Democracies, Disputes, and Third-Party Intermediaries

The proposition that democracies rarely fight one another has been well-substantiated by empirical research. A prominent explanation for this finding is that shared norms fostered by a democratic political culture promote peaceful conflict resolution. Joint democratic dyads allegedly have a greater propensity than other types of dyads to entrust third parties with judicial competence to settle their disputes. The results from a study of 206 dyadic disputes involving third-party intermediaries support this claim. The presence of joint democracy in dangerous, war-prone dyads has a strong positive effect on the probability of referring interstate disputes to binding third-party settlement, even when controlling for alliance bonds and geographic proximity. In addition, the more a joint democratic dyad is marked by coherent regimes or a rough parity in the distribution of military capabilities, the greater the propensity to refer disputes to binding third-party settlement.