Democratic Peace Theory

Democratic peace theory (or simply the "democratic peace") is the theory that democracies do not go to war with each other. In contrast to theories explaining war, it is a "Theory Of Peace".

Some have preferred terms like "mutual democratic pacifism" or "inter-democracy nonaggression hypothesis" for the theory, to clarify that it is not the peace itself that is democratic, but rather the countries involved.

Among proponents of the theory, several explanations have been offered for it:

• that democratic leaders must answer to the voters for war, and therefore have an incentive to seek alternatives;
• that such statesmen have practice settling matters by discussion, not by arms, and do the same in foreign policy;
• that democracies view non-democracies or their people as threatening, and go to war with them over issues which would have been settled peacefully between democracies;
• that democracies tend to be wealthier than other countries, and the wealthy tend to avoid war, having more to lose.

  Physicist turned historian Spencer R. Weart disagrees with this, saying, "It is not because of their advanced economic development—wealthy countries fight wars about as often as poor ones."

Among those who dispute the theory, there are also several opinions: that the claim is a statistical artifact, explicable by chance; and that definitions of democracy and war can be deliberately cherry-picked to show a pattern that may not be there.