Replication data for: Democratic Leaders and the Democratic Peace: The Operational Codes of Tony Blair and Bill Clinton

Do the beliefs of leaders make a significant difference in determining if democracies are peaceful and explaining why democracies (almost) never fight one another? Our comparisons of Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bill Clinton reveal that both leaders view democracies as more friendly than nondemocracies, and they have significantly less cooperative beliefs toward the latter than toward the former, a difference that extends to the behavior of their respective governments during the Kosovo conflict. We also find that individual differences in the operational codes of the two leaders matter in the management of conflict with nondemocracies; the leaders exhibit opposite leadership styles and behavior associated with the domestic political culture of the two states. Overall, these results support the dyadic version of the democratic peace and suggest that the conflict behavior of democratic states depends upon the beliefs and calculations of their leaders in dealing with nondemocracies.

领导人的信念是否会对判定民主国家是否具备和平属性，以及解释民主国家（几乎）从不彼此开战的成因产生显著影响？我们通过对比英国首相托尼·布莱尔与美国总统比尔·克林顿的相关言行发现，两位领导人均认为民主国家相较于非民主国家更为友好，且对后者的合作性认知显著弱于前者，这一差异在科索沃冲突期间两国政府的行为中均有体现。我们还发现，两位领导人的行动信条存在个体差异，这在应对非民主国家的冲突管理中具有重要影响；两位领导人展现出与两国国内政治文化相契合的截然相反的领导风格与行为模式。总体而言，本研究结果支持二元民主和平论，并表明民主国家的冲突行为取决于其领导人在与非民主国家打交道时的信念与决策考量。