Characteristics of States

If the nation-state system does not completely explain war, are there individual states that are particularly prone to war—the so-called “bad seed” idea? Just a few nations do account for most of the wars in the 150 years following the defeat of Napoleon (Singer & Small, 1972).

Numerous studies have tried to identify characteristics that make a state prone to war. They focus on different historical periods or lengths of time and consider a vast number of different dependent and independent variables. Rummel’s (1968) study is typical. He correlated 235 cultural, demographic, economic, geographic, political, and sociological characteristics of nations and 13 measures of foreign conflict. None of these studies identified any statistically significant relationship between characteristics of states and war proneness. It does not seem a promising approach to understanding interstate war, although falsification of an idea is a contribution to knowledge.

Some theorists argue democracies and republics are less prone to war, particularly against one another. However, Athens and Sparta, and Rome and Carthage, fought one another for years. Some phases of the on-again, off-again 1830–1999 war between Peru and Ecuador began when both had democratically elected governments. The El Salvador-Honduran “Football War” of 1969 is another exception as are Guatemala with Belize, Guatemala with Honduras, Guyana with Suriname, Nicaragua with Colombia, Trinidad-Tobago with Colombia, and Venezuela with Guyana (Dominguez 2003). India and Pakistan have fought several times, although calling the latter a democracy may be a stretch. Argentina and Britain went to war over the Falklands. Poland and Germany had democratically elected governments in the 1930s, although Hitler was ruling as a dictator by the time he invaded Poland. Considering the small number of democracies and republics that existed at the same time within fighting distance of one another, these examples seem sufficient to refute the idea that democracies do not make war on one another.