Never at War: Why Democracies Will Not Fight One Another is a book by the historian and physicist Spencer R. Weart published by Yale University Press in 1998. It examines political and military conflicts throughout human history and finds no exception to one of the claims that is made by the controversial democratic peace theory that well-established liberal democracies have never made war on one another. In addition to the democratic peace, Weart argues that there is also an oligarchic peace and provides a new explanation for both the democratic and oligarchic peace. The book is often mentioned in the academic debate and has received both praise and criticism.
Sources The long time period made Weart often rely on the works of other historians, but he consulted at least five works for even trivial crises involving democracies and oligarchies. Some cases have never been studied with that question in mind, and he then used primary sources, which included reading works in French, German (including Alemannic German), Italian (including the Tuscan dialect), Spanish, Greek, and Latin.
Definitions
The book classifies human societies into four broad groups:
Anocracies are societies in which central authority is weak or nonexistent. Kinship bonds extended by personal allegiances to notable leaders are the principal relations. A society may in theory be a state, but if the above applies, Weart classifies it as an anocracy. Examples include tribes, Somalia, and the medieval Italian cities in which influential families fought street battles and lived in fortified keeps. Importantly, there is no central authority that can effectively restrain personal violence such as raids, which often escalate by involving friends and relatives to vendettas and wars. Some anocratic tribes may have a form of democracy in the extended kinship group but no effective control of personal raids against non-kin groups. Examples include the Iroquois, who frequently raided and eventually destroyed most of the Hurons.
Autocracies are states in which opposition against the current rulers is suppressed. There may be frequent shifts back and forth between anocracy and autocracy if a leader temporarily gains enough power to suppress all opponents in a territory.
Oligarchies are states in which participation in government is restricted to an elite. Voting decides policy, and opposition is accepted within the elite. Voting is usually restricted to less than a third of the males. Examples include Sparta and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Democracies are states that are similar to oligarchies, but there is no sharp and clear distinction between an elite and the rest of the domestic population. Usually, more than two thirds of the males have the right to vote.
A borderline case is the Athenian democracy, which excluded metics and slaves. Weart argues that it was a democracy since appearance alone did not decide who was a citizen, citizens became slaves and slaves became free, citizens could be poorer than slaves, and slaves could work such as in banking. The metics were even harder to tell from the citizens. Typically, the citizens and noncitizens worked together under similar conditions. Thus, noncitizens were so interwoven through the community that their views were probably represented by the citizens on most issues. Some aspects of the direct democracy that was practiced in Athens may have been more open and democratic than the representative democracy that is used today. In contrast, the Confederate States was an oligarchy.
To help differentiate between oligarchies and democracies, Weart requires the classification not to differ from how the people at the time viewed the differences, the oligarchic elite should live in constant fear of a rebellion, and a war should not have been prevented if everyone had the vote in democracies. For example, it was the Greeks who first created the concepts of democracy and oligarchy and who classified Athens as a democracy while Sparta was an oligarchy. There was no mention in the historical record of fears of a revolt by the slaves in Athens, but such fears were frequent in Sparta and the Confederate States.
Weart uses a broader definition of war than is usual in his research on the democratic peace theory and includes any conflict causing at least 200 deaths in organized battle by political units against one another. He requires the democracies and the oligarchies to have tolerated dissent for at least three years since he finds that time to be necessary for a political culture in a nation to change and to be reflected in foreign policy.
Results Using those definitions, Weart finds numerous wars between the same and different kinds of societies but also two exceptions. Democracies have never fought one another, and oligarchies have almost never fought one another. Wars between democracies and oligarchies have, however, been common.
The book argues that the pattern is sharply evident, for example in the 300 years of Ancient Greek history, the Swiss cantons since the 14th century, the County of Flanders during the 14th century, the three-and-a-half centuries of the Hanseatic League, and Renaissance Italy. Those periods included numerous societies that frequently changed types of regime. Those societies abruptly stopped fighting other oligarchies if they became oligarchies and abruptly stopped fighting other democracies if they became a democracies. That pattern immediately reversed if the regime type changed again.
Weart argues that the only clear case of war between oligarchies is a 1656 battle between Bern and Lucerne, which was caused by religious fervor during the Reformation. The War of the Pacific may be another, but both Chile and Peru had strong anocratic tendencies in which family and personal loyalty formed much of the power base of the leaders. Toleration of political dissent was, at best, limited.
Democracies have, a few times, issued formal declarations of war on other democracies, usually because of a war between a temporary allied nondemocracy and the other democracy. In such cases, the democracies have carefully avoided engaging in almost any real battle with one another. There seems to have been almost no deaths during the 369–362 BC war between Thebes and Athens, but at the same time, Sparta and Thebes fought numerous bloody battles. In the main battle in 362 BC, the Athenian infantry avoided joining the charge. Finland and the United Kingdom carefully avoided attacking one another during World War II despite a formal declaration of war.
Explanation Weart's explanation for the democratic and the oligarchic peace is the human tendency to classify other humans into an ingroup and an outgroup, as has been documented in many psychological studies. Members of the outgroup are seen as inherently inferior and so exploitation of them is justified. Citizens of democracies include citizens of other democratic states in the ingroup. The elites of oligarchies include the elites of other oligarchies in the ingroup. However, the oligarchic elites and the democratic citizens view each other as an outgroup. Democracies view the elites as exploiting the rest of the population, and the oligarchic elites view democracies as governed by inferior men and are afraid that the democratic ideals may spread to their state.
The democratic and oligarchic peace are also strengthened by the culture of arbitration and the respect for the ingroup opposition in both democracies and oligarchies. Similar policies are applied to foreign policy to deal with states belonging to the ingroup. In contrast, the leaders of autocracies are the survivors of a culture of violence against opponents. They use similar methods to deal with other states, which often cause wars. The book presents earlier statistical studies and case studies to show that democracies and oligarchies conduct diplomacy very differently from autocracies. Weart argues against explanations like more trade between democracies since he finds the pattern to change too abruptly for that to be the case.
Earlier democracies and oligarchies did not include non-Europeans in the ingroup since they perceived them to be racially inferior and to be living in autocracies and anocracies. That allowed colonial and imperialistic wars and exploitation.
The book also describes an "appeasement trap." The autocratic leaders misunderstand the conciliatory methods used by democracies and oligarchies and see it as an admission of weakness that can be exploited with little risk. When the conciliatory methods are suddenly abandoned and the war arrives, autocratic leaders are often surprised and then conclude that the other side planned the war from the beginning.
Specific conflicts Most of the book describes specific conflicts that are borderline cases in which critical features might be expected to show up. The following presents some of the conflicts mentioned and Weart's arguments for why they are not wars between well-established liberal democracies. American Revolutionary War: the United States can be considered a liberal democracy after the Continental Congress but was less than three years old. The monarchy under George III was still the final arbiter of British policy in such matters as the appointment of colonial officials and the power to declare wars. The franchise was restricted to a small minority.Weart, 1998, p. 304–305. Quasi-War, with less than 200 battle deaths, a few dozen. The franchise in the French Directory was restricted to a minority of wealthy Frenchmen. In 1797, a coup d'état used troops against the opposition, closed down opposing newspapers, canceled election results, and condemned hundreds of opponents to exile or death.Weart, 1998, p. 305–306. War of 1812: the franchise in the United States was restricted to white men. The British prince regent still retained the final word on ministers and war. Open criticism was punishable as lèse majesté, and dissidents were driven into exile. The franchise was restricted to a small minority.Weart, 1998, p. 135–138, 184–186, 306. Trail of Tears: the Cherokees had created a republican constitution in 1827 that theorically had many democratic rights. However, it allowed slaveholding and became increasingly authoritarian and eventually beat, censored and even murdered those advocating a voluntary removal. The state of Georgia decreed that the government was dissolved in 1828, three years after the creation of the constitution. No battle deaths.Weart, 1998, p. 225–226, 306–07. Mexican–American War: Mexican President Mariano Paredes was a general who took power in a coup d'état.Weart, 1998, p. 201-204, 207, 214 Sonderbund War: less than 200 battle deaths. Democracy was less than three years old in Zürich, which was the leading Protestant Canton. The Catholic cantons restricted the suffrage to Catholic men and often also to a group that descended from the original inhabitants. The Protestants and liberals attempted a rebellion in Catholic Lucerne but were defeated. Some fled what they called a Catholic "reign of terror." Lucerne announced that Jesuits would be responsible for the educational system. That was perceived as evidence that Lucerne was now a regime under the thumb of the autocratic Pope. A private expedition of volunteers tried to "liberate" Lucerne but failed. The perceptions of lack of democracy was strengthened when the Catholic cantons refused to comply with the majority of the Swiss Federal Council and turned for aid to foreign Catholic powers, like the Habsburgs.Weart, 1998, p. 26–27, 309–310.