Debating the Democratic Peace in the International System

In recent publications, we inquire whether the pacifying effects that are often attributed to democracy are likely to continue to hold as the world democratizes. Critics raise questions about the theoretical logic and especially the empirical results that we present. After clarifying our theoretical arguments, we discuss the central empirical critiques. We demonstrate that Crescenzi and Kadera’s ([2016][1]) finding of a pacifying effect of systemic democracy is driven not, as they claim, by the use of a better measure of systemic democracy, but by the unjustified decision to omit systemic regime difference from their analysis. Once we restore this variable, we find no evidence that democratization produces a system-level pacifying effect. We agree with our critics that the inclusion of dyadic regime difference produced misleading estimates for lower-threshold democracy. Because our arguments presume the historical existence of a dyadic democratic peace, however, this observation, if anything, resolves an apparent anomaly for our claims. Finally, we explain that Choi ([2016][2]) misunderstands the argument that systemic regime-type difference seeks to capture; we show that his proposed alternative neither captures our concept of interest nor accomplishes what he claims. [1]: #ref-7 [2]: #ref-4