Collaborative Research: The Democratic Peace - An Experimental Approach

无数研究发现，民主国家从不与其他民主国家发生战争，但学者们仍在争论为什么这种模式存在。 一些人认为，民主和平是遗漏了共同利益等变量的虚假结果。 其他人认为民主会带来和平，但对产生这种关系的机制持不同意见。 之前的尝试面临三个严重的障碍：内生性、共线性和过度聚合。 因此，很难孤立民主促进和平的条件，也很难理解其因果力量背后的机制。 几十年来，美国和外国领导人在分析外交事务和证明民主扩张的合理性时都引用了民主和平。 鉴于中东、亚洲和北非面临着巨大的民主压力，这个话题在今天显得更加重要。 通过阐明民主促进和平的环境，并确定其运作机制，该项目可以帮助领导人预测民主化的影响和战争的可能性。 此外，通过指出民主的哪些制度特征有助于和平，这项研究可以为新民主国家的设计提供信息。 最后，研究民主不仅如何影响战争，而且如何影响经济和外交关系，将产生关于国际合作来源的新的、一般性的知识。研究人员建议通过进行微观实验来克服上述三个障碍。 现有的民主和平理论对公民个人和精英的偏好和信仰具有可检验但未经探索的影响。 研究人员将进行一系列调查实验，让美国公民，包括最像政治精英的一部分公民，了解外交政策情景。 情况的各个方面，包括潜在对手是否是民主国家，都会有所不同。 这些实验将提供关于民主如何影响战争偏好的微观证据，同时避免阻碍先前研究的内生性和共相关性问题。 研究人员还将研究当目标是民主国家而不是独裁国家时，为什么个人会有不同的反应。 民主可以通过改变对对手构成的威胁、战争的预期成本、成功的可能性以及使用暴力的道德的看法来促进和平。 我们将对这些和其他看法进行研究，以阐明因果机制。

Countless studies have found that democracies never fight againts other democracies, but scholars continue to debate why this pattern exists. Some argue that the democratic peace is a spurious result of omitted variables such as shared interests. Others believe that democracy causes peace but disagree about the mechanisms generating this relationship. Previous attempts have faced three serious obstacles: endogeneity, collinearity, and over-aggregation. As a consequence, it has been difficult to isolate the conditions under which democracy contributes to peace and to understand the mechanisms behind its causal power. For decades, U.S. and foreign leaders have cited the democratic peace when analysing foreign affairs and justifying democratic enlargement. This topic is even more critical today, given the tremendous pressure for democracy in the Middle East, Asia, and North Africa. By clarifying the circumstances under which democracy fosters peace, and by identifying the mechansism through which it operates, this project could help leaders forecast the effects of democratization and the likelihood of war. Moreover, by indicating which institutional features of democracy contribute to peace, the research could inform the design of new democracies. Finally, studying how democracy affects not only war but also economic and diplomatic relations will result in new and general knowledge about the sources of international cooperation.The researchers propose to overcome these three obstacles, mentioned above, by conducting micro-level experiments. Existing theories of the democratic peace have testable but unexplored implications about the preferences and beliefs of individual citizens and elites. The researchers will conduct a series of survey experiments in which U.S. citizens, including a subset of citizens who most resemble political elites, read about foriegn policy scenarios. The aspects of the situation, including whether the potential adversary is a democracy, will be varied. The experiments will provide micro-level evidence about how democracy affects preferences about war, while avoiding problems of endogeneity and collinnearity that have hampered previous research. The researcers will also study why individuals react differently when the target is a democracy rather than an autocracy. Democracy could promote peace by changing perceptions about the threat the opponent poses, the expected cost of war, the likelihood of success, and the morality of using violence. These and other perceptions will be examined in order to shed light on the causal mechanisms.