrowly restricted to male property owners. See Immanuel Kant, "The Metaphysics of Morals," in Kant's Political Writings, ed. Hans Reiss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 139-40.

6. Otto Hintze, "The Formation of States and Constitutional Development," in The Historical Essays of Otto Hintze, 163.

7. Ibid.; Baron de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, vol. 1, trans. Thomas Nugent (New York: Hafner, 1949), 120-25, 138-39.

8. Montesquieu, vol. 1, 269, 272-73.

9. Ibid., 126-27.

10. Seymour Martin Lipset, "Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy,"American Political Science Review 53 (1959): 69-105; Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981; Barrington Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966); Larry Diamond, "Economic Development and Democracy Reconsidered,"American Behavioral Scientist, 35 (March/June 1992): 453-72; Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991); Dankwart A. Rustow, "Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model," Comparative Politics 3 (April 1970): 337-63; Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens, and John D. Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 269-72; Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, eds., The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978).

11. Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, 13-22.

12. Huntington, The Third Wave, 45.

13. Rustow, 350-52.

14. Kenneth McRae, Consociational Democracy (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1974).

15. Hintze, "The Formation of States and Constitutional Government," 174-75.

16. Diamond, 481-87.

17. Ibid., 79-80.

18. Ibid., 486-87.

19. Barrington Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), pp. xiv-xvii, 35-40, 433-35.

20. Moore, p. 418.

21. Herbert Kitschelt, "Political Regime Change: Structure and Process-Driven Explanations?," American Political Science Review, 86 (December 1992): 1033; Huntington, 64-65, 313.

22. Aristotle, 1266a-1267b, 1281a, 1295b-1296b; Lipset, Political Man, 51, 460-61.

23. Rustow, 358-59.

24. Huntington, The Third Wave, 164-74.

25. Cassell's Latin Dictionary (New York: MacMillan Publishing, 1982), 188.

26. Clinton Rossiter, Constitutional Dictatorship: Crisis Government in Modern Democracies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1948).

27. Sigmund Neumann, Permanent Revolution: Totalitarianism in the Age of International Civil War (Frederick A. Praeger, 1965), xv, 41.

28. William Pfaff, The Wrath of Nations: Civilization and the Furies of Nationalism (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993), 16.

29. Porter, 79-81.

30. Downing, 170-72.

31. Montesquieu, 269, 273.

32. "No. 8: Hamilton," in The Federalist Papers, ed. Clinton Rossiter (New York: NAL Penguin, 1961), 70.

33. Thompson, 151-54.

34. Norman Davies, God's Playground: A History of Poland, vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 321-72.

35. Carol L. Schmid, Conflict and Consensus in Switzerland (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1981), 29.

36. Georg Threr, Free and Swiss, trans. R. P. Heller & E. Long (London: Wolff, 1970), 117.

37. Porter, 50-53.

38. Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, 15, 30, 62, 89.

39. Downing, 212-20.

40. Vernon Mallinson, Belgium (New York: Praeger, 1970), 20-23, 42-43; Adrien de Mees, History of the Belgians, trans. G. Gordon (New York: Praeger, 1962), 139-40, 213-15.

41. Mallinson, 50-63.

42. Rueschemeyer et al., 172.

43. Ibid., 172-78.