Democracy and Victory: Why Regime Type Hardly Matters

Overview

Are democracies more or less likely than authoritarian states to achieve victory in warfare? According to Michael Desch of the University of Kentucky, “democratic defeatists” considered democracy a “decided liability” in war fighting. More recently, “democratic triumphalists” have argued that democracies, whether because they more carefully select the wars they wage or because they fight more effectively, are more likely to win in war. Following a review of major wars since 1815, however, Desch concludes that “regime type hardly matters” in explaining who wins and loses wars. Other factors—including overall military capabilities, the nature of the conflict, and the degree of regime consolidation —may better explain victory and defeat.

From the first page...
"Whether democracies are more or less likely to win wars has long been a contentious issue. The Greek general Thucydides’ chronicle of the defeat of democratic Athens in its twenty-four-year struggle with authoritarian Sparta in The Peloponnesian War, particularly his account of the Sicilian debacle, remains the classic indictment of the inability of democracies to prepare for and fight wars. Indeed, for most of Western history, pessimism dominated thinking about democracy and war. “Democratic defeatists,” from the French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville to mid-twentieth-century realists such as E.H. Carr, George Kennan, and Walter Lippmann, believed that democracy was a decided liability in preparing for and fighting wars. Particularly during the Cold War, the pessimistic perspective on the fighting power of democracies was dominant. Even leaders of the free world, such as John F. Kennedy, believed that when democracy “competes with a system of government... built primarily for war, it is at a disadvantage.” Despite the end of the Cold War, a few Cassandras remain concerned that democracies are unprepared to meet the next major military threat from authoritarian states such as China or international terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda."