Fateful Transitions. Daniel M. Kliman
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to strengthen the global order. For more than six decades, the rules-based international system has advanced peace, prosperity, and freedom. However, new challenges to the order have emerged. These include a weakened global financial architecture, expansive maritime claims in East Asia and beyond, the retrenchment of democracy in some parts of the world, and fiscal constraints in the United States and Europe. To adapt and renew the current system, Washington should look to rising democracies as the most promising partners. Unlike China or Russia, these new powers possess domestic institutions that permit the United States to work with them in an environment devoid of crippling mistrust and offer American leaders entry points into their foreign policy processes. U.S. engagement with rising democracies is critical. The choices these emerging powers make—about whether to take on new global responsibilities, passively benefit from the efforts of established powers, or complicate the solving of key challenges—may, together, decisively influence the trajectory of the current international order.
The world of the twenty-first century is a world of fateful transitions. In the years ahead, how to manage rising powers will increasingly preoccupy the foreign policies of the United States, Europe, and much of Asia. The flare-up of Japan-China tensions surrounding the Senkaku/Diaoyu island group and the revelation of widespread Chinese hacking against American government agencies and corporations have put a spotlight on whether current approaches toward the growth of Chinese power are working. Meanwhile, budgetary pressures on U.S. foreign affairs and defense spending will place an even greater premium on building partnerships with rising democracies. Within Europe, the continued weakness of many Eurozone economies after the debt crisis underscores the global power shift and focuses European capitals on how to navigate the rise of other states. Leaders in the world’s established powers—and their rising-state counterparts—would do well to keep in mind how regime type frames power transitions if they wish to avoid the mistakes of their predecessors.
The Book and International Relations Theory
This book speaks to multiple strands of international relations scholarship. It reinforces the extensive literature on the democratic peace and contains new insights for academic work on relations between declining and rising states. At the same time, the book examines whether arguments about the interplay of economic interdependence and foreign policy explain the strategic choices made by democratic leaders as they navigate power transitions.
The Democratic Peace
Scholars have devoted much attention to understanding why democracies, though about as conflict prone as autocracies, have “virtually never fought one another in a full-scale international war.”1 Potential explanations generally fall into one of two categories. Normative accounts of the democratic peace argue that democratic leaders externalize rules and practices that govern the domestic political arena, for example, nonviolent conflict resolution and “live and let live” attitudes toward negotiation. At the international level, these norms translate into mutual trust and respect among democracies, which prevent conflicts from escalating into war. However, democracies do not accord autocratic regimes the same trust and respect because the latter’s type of political system lacks norms that would moderate external conduct. Thus, disputes between democracies and autocracies may result in war.2
The other explanation for the democratic peace emphasizes the role of domestic institutions. In democracies, leaders are accountable to legislatures, major interest groups, and the general public. According to proponents of the democratic peace, this imposes a number of constraints on foreign policy. Publics will normally be averse to bearing the costs of war.3 Democratic institutions also give a voice to interest groups who may oppose military conflict for political or moral reasons. Mobilizing for war therefore constitutes a complex, drawn-out process as leaders try to convince the public and major societal actors to support military action. Consequently, democracies mobilize slowly and in the public eye. In crises featuring two democracies, neither need fear surprise attack—each recognizes that the other operates under similar domestic constraints. This provides ample time to peacefully resolve crises through locating mutually acceptable agreements.4
A different institutional argument for the democratic peace draws attention to the linkage between successful prosecution of war and political survival of elected elites. Democratic leaders should be more willing than their autocratic counterparts to devote resources to war because military defeat would erode the broad political base they require to remain in office. Recognizing that elected elites in other states confront the same incentives to expend significant resources in the pursuit of victory, democratic leaders will avoid costly conflicts with each other.5
The democratic peace is not without critics. Using regression analysis, Joanne Gowa observes no statistical evidence of a democratic peace prior to World War I or during the interwar period. Although the democratic peace appears statistically significant throughout the Cold War, Gowa attributes this finding to shared national interests: the Soviet threat compelled democracies to settle their differences peacefully.6 David Spiro points to the Spanish-American War and Finland’s membership in the Axis during World War II as examples of military conflicts among democracies.7 Critiquing the democratic peace from a different angle, Christopher Layne examines “near misses” where rival democratic states nearly went to war. According to Layne, in these cases factors other than externalized norms averted military conflict.8 Sebastian Rosato, in a critique of mechanisms underlying the democratic peace, contends that nationalist publics may demand war and that leaders can manipulate public opinion when initial support is lacking.9 Last, Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder put forward a major qualification to the democratic peace. Using both statistical analysis and a series of case studies, they argue that well-developed political institutions and rule of law prove conducive to peace, but elected regimes at the early phase of democratic transitions are actually war prone.10
Proponents of the democratic peace have answered each of these critiques. Bruce Russett and John Oneal demonstrate that the democratic peace extends throughout the twentieth century. In their statistical analysis, “When the democracy score of the less democratic state in a dyad is higher by a standard deviation, the likelihood of conflict is more than one-third below the baseline rate among all dyads in the system.”11 Other scholars have replicated Russett and Oneal’s findings, and the significance of the democratic peace across time has largely ceased to generate debate.
The historical anomalies that Spiro and Layne identify have led to a more precise understanding of how the democratic peace operates. John Owen incorporates perceptions of regime type into democratic peace theory. He argues that pacific relations between democracies endure only when each state perceives the other as liberal. The Spanish-American War thus upholds the democratic peace because the United States perceived its European adversary as a monarchy. Owen also evaluates “near misses” in which democracies came close to conflict and finds that normative mechanisms actually operated to forestall war.12 Charles Lipson proposes that democracies have a special “contracting advantage.” Transparency, stable leadership succession, public accountability, and constitutional checks and balances enhance outsiders’ confidence that a democracy will abide by its commitments. Repeated interaction gradually increases confidence in another democracy’s reliability as a contracting partner. Lipson thereby accounts for why “near misses” may occur between democracies, particularly at the early stage of their relationship.13
Rosato’s challenge to the democratic peace has not withstood close scrutiny. David Kinsella notes that Rosato mischaracterizes the democratic peace. The theory extends to interactions between democratic states, yet Rosato treats it as an argument for democratic avoidance of war in all circumstances. In addition, Rosato tries to falsify the democratic peace by pointing to historical anomalies that existing scholarship has already addressed.14 Branislav Slantchev, Anna Alexandrova, and Erik Gartzke call attention to methodological flaws in Rosato’s analysis. Rosato casts the democratic peace as an inviolable law of international relations, yet it is a theory that predicts broad tendencies, not the foreign policy choices made by any given democracy. Slantchev and his coauthors also uncover selection bias in Rosato’s choice of evidence to refute the democratic peace.15 Michael Doyle critiques Rosato from a perspective rooted in the writings of