Toward a Democratic Civil Peace? Democracy, Political Change, and Civil War, 1816-1992.(Statistical Data Included)

The "third wave of democratization" (Huntington 1991; Vanhanen 2000) has raised hopes for a more peaceful world. The thesis of the democratic peace suggests that the spread of democracy will promote a decline in interstate warfare (Doyle 1986; Russett 1993), at least once the unsettling effects of the transition period are overcome (Ward and Gleditsch 1998). But does democratization also lead to civil peace?

Considerable research has examined how regime type or the level of democracy relates to domestic conflict. Much of it focuses on the result that semidemocracies (regimes intermediate between a democracy and an autocracy) exhibit a higher propensity for civil conflict than either extreme. Another strand of research focuses on how changes in regime lead to domestic conflict. This has implications for the former finding, since semidemocracies are more prone to regime change. Indeed, is the greater propensity for violence of intermediate regimes equivalent to the finding that states in political transition experience more violence? Are the results relating civil violence to level and change, in fact, one and the same finding? Or, are both explanations relevant? That is the key issue examined in this article.

We link level of democracy and regime change in an empirical analysis that uses data from 152 countries in the period 1816-1992. We also explore the implications of the direction and magnitude of political change. The statistical model we formulate overcomes some of the problems in research that is based on country-years, such as the fact that these do not constitute independent observations, as well as the possibility that the amount of civil war in the system of states fluctuates over time. Finally, our work adopts a multivariate framework with several control variables, among them socioeconomic and cultural factors, as well as spatial and temporal contagion. A separate analysis, with a more extensive set of control variables, is performed for the post-World War II period.

DEMOCRACY, DEMOCRATIZATION, AND CIVIL WAR

Level of Democracy and Civil War

Harshly authoritarian states and institutionally consistent democracies experience fewer civil wars than intermediate regimes (de Nardo 1985; Francisco 1995; Muller and Weede 1990), which possess inherent contradictions as a result of being neither democratic nor autocratic. Semidemocracies are partly open yet somewhat repressive, a combination that invites protest, rebellion, and other forms of civil violence. Repression leads to grievances that induce groups to take action, and openness allows for them to organize and engage in activities against the regime. Such institutional contradictions imply a level of political incoherence, which is linked to civil conflict.

A number of works support the hypothesis of an inverted U-shaped curve between democracy and domestic violence, but most are based on a small number of cases or a short period. For instance, Francisco (1995) examines only the former German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, and the Palestinian Intifada. The study by Muller and Weede (1990) used data collected by Taylor and Jodice (1983) for 1973-77.(1)