| This dissertation explores the relationship between democracy and war by examining the impact of domestic political competition on a state's ability to reach negotiated settlements of international crises. Building on a substantial literature in economics, it argues that wars occur when disputants have private information about their willingness and ability to wage war and incentives to misrepresent that information in the course of bargaining. Private information generates uncertainty about the range of mutually acceptable settlements, and strategic misrepresentation makes overcoming this uncertainty problematic.;Open competition between government and opposition parties--such as generally characterizes democratic states--can help a state reveal its private information credibly, thus facilitating the peaceful resolutions of disputes. Using a formal model of crisis bargaining, I show that the existence of an opposition party which can choose to publicly support or oppose government policies in a crisis leads to better information revelation than when the government serves as the lone voice of the state. The opposition party makes the government more selective about the threats it makes by rendering misrepresentation riskier. At the same time, the opposition party can improve the credibility of a government's threats by giving them public support. In either case, the probability of war is reduced.;This argument is supported by a statistical analysis of 127 states involved in over 2000 disputes in the period 1815-1985. The results show that, compared to other states, those which permit activity by effective opposition parties (1) are more likely to reach peaceful settlements of crises, (2) initiate disputes at a lower rate, and (3) when they do initiate disputes, are less likely to end up using force than nondemocratic initiators. All of these findings are consistent with the argument that institutions promoting political competition facilitate information revelation in a crisis. The causal mechanisms of this approach are illustrated by a case study of the 1898 Fashoda crisis between Britain and France. I show that this crisis was settled peacefully because of the credible signals which emerged from the interplay of government and opposition in both countries. |
