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How do nation-states' political institutions affect the relations between states? This article addresses that question by testing the predictions of different theories linking political institutions to war outcomes. Specifically, rent-seeking and regime legitimacy theories predict that all democratic belligerents are more likely to win wars because they fight more effectively. Alternatively, other theories focusing on the domestic political vulnerability of leaders and the marketplace of ideas predict that democracies are likely to be more careful about choosing when to start war. This would mean that only democratic initiators are more likely to win. Analyzing all interstate wars from 1816 to 1982 with a multivariate probit model, we find that democratic initiators are significantly more likely to win wars; democratic targets are also more likely to win, though the relationship is not as strong. We also find empirical support for several control variables, including strategy, terrain, and capability.
Recent empirical scholarship has noted that democracies are significantly more likely to win the wars they fight than are other types of regimes. Though this finding refutes the general realist claim that regime type is unrelated to foreign policy behavior, it also begs the important theoretical question of why democracies are more likely to win wars. Since different theories of foreign policy behavior provide different answers to this question, discerning the real reasons would advance our theoretical understanding of foreign policy behavior.
Scholars offer two different general arguments to explain democracies' winning ways. First, they are perceived as intrinsically more effective at waging war than are nondemocracies (hereafter termed the "warfighting" explanation), primarily because it is easier for them to rally their society behind a war effort. Second, as derived from several theories, democracies win more often because they are more careful about deciding to initiate war (hereafter termed the "selection-effects" explanation). Significantly, the theoretical assumptions of the latter argument are consistent with the structural explanation of the tendency for democracies not to fight one another, popularly known as the democratic peace.
This article explores in detail why democracies are more likely to win wars, specifically comparing the war-fighting and selection-effects explanations. Our empirical tests discriminate between these explanations by exploring whether democracies are more likely to win all wars in which they participate (predicted by the...