The Democratic Peace and Territorial Conflict in the Twentieth Century

This book re-evaluates the foundations of the democratic peace literature and presents three distinct theoretical models of how domestic institutions can influence the foreign policy choices of state leaders – Political Accountability, Political Norms, and Political Affinity. Huth and Allee test their hypotheses against a new and original global data set of 348 territorial disputes from 1919 to 1995.Each territorial dispute is divided into three separate but related stages for empirical analysis: Challenge the Status Quo Stage, Negotiation Stage, and Military Escalation Stage.The authors employ advanced statistical tests to compare the explanatory power of the three theoretical models across each stage of a territorial dispute.Their results provide strong support for the importance of democratic accountability and norms in shaping the diplomatic and military policies of incumbent leaders, and add new insights into understanding when and why democratic leaders engage in highly cooperative or confrontational foreign policies.