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Abstract: This article extends Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder's proposition that regimes in the process of democratization are more likely to engage in international conflict. First, the article expands the theory to include civil war by looking at Russia's internal clashes with Chechnya. Second, the analysis demonstrates the existence of a vicious circle in which the process of democratization led to military adventures, which in turn reduced the level of democracy in Russia. While many explanations have been advanced for the Chechen wars, this article focuses on elite competition, the role of the military, the loss of great power status, and the need to identify an external enemy in order to promote internal consolidation as determining factors.
This article argues that the effect of the two Chechen wars, 1994-1996 and 1999-2002, has been devastating to the Russian democratization process. Both wars were the product of a regime moving from authoritarian to more democratic government but, the wars themselves helped block Russia's democratic transition and reinforced the semi-authoritarian nature of the state.
This argument proceeds using the framework of the theory about democratization and war developed by Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder. The article analyzes how this theory and its implications fit Russia's case, and whether the case of Russia and particularly Russia's wars in Chechnya support the theory. In addition, the article extends the original Mansfield and Snyder analysis by showing how the wars slowed the democratization process.
The article only examines the case of Russia through empirical observations and does not touch upon the methodology that has been used by Mansfield and Snyder and others to find statistical evidence for the theory. The two Chechen wars are examined and some conclusions are drawn from them, as to how small but continuous wars have both been the product of elite competition under conditions of partial democratization, and have undermined Russia's democratization process. The article thus extends the analysis of the problem identified by the theory by showing how, in the Russian case, war is not just a product of incomplete democratization, but itself contributes to weakening democratization. Thus, under some circumstances, there may be a vicious circle whereby incomplete democratization makes war more likely, but war then slows down or reverses democratization, making further...