Democratic political processes regulate competition among groups with conflicting preferences.
Although much of the competition occurs peacefully within existing political institutions, democratic practices can also facilitate the resolution of intense conflict when the political system is challenged from within by groups fighting against the established government, and when it is challenged from without and on the brink of interstate war.
This chapter provides an overview of the scholarly literature linking democracy to peace and conflict resolution, including pertinent theoretical propositions and the balance of evidence generated by empirical researchers. The promise of peace associated with civil liberty, political openness, and the foreign policies of democratic states has long figured into the writings of moral and political philosophers, perhaps most notably in Immanuel Kant's essay Perpetual Peace, published in 1795. But the burgeoning academic literature in recent decades is largely the product of social scientific research, much (but not all) of which is built upon the analysis of large quantitative data sets. Our primary focus, then, is what social science, and in particular political science, tells us about the relationship between democracy, conflict resolution, and peace between and within states.
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