*Topicality/Definitions Democracy Promotion Includes Military Intervention
Democratic Transition Key to Global Peace
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- DEMOCRACY STOPS WAR AND CONFLICT Dafoe et al, ’13
- SUCCESSFUL DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION IN MIDEAST CRITICAL TO REDUCING VIOLENCE AND EXTREMISM THROUGHOUT THE WORLD
- DEMOCRACY PROMOTION FOSTERS THE CONDITIONS FOR A MORE PEACEFUL AND STABLE WORLD
- SUCCESSFUL DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION REDUCES VIOLENCE AND EXTREMISM
- SYNERGY OF DEMOCRACY AND DETERRENCE ONLY SIGNIFICANT FACTOR IN PREVENTION OF MAJOR WAR – OTHER FRAMEWORKS MAKE WAR INEVITABLE
- Certainly if we were able to press a button and end poverty, racism, religious intolerance, injustice, and endless disputes, we would want to do so
- No one, however, has yet been able to demonstrate the kind of robust correlation with any of these "traditional" causes of war as is reflected in the "democratic peace."
- DEMOCRACY MAKES CONFLICT LESS LIKELY AT EVVERY POINT OF TENSION – CAUSES DE-ESCALATIN AND STRENGTHENS DETERRENCE
Democratic Transition Key to Global PeaceDEMOCRATIC PEACE THEORY IS THE MAIN MOTIVATION FOR US DEMOCRACY PROMOTION Dionysis Markakis, Center for International and Regional Studies- Georgetown University, 2016, US Democracy Promotion in the Middle East: The Pursuit of Hegemony, p. 31-2 The second formative influence relates to US national security, and in particular a belief in the validity of the democratic peace theory. This as the basis of a more stable and secure world and, indeed, a more pro-American one. As Larry Diamond argues: “a more democratic world would be safer, saner, and more prosperous world for the United States.” The democratic peace theory is based on two claims: first that “democracies almost never fight each other and very rarely consider the use of force in their mutual relations,” and second that “other types of relations are much more conflictual including democracies’ interactions with non-democracies”. The US has long seen the expansion of liberal democracy as a panacea of sorts, particularly after the fall of the Soviet Union. Thus George H.W. Bush asserted that: “in a world where we are the only remaining superpower, it is the role of the United States to marshal its moral and material resources to promote a democratic peace.” This was continued by Clinton, who adopted “democratic enlargement” as his major foreign policy theme, arguing that: “the best strategy to ensure security and to build a durable peace is to support the advance of democracy elsewhere.” The advocacy of a democratic peace was taken to unprecedented heights by G.W. Bush, who extolled is virtues throughout his presidency, claiming that “history has proven that free nations are peaceful nations, that democracies do not fight their neighbors.” Therefore while democracy promotion is directed towards the maintenance of states’ internal stability, in a broader sense it also relates to inter-state stability, namely the absence of conflict between democratic states posited above.
Properly Specifying the Conditional Effects of Political Regimes The conditionality of the democratic peace on the political composition of the international system can be simply assessed by creating an indicator variable that identifies jointly democratic dyads and interacting it with the proportion of democracies in the system. As noted above, the behavior of autocratic pairs should also be affected if G&W are correct in believing that cooperation between states with similar political systems is dependent on the level of threat they face from dissimilar polities. When autocracies are scarce and democracies plentiful, autocracies should be united by the common threat they face and behave more peacefully toward one another. Consequently, in the tests below we also identify jointly autocratic pairs and interact that variable with the proportion of democracies system-wide. Historically, the “autocratic peace” should have grown with the increasing number of democratic states, if G&W are correct. Finally, we add an indicator for mixed dyads, those pairs that include one democracy and one autocracy, and again create an interactive term. This setup allows us to estimate the effects of the political composition of the system on the three types of dyads of greatest interest. In particular, we can assess the conditionality of the democratic peace and can determine whether it is meaningful to speak of an autocratic peace. Like G&W, we estimate the consequences of the increasing number of democracies on the probability of interstate conflict using a logistic regression in which there are controls for important realist influences, but we make two changes. First, we replace the indicator (Major Power) identifying dyads that include at least one state that was a major power according to the Correlates of War (COW) project with a continuous measure of the size of the more powerful state in each dyad. To do this, we use COW's Composite Index of National Capability (CINC). We justified this improvement in the liberal-realist model elsewhere (Hegre, Oneal and Russett 2010), noting that Bremer (1992:337) worried from the beginning that the major-power indicator was unduly subjective and biased by a posteriori knowledge about which states fought frequently, a behavior characteristic of major powers. A binary variable is also a crude indicator of a state's ability to project military force. The CINC score is a continuous measure of states' power that takes into account demographic, industrial, and military capabilities. Second, we include controls for temporal dependence (Beck et al. 1998) as G&W did, but add a measure of the number of the states in the international system to account for the real opportunities for interaction as the state system expands (Raknerud and Hegre 1997).11 Our dependent variable is the onset of a militarized interstate dispute (MID). Bennett and Stam (2004) recommend considering only the originators of a dispute, those states involved on the first day of fighting, because the outbreak of fighting changes the situation for countries that might join (or be forced to join) subsequently. In particular, information regarding the correlation of force is affected. Excluding joiners may be appropriate if one is focusing on realist theories; but we are concerned with testing the democratic peace. The onset of a dispute provides new information about the balance of power but not states' political characteristics. Consequently, we also report tests in which conflicts involving joiners are included. In addition, we consider two sets of MIDs: (1) all threats, displays, and uses of force including those that become wars and (2) only fatal disputes, where at least one combatant was killed. We have a long-standing preference for the latter (Oneal, Russett, and Berbaum 2003).12 Focusing on these more violent conflicts reduces the bias in the reporting of less severe military incidents. Examining fatal disputes also helps insure that our analyses are relevant to the violent international interactions of greatest concern. Bluffing is more common at low levels of conflict (Bueno de Mesquita 1981).13
Results
We present the estimated coefficients and standard errors for the indicators of jointly democratic, jointly autocratic, and mixed dyads; the proportion of democracies in the system; and their interactive terms for our four analyses of interstate conflict, 1816–2001, in Table 1. We also provide summary statistics for the models. We omit the realist variables and statistical controls from the table to save space. Those results are consistent in almost all cases with our previous work and the work of others, including G&W (Table 2, p. 178). Our results leave no doubt about the continuing importance of the democratic peace. Indeed, contrary to G&W's claim, the separate peace among democracies has strengthened as the proportion of democracies has increased. That is the only interactive term that is statistically significant in all four tests. Contrary to G&W's expectations, there are no consistent effects of the growth in the number of democratic polities on either jointly autocratic or mixed dyads. The interactive term Mixed * Proportion of Democracies is never significant, and the results for the corresponding variable for jointly autocratic pairs are inconsistent and in only one case statistically significant at even the .10 level. G&W's results are not robust (Criterion 3). Finally, the estimated coefficient for Proportion of Democracies is positive and significant in all four models. Interstate violence for the reference group (all dyads that include one state that is neither a democracy nor an autocracy) has increased over time. Thus, we find no evidence that a growing number of democracies pacify the system as a whole (Russett and Oneal 2001; Crescenzi, Kadera, Mitchell and Thyne 2011). Table 2 presents estimates of the probability of the onset of interstate conflict (either any MID or a fatal one, for originators only or originators and joiners), varying only the political character of the dyad and the proportion of democracies in the international system. We use the historical range for the latter variable—0.032 and 0.427—and extrapolate into the future by adding 50% to the higher value (0.641). In generating our estimates of the risk of a dispute, we focus on “dangerous dyads,” to use Bremer's (1992) memorable phrase, setting the realist variables at levels conducive to violence: The two states are large, share a land border, have proximate capitals, are not allies, and recently fought.15 We used King, Tomz and Wittenberg's (2000) statistical program to clarify our results. Many of the estimated probabilities reported in the table have large standard errors because the interactive terms are themselves insignificant, but the patterns in the results are clear. The first thing to note is that in the early 1800s, when democracies constituted only a small proportion of the states in the system, jointly democratic pairs were not particularly peaceful (Farber and Gowa 1997; Russett and Oneal 2001). The United States had several low-level conflicts with other democracies in the nineteenth century as did France, but fatal disputes between democratic countries were rarer. By 1864, two democracies were more peaceful than two autocratic states if the less favorable of the analyses using fatal MIDs is considered, that with disputes involving originators only; the transition is early in the nineteenth century if both originators' and joiners' fatal disputes are analyzed. The greater peacefulness of democratic pairs is evident only later if all MIDs are analyzed, somewhere between 1912 and 1917. By the end of the twentieth century, when the proportion of democracies was over .40, the greater peacefulness of democratic pairs of states is clear and dramatic. The risk of a fatal dispute involving two democracies is about 2/3 of that for two autocracies if originators only are included; it is only 1/10 if all fatal MIDs are considered. Comparisons at the end of the twentieth century are also very favorable to democracies if all MIDs are studied, and our analyses indicate that the democratic advantage will continue to grow if the proportion of democracies in the system increases further. Thus, these analyses provide no reason to worry that the democratic peace is becoming attenuated in the post-Cold War era.
To summarize, we find no indication that the democratic peace diminished as the proportion of democracies in the international system increased during 1816–2001. Indeed, the peacefulness of jointly democratic pairs has grown over time, leaving a wide gap in behavior between democratic and autocratic dyads. Our results make clear that the separate peace among democracies cannot be subsumed under the general rule regarding the violent consequences of political differences that G&W have proposed. Nor do we find evidence of a meaningful “autocratic peace.” Autocratic pairs are peaceful only relative to mixed dyads, which are especially prone to fight. It is encouraging that the democratic peace strengthened as liberal institutions spread beyond the North Atlantic region where they originated. The Arab Spring may after all improve the prospects for peace in the Middle East. Conclusion: From Monads to Complex Systems
Further developments came in at least three forms. First was the exploration of the role of domestic politics on international relations. This meant, for example, that effective cooperation rather than conflict derived heavily from the political and economic characteristics that define the different interests of states. This required creating new data sets. Not coincidentally, the new perspectives on the sources of cooperative behavior severely damaged the realist perspective of inevitable conflict in an individualist dog-eat-dog world. A second development was the expansion of dyadic analysis to triads, then to regions or other groupings, and most recently the blossoming of complex network analysis to the entire global system. A third development arose from increasing appreciation of the challenge that causal complexity and dependence poses to causal inference using observational data. Some scholars sought to address this challenge by developing model-based techniques, such as multiple equation models and novel estimators. These techniques, however, are prone to making statistical inference more opaque, and often depend on additional conditions that are harder to verify. Other scholars have begun to employ design-based strategies for improving causal inference, leveraging experiments, sources of as-if random variation in causes of interest, causal process observations, and other techniques. These and future developments will no doubt reshape how we think about the causes of cooperation and conflict in international relations. At present, however, none of these developments has persuasively overturned the empirical regularity first identified almost 40 years ago. In particular, the two articles addressed here do not inform our understanding of the democratic peace, and they do not provide evidence against the theory that democracy operates as a powerful force for peace. In a subject of study where reliable insights are rare, the robust finding that democracies are more peaceful toward each other remains an important empirical regularity for future scholarship to build upon.
Jeffrey Feltman, Assistant Secretary of State-Near Eastern Affairs, 2011, House Hearing: Assessing U.S. Foreign Policy Priorities and Needs Amidst Economic Challenges in the Middle East, March 01, [http://www.hcfa.house.gov/112/65055.pdf], p. 8-9 We have much at stake. Successful democratic reforms in the Middle East would lay the groundwork for a more sustainable regional foundation. Peaceful changes that answer people’s legitimate aspirations and respect their rights would give the lie to al Qaeda and all of those who claim that violence and extremism are the only means for achieving results.
Daniela Huber, Senior Fellow Instituto Affari Internazionali, Rome, 2015, Democracy Promotion and Foreign Policy: Identity and Interests in US, EU, and Non-Western Democracies, p. 35--6 The assumption of many structural realists that democracy promotion is opposed to the security interest and of second-order normative concerns is contested. Democracy promotion cannot only be seen as opposing the security interest, but also as a distinct security policy which reduces threats and fosters a stable order. Neo-classical, motivational realist theories on the democratic peace (i.e., the observation that democracies do not wage wars against one another) have pointed to reasons why it is a rational long-term policy for democracies to promote democracy abroad and why, in general, democracy promotion can be seen as a perfectly realist foreign policy. Democracies are perceived as “sheep in sheep’s clothing,” that is, as security seekers. Their transparency enables them to send reliable signals and thus alleviate the security dilemma which is the reason for the lack of trust and cooperation in the international system. But not only utilitarian-inspired considerations present motivations to promote democracy. It also helps to pursue security interests from an identity-driven perspective: for constructivists, the security dilemma among democracies is reduced, since they trust one another which equals complete information. In addition, when other states are “converted” to democracy, their ontological threat of representing other values and norms in the international system is removed. Democracy promotion manipulates how other states perceive the international system, seeing the power of democracies as favorable and as “no threat to their fundamental visions of societal order.” Thus, with democracy promotion democracies can also counter the challenge of rising non-democratic powers in the international system. In 2008, one of the most renowned scholars on Democracy, Larry Diamond, assessed a backlash against democracy around the world, led by China, Russia, but also Iran and Venezuela, representing strategic sponsors for many autocracies in the world. Thus, democracy promotion could also be seen as a policy of democracies to contain not only these powers, but the very values and norms that they are representing. SUCCESSFUL DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION REDUCES VIOLENCE AND EXTREMISM Jeffrey Feltman, Assistant Secretary of State-Near Eastern Affairs, 2011, House Hearing: Assessing U.S. Foreign Policy Priorities and Needs Amidst Economic Challenges in the Middle East, March 01, [http://www.hcfa.house.gov/112/65055.pdf], p. 10-1 The people of the Middle East face some steep obstacles in meeting these challenges, and though it is they who will determine the outcomes, the United States has much at stake in their success and stands prepared to support and assist them as they grapple with these issues. Successful democratic reforms that respond to the people’s legitimate aspirations and respect people’s universal rights would discredit those who claim that violence and extremism are the only means for achieving change, while laying a more sustainable regional foundation that benefits the people and governments of the Middle East and the international community alike. Investing in diplomacy and our relationships in the Middle East, with the governments as well as people, will enable us to help shape events and address contingencies that can have a critical impact on our national security.
John Norton Moore, 2004, Director center for Security Law-University of Virginia, Solving the War Puzzle, Beyond the Democratic Peace V Democracy and Deterrence: A First-Stage Hypothesis A synthesis of idealist and realist visions. FITTING THE PUZZLE TOGETHER, major interstate war seems predominantly to be a synergy between a potential aggressive nondemocratic regime and an absence of effective levels of deterrence; that is, democratic nations do not need to deter other democratic nations through external incentives even where contiguity, and thus higher risk, is present. Canada does not, and need not, fear a United States invasion, despite the overwhelming military superiority of the United States. And Belgium does not, and need not, fear a French invasion, despite the overwhelming military superiority of France. But NATO was certainly correct to work assiduously to deter an invasion from the then Soviet Union. Indeed, NATO may well have prevented World War III and may have been one of the most effective foreign policy initiatives in U.S. history. The principal path to major war for democracies seems to be failing to ensure adequate levels of deterrence when confronted by potential aggressors. As has been seen, this can occur because of an absence of adequate military forces, as was true of the United States entry into World War I and, in part, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor; lack of communication of intent, as was true in the Korean and Gulf Wars;1 or lack of believability of the guarantee, as was true of British entry into World War II and, in part, Milosevic's decisions to defy NATO in Bosnia and Kosovo. This means, if correct, that democracies should focus on ensuring effective levels of deterrence in response to threats of aggression or democide, considering all such factors, in settings where they would otherwise be prepared to go to war. To recognize this imperative, however, is not to supply the answers to the considerable strategic and political difficulties in meeting this challenge in settings such as those Britain faced in Hitler's threat to Europe or those the United States faced in Hussein's initial threat to Kuwait. But understanding the problem, and then focusing on the right objective, is at least a necessary condition for getting it right in war avoidance. Given the likely principal path to war for democracies, does the evidence suggest that democracies are uniquely poor at deterrence? Certainly some visible features of democracies may contribute to misperceptions by potential aggressors. The healthy pluralism and robust free speech, the anti-war skepticism, the checks and balances, and diffusion of power between the executive and legislative branches may all contribute to undermining deterrence in specific settings. Hitler was certainly encouraged by the infamous 1933 Oxford Union pledge: "This House will under no circumstances fight for its King and Country"2 and the record of British and French diplomacy from 1935 to 1939 caving to Hitler's demands. Japan was certainly encouraged in its perception of a weak United States, little committed to its Pacific interests, by the pervasive isolationist mood in the United States as reflected in the 1934-36 Nye Commission,3 five "neutrality laws" passed from 1935 to 1939, the 1938 Ludlow Amendment,4 and that when Congress finally reinstated the draft it had done so by only one vote and on condition that no draftees fight outside of this hemisphere. Examples of such misguided efforts to avoid war are legion. It is possible, as one speculative thought about democracies and deterrence, that settings of lessened public perception of war risk may generate political responses that can sometimes result in inadequate deterrence against the next major threat.5 Something of such a cycle can be seen in the rapid U.S. demobilization following World Wars I and II and, to a lesser extent, following the Cold War. It is doubtful, however, that democracies are uniquely poor at deterrence. Rummel's analysis of major wars between 1816 and 1991 shows that there were 198 war pairings between nondemocracies, the largest category of war in this period.6 If the earlier analysis of the importance of deterrence in war avoidance when dealing with potential aggressors is correct, then this level of war between nondemocracies suggests that nondemocratic regimes also may have great, if not even greater, difficulty deterring. Perhaps the principal mechanisms are somewhat different, as when totalitarian leaders pursue superficially shrewd deals with other such leaders that backfire, as with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. We might also note in favor of the deterrent ability of democracies that they can be quite effective in deterrence when they clearly focus on the threat and are united. NATO, as has been urged, may be one of the most effective efforts at deterrence in human history. The coalition forces in the Korean and Gulf Wars seem to have put in place effective deterrence to prevent a recurrence. Further, since democracies overwhelmingly win the wars they fight, this is a factor that should add to their effectiveness in deterrence.8 There is also evidence that "when democratic states are strongly resolved to use force, they are better able to convince their opponents of that fact than are nondemocratic states."9 The real lesson may simply be that ensuring effective deterrence is difficult and that if the model is correct, leaders need to focus more explicitly on achieving it against threatening nondemocracies.10 If major interstate war is predominantly a product of a synergy between a potential nondemocratic aggressor and an absence of effective deterrence, what is the role of the many traditional "causes" of war? Past, and many contemporary, theories of war have focused on the role of specific disputes between nations, ethnic and religious differences, arms races, poverty or social injustice, competition for resources, incidents and accidents, greed, fear, and perceptions of "honor," or many other such factors. Such factors may well play a role in motivating aggression or in serving as a means for generating fear and manipulating public opinion. The reality, however, is that while some of these may have more potential to contribute to war than others, there may well be an infinite set of motivating factors, or human wants, motivating aggression. It is not the independent existence of such motivating factors for war but rather the circumstances permitting or encouraging high risk decisions leading to war that is the key to more effectively controlling war. And the same may also be true of democide. The early focus in the Rwanda slaughter on "ethnic conflict," as though Hutus and Tutsis had begun to slaughter each other through spontaneous combustion, distracted our attention from the reality that a nondemocratic Hutu regime had carefully planned and orchestrated a genocide against Rwandan Tutsis as well as its Hutu opponents." Certainly if we were able to press a button and end poverty, racism, religious intolerance, injustice, and endless disputes, we would want to do so. Indeed, democratic governments must remain committed to policies that will produce a better world by all measures of human progress. The broader achievement of democracy and the rule of law will itself assist in this progress. No one, however, has yet been able to demonstrate the kind of robust correlation with any of these "traditional" causes of war as is reflected in the "democratic peace." Further, given the difficulties in overcoming many of these social problems, an approach to war exclusively dependent on their solution may be to doom us to war for generations to come. A useful framework in thinking about the war puzzle is provided in the Kenneth Waltz classic Man, the State, and War,12 first published in 1954 for the Institute of War and Peace Studies, in which he notes that previous thinkers about the causes of war have tended to assign responsibility at one of the three levels of individual psychology, the nature of the state, or the nature of the international system. This tripartite level of analysis has subsequently been widely copied in the study of international relations. We might summarize my analysis in this classical construct by suggesting that the most critical variables are the second and third levels, or "images," of analysis. Government structures, at the second level, seem to play a central role in levels of aggressiveness in high risk behavior leading to major war. In this, the "democratic peace" is an essential insight. The third level of analysis, the international system, or totality of external incentives influencing the decision for war, is also critical when government structures do not restrain such high risk behavior on their own. Indeed, nondemocratic systems may not only fail to constrain inappropriate aggressive behavior, they may even massively enable it by placing the resources of the state at the disposal of a ruthless regime elite. It is not that the first level of analysis, the individual, is unimportant. I have already argued that it is important in elite perceptions about the permissibility and feasibility of force and resultant necessary levels of deterrence. It is, instead, that the second level of analysis, government structures, may be a powerful proxy for settings bringing to power those who may be disposed to aggressive military adventures and in creating incentive structures predisposing to high risk behavior. We should keep before us, however, the possibility, indeed probability, that a war/peace model focused on democracy and deterrence might be further usefully refined by adding psychological profiles of particular leaders, and systematically applying other findings of cognitive psychology, as we assess the likelihood of aggression and levels of necessary deterrence in context. A post-Gulf War edition of Gordon Craig and Alexander George's classic, Force and Statecraft,13 presents an important discussion of the inability of the pre-war coercive diplomacy effort to get Saddam Hussein to withdraw from Kuwait without war.14 This discussion, by two of the recognized masters of deterrence theory, reminds us of the many important psychological and other factors operating at the individual level of analysis that may well have been crucial in that failure to get Hussein to withdraw without war. We should also remember that nondemocracies can have differences between leaders as to the necessity or usefulness of force and, as Marcus Aurelius should remind us, not all absolute leaders are Caligulas or Neros. Further, the history of ancient Egypt reminds us that not all Pharaohs were disposed to make war on their neighbors. Despite the importance of individual leaders, however, we should also keep before us that major international war is predominantly and critically an interaction, or synergy, of certain characteristics at levels two and three, specifically an absence of democracy and an absence of effective deterrence. Yet another way to conceptualize the importance of democracy and deterrence in war avoidance is to note that each in its own way internalizes the costs to decision elites of engaging in high risk aggressive behavior. Democracy internalizes these costs in a variety of ways including displeasure of the electorate at having war imposed upon it by its own government. And deterrence either prevents achievement of the objective altogether or imposes punishing costs making the gamble not worth the risk.15 DEMOCRACY MAKES CONFLICT LESS LIKELY AT EVVERY POINT OF TENSION – CAUSES DE-ESCALATIN AND STRENGTHENS DETERRENCE Paul K. Huth & Todd Allee, 2003, Professor & PhD Candidate at the Department of Political Science , University Michigan, The Democratic Peace and Territorial Conflict in the 20th Century, p. 292-295 Is democracy an asset or liability for foreign policy-makers? We believe that the empirical evidence supports the conclusion that democratic norms and accountability are, on balance, an asset that can be used by democratic leaders to protect and advance their country’s interests in international disputes. Specifically, five findings are the basis for drawing this conclusion. First, democratic states were not singled out as targets of military threats and probes in the Status Quo Stage. As a result, there is no systematic evidence to suggest that the leaders of non-democratic states believe that democratic leaders are vulnerable to coercive pressure and therefore more willing to offer territorial concessions in order to avoid military confrontations. Second, in the Escalation Stage the deterrent policies of democratic leaders were more effective in preventing escalation than those of non-democratic leaders. This indicates that adversaries recognize that once democratic leaders take a strong and public position in a crisis they are unlikely to back down due to the domestic political costs of a retreat. As a result, greater political accountability enhances the credibility of deterrent threats by democratic leaders. Third, in the Negotiations Stage it was found that states were more likely to offer concessions when their democratic negotiating adversary enjoyed strong political support in the legislature or parliament. This is because presidents and prime ministers, when backed by majority support from political parties back home, come to the negotiating table with the credible power to make deals that could be ratified. As a result, states are more willing to put concessions on the table because they expect any agreement reached will remain in place when taken back home by their democratic counterpart. Once again, greater political accountability can strengthen the bargaining position of democratic leaders. Fourth, in the Negotiations Stage signals of resolve by democratic leaders were more effective in securing concessions from negotiating adversaries than were signals of resolve by non-democratic states. This finding suggests that democratic states can be quite effective in bargaining with non-democratic states and that democratic leaders are quite capable of sending credible signals of resolve in rounds of talks. Fifth, in the Negotiations Stage there was no systematic evidence that democratic states were more likely to concede in the wake of previously stalemated talks. The evidence, in fact, suggests the opposite is more likely to be true. That is, non-democratic leaders are more likely to make concessions in the wake of previously stalemated talks than are democratic leaders. This indicates that democratic norms do not lead democratic negotiators to concede first in difficult negotiations and it also suggests that non-democratic negotiators do not rely upon concessions from democratic states to break stalemates in negotiations. The broad policy implications that follow from these findings are that democratic leaders should be able to effectively manage disputes with non-democratic states. When democratic leaders have strong support in the legislature or parliament they should push for talks and concessions from their non-democratic adversary. Furthermore, democratic leaders should be prepared to stake out firm negotiating positions early on in talks. If a military confrontation does emerge, then deterrent policies can be quite effective as long as democratic leaders take the initiative and signal their resolve and communicate this resolve early on in a crisis. Promoting the resolution of international disputes There are two findings from our research that have useful policy implications in terms of the conditions under which disputes are most likely to be resolved through negotiations. First, there is strong evidence that democratic leaders are more inclined to pursue talks and offer concessions in periods shortly after national elections. As a result, this suggests that states should seize the opportunity after elections to push for talks and to try and make relatively rapid progress in the negotiations if the goal is to conclude an agreement. For one, the later the talks begin and the longer they last, the lower the prospects of securing concessions from the democratic negotiating partner. A related implication is that state leaders may want to downplay the resumption of negotiations or try to generate strong expectations of progress in ongoing or forthcoming talks if they know that their democratic negotiating partner is entering into the later stages of the electoral cycle. In this situation, it might be preferable to defer talks or to accept the fact that the goal of talks at this time should not be to reach any formal agreement but rather to lay the groundwork for more serious talks after elections have been held. A second finding with policy relevance is that states are more likely to concede in negotiations when the ruling coalition of the president or prime minister controls a significant majority of the seats in the legislature or parliament. One implication is that democratic leaders should be strategic and use this situation of domestic strength to their advantage in negotiations. For example, an opportune time for democratic leaders to press adversaries to make concessions is when democratic leaders have strong legislative or parliamentary support. Conversely, democratic leaders should understand that they are less likely to secure concessions when they lack such political backing. This point leads directly to the second implication that the bargaining tactic of using political weakness at home to gain greater concessions at the international negotiating table is unlikely to be very effective. The empirical evidence suggests that state leaders are more impressed with the political security of their negotiating partners. While it may be an appealing policy to try and use political weakness to strengthen one’s bargaining position, the hard reality is that states are more likely to offer concessions to politically secure negotiating partners because they view commitments to reciprocate concessions and then ratify agreements as more credible from leaders with strong backing at home. Third-party efforts at mediation and extended deterrence Two additional findings are of practical value to policy-makers who seek to protect an ally involved in a territorial dispute. First, challengers take advantage of an adversary’s involvement in military confrontations with other states to initiate threats and to probe the resolve and military capabilities of the potentially distracted adversary. As a result, for those states seeking to deter military threats to their allies, they should recognize this situation as a vulnerable time for their ally and therefore be prepared to warn challengers that they are committed to their ally’s security. Concrete policy actions could include public and repeated statements by high-level officials of their country’s extended deterrent commitments as well as military exercises and deployments that demonstrate the ability to project military forces. Second, once military threats have been issued, further escalation by challengers is strongly influenced by the local balance of conventional forces. For states worried about attacks against allies, their short-term threats and military actions will fail to achieve strong deterrent effects unless they can concretely contribute to denying the challenger a local military advantage. As a result, the defending state often will need to undertake substantial military actions on short notice. If we turn to the role of third parties as mediators in negotiations over disputed territory, we believe that several findings from the Status Quo and Negotiations Stages are of policy relevance. For example, the previously discussed findings on the importance of the electoral cycle for the initiation and outcome of negotiations suggests that a “ripe” time for mediators to push democratic leaders to open up talks and offer concessions is shortly after national elections. Therefore, if democratic leaders enjoy strong party support, then mediators should press negotiating partners of the democratic state that the time is favorable for negotiating mutual concessions and securing treaty ratification. Finally, we found considerable evidence that democratic leaders can be quite sensitive to the domestic political costs of offering concessions. 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