Federal democratic peace: Domestic institutions, international conflict, and American foreign policy, 1807-1860

Recent scholarship on democracy and international conflict has investigated whether democratic institutions—divided political authority and the accountability of political leaders to an electorate—tend to constrain the use of military force against other states. Despite evidence that democratic institutions may have this effect, the empirical record also demonstrates that democratic institutions do not constrain military force in a consistent or uniform way. One possible explanation is that institutional variation among different types of democracies will produce variation in the potential for constraints on military force. While most democracies divide power in some way, and all modern democracies hold leaders accountable to an electorate, different types of democracies do so in different ways. Therefore, the logic of institutional constraints will vary across democratic states, as will the conditions under which institutional constraints are likely to hold. One type of democracy that demonstrates the implications of institutional variation for the use of military force is federal democracy. Federal democracy can be distinguished from other democratic systems by the structure of the legislature, the executive-legislative relationship, and the organization of the electoral and political party systems. Variation in these features implies that decision-makers in federal democracies will face a different set of institutional barriers and political incentives than decision-makers in non-federal democracies. The distinctive logic of federal constraints is clearly evident in American foreign policy in the early nineteenth century. Federal institutions constrained the use of force against Great Britain during the crises of 1807 and 1809 and during the Oregon crisis of 1846, against Spain during the Cuba crisis of 1854–55, and against Mexico in 1853 and 1858–60. Federal institutions prevented the use of military force for territorial expansion into Canada and Spanish East Florida during the War of 1812, and prevented the United States from taking more territory from Mexico in 1848. Despite the constraining effects of federal institutions in these cases, America's federal system did not prevent war against Great Britain in 1812 or against Mexico in 1846.