Democracy and the Mediation of International Conflict

民主国家卷入敌对行动和战争的频率与非民主国家差不多。然而，民主国家之间的敌对和战争是罕见的事件。出现了一个基本命题，用来解释为什么民主国家很少相互敌对。也就是说，争斗的民主国家通过成功地利用第三方的调解和其他努力来解决或改善它们之间的冲突，从而避免彼此之间的战争。这项研究的目的是调查民主治理对战后约250起国家间安全争端中冲突管理技术的使用及和平解决的影响。这是对这一基本命题进行直接实证研究的第一次尝试。研究人员将首先开发一个综合数据库，收集关于州际争端及其结果、争端各方的属性、寻求改善的任何第三方以及争端双方和第三方采取的具体行动的各种信息。利用这些数据，研究人员将构建和估计一个将民主作为促进使用冲突管理技术的因素的理论模型，然后重点研究民主如何与冲突管理技术一起在和平解决争端中发挥作用的更复杂的模型。该项目的最后阶段涉及在一系列比较案例研究中对选定的争端进行事后审查。调查的这些阶段确保了关于民主国家为什么很少相互开战的命题得到了严格的检验。

Democratic nations are involved in hostilities and wars about as often as non-democratic nations. However, hostilities and wars between democracies are rare events. A fundamental proposition has emerged to explain why democracies rarely engage in hostile acts with one another. Namely, contending democratic nations avoid war with one another by successfully employing mediation and other efforts of third parties to resolve or ameliorate conflicts between them. The goal of this research is to investigate the impact of democratic governance on the use of conflict management techniques and peaceful settlement in approximately 250 postwar interstate security disputes. It represents the first attempt to subject this fundamental proposition to direct empirical investigation. The researcher will begin by developing an integrated data base drawing together diverse information on interstate disputes and their outcomes, attributes of contending parties in the disputes, any third parties seeking amelioration, and specific actions taken by both disputants and third parties. Using these data, the researcher will construct and estimate a theoretical model incorporating democracy as a factor promoting the use of conflict management techniques and then, focus on more complex models of how democracy works in conjunction with conflict management techniques in the peaceful settlement of disputes. The final phase of the project involves post-hoc examination of selected disputes in a series of comparative case studies. These stages of inquiry assure that the proposition about why democracies rarely engage in wars with one another is rigorously tested.