The closest one can come, and its about 106 years ago, was when France and Britain nearly went to war over the Fashoda Incident - of course, back in those days, the unelected House of Lords in Britain did have veto power over the popularly elected Parlaiment, which was elected by substantially less than 50% of the voting-age population of Great Britain...and France, as of that time, did not allow women to vote...so, hardly democratic by our modern standards...

Its something that I noted a very long time ago - democracies tend not to war on each other, and he more universal the suffrage, the less chance of this even possibly happening. Politicians are glad-handers; they don't like to bring unpleasant truths to the table and prefer to go about happy/happy, joy/joy all the time - easier to get votes that way than by saying "hey, time to get into the trenches".

Does the Falkland war count? I'm not sure how democratic Argentina was at the time. If it does though, it would be the preverbal “exception that proved the rule”. You’re right though, the observation seems to be valid.

You know that's probably a good example, Rick. Argentina's a bit shaky but I'm pretty sure they were a democratic republic in the '80s. It was a pretty short conflict, but it was real enough.

Rick, Argentina was controlled by an autocratic military junta at the time. The net result of the war was to speed up democratization in Argentina in reaction to the shock of the Falklands loss.

Mark, good to see you bring up the Fashoda Incident, but another notch in the "France was a weak democracy at the time" box has to be the autocratic manner in which the government handled the Dreyfus Affair.

Dean, there are a couple statistical quirks in the datasets I've worked with in which a nominal democracy was in conflict with an actual democracy -- Syria and Israel during a brief period in the 1950s, India and Pakistan during brief mutually democratic periods in the 1990s. The substantive cases of democracies going to war with one another are probably the Spanish-American War and the War of 1812, though treating these cases as such requires fudging a bit on the operational definition of democracy.

Here's another thing for you folks to discuss: democracies, compared to autocracies, almost always win the wars they fight. Is this finding a simple byproduct of the industrial might of most democracies, or are democracies more likely to choose wars they know they can win?

Argentina was controlled by an autocratic military junta at the time.

I stand corrected.

I would agree with you that Syria is only nominally democratic. Pakistan is probably more of a democracy, although again it's shaky.

Still, Matt, let's say we grant all your examples the benefit of the doubt and call them all democracies. Notice something else about the exceptional conflicts you mention: all of them since the War of 1812 were quite short-lived and rather low-intensity. Once the shooting starts it appears that governments which have at least some form of democratic influence also tend to quickly find a way to settle feuds. A few punches get thrown and then cooler heads prevail.

Dean, one reason the Spanish-American War and War of 1812 were of lower intensity, even if we grant that they were wars between democracies, is that direct territorial threats were not involved. If two states are fighting over territory on their borders, like India and Pakistan, intensity tends to be higher. In the two "democratic dyads" I pulled from the literature, you had powers fighting over mostly colonial holdings.

(Note also that Syria was only democratic according to the survey research for about 3 months in 1953, IIRC, and nobody considers Syria democratic at present.)

To echo something Mark said, democracies, on the whole, tend to be disinclined to go to war because there are more hands controlling what kind of goods an economy produces. In most autocracies, weak market institutions and a lack of representation in government mean that a narrow elite gets to pick the goods, which means that there's greater opportunity for war-making potential. (One exception is at the early stage of democratization, where young democracies can more readily shift resources towards war fighting and tend to be dangerous to their neighbors.)

In terms of mutual democracy, there's another big peace-promoting factor that comes into play: one of the greatest contributors to war is uncertainty about capabilities and intent, and democracies, by their very nature, tend to be open. Democracies keep less secrets from one another, and it becomes harder to either calculate in favor of war or sell the public on a war when both societies are open.

Matthew
I think that when evaluating whether democracies support a war effort better, you have to factor in economy size. Certainly the Soviet Union would have been no match for a smaller democracy just as the US would be no match for a smaller autocracy.

But Regan proved that the US economy could better support a buildup than could the Soviet economy. And when I look at N. & S. Korea, I just have the unsubstantiated opinion that if the North did not overwhelm the South in the first wave, the North could not support a sustained effort whereas the South could by adjusting their production to war materiel.

Milosevic was elected president of Serbia May 8 1989. I am not entirely sure how democratic the process was.

He was also democratically ousted from power.

And, of course, the Conch Republic declared war on the U.S. in 1982.

http://www.conchrepublic.com/history.htm

The Boer War (1898) nearly qualifies, given that the Boer Republics were as democratic as any at that time. I don't know if you'd call the Cyprus conflicts a "war", but the there was certainly shooting and both the Greeks and Turks are democratic states. If both sides had not been members of a common alliance (NATO) and under extreme diplomatic pressure I think a full-fledged war would have been likely.

One could also argue that WWI was fought largely between states with relatively democratic governments - even the German/Austrian/Russian Empires had parliments of a sort, indeed the Bismark constitution of the German Empire was not all that different from the power structure of Great Britian a century earlier. Certainly there was a broad base of support within German society for the initiation of the war, and the structure of the state was argueably more democratic that Hilterian Germany in 1939.

Belicose and expansive democratic societies are perfectly capable of starting wars in pursuit of their interests (see USA, 19th century wars, history of). The relative lack of candidates in the 20th century is more a function of circumstance (limited number of distinctly democratic states, and most of those large and defensively oriented "haves" rather than "have-nots", US Superpower status and the Cold War power structure.)

Democracies tend to win the wars they do fight because they have the popular support of the people, and in war will is everything (just ask the North Vietnamese!)

I don't know if I believe that democracies usually win wars. The US skews the data.

Athens lost to Sparta.

France was a democracy and they lost to Germany.
It has more to do with the military. Germany was a dictatorship but their military believed in initiative and truth-telling (on the battlefield) and they defeated the larger army of a democracy. Indeed, a lot nations of Europe in 1940 were at least proto-democracies and they only survived because the US worked with GB (democracy) and the USSR (communist dictatorship) to defeat Germany.
The Arab nations don't believe in initiative in junior officers, or even senior officers in many instances. Israel, a democracy, defeated much larger Arab armies handily but it was because of their army's skill and determination.

Perhaps a truly good military is much more possible under a democratic government but not exclusively.

The Confederacy and the Union.

Actually, Veeshir, I don't have the datasets with me where I am now, but even with the US taken out of the picture, democracies do tend to win most of the wars they fight. I didn't say they win all of the wars, but most.

Veeshir
I don't know if I believe that democracies usually win wars.

You point out that there are other factors, but I believe that economies win wars. I just looked up casualty numbers for WWII. The US lost 400K men, at our current population of 210M or 100M males (the heaviest hit gender) that works out to .4% of the male population. The numbers are rough and do not take age into account, but wars are not generally won by attrition.

Wars are won by the ability to resupply, and it takes a sound economy to resupply a war as well as meet the needs of the population. I believe democracies generally do this better.

Yeti,

Good point - but even back then, a huge proportion of the voting-age populations North and South could not vote. Actually tends to prove my point that the wider the suffrage, the less chance of war.

Phwest,

The Boer Republic was, however, highly restrictive on whom could be a citizen - one of the proximate causes of that war was the legal disability of the "uitlanders" (who made up substantially more than half the people living in the Boer Republic) denied citizenship by the Boers.

Matthew,

Spain was ruled by an absolute monarchy in 1898.

Just got back from DC, thanks for the link!

A more modern version of that rule, and one which eliminates all subjective judgements, is as follows:

No two countries with at least one McDonalds have ever gone to war with each other.

I agree with the concept in general and I hate to throw a monkey wrench into the pristince machinery, but.... What about the American Civil War?

Tom,

The McDonalds Rule was true until Kosovo.

The comparison is actually misleading. Exactly how many democracies are there in the world in the last 100 years? Most are thinnly disguised authoratraian governments, dictatorships or the like. When Poland invaded Czechloslavakia in 1939 were either of these two nations "democratic." Is either Pakistan or India democratic? Perhaps Western Europe, Isreal, Japan, and a few other nations qaulify but most of the world is not democratic. Just visit Mexico to see a strongman government in action.

Yes, India is a democracy, by any reasonable standard of measuring these things.

Pakistan is shakier and more debateable. There is a parliament, and it does exert some power and authority, even if the autocrat in charge (Musharaaf) has more power than he likely should.

By the way, last I read, about 60% of the world population now lives in some form of democracy with universal suffrage. Which is an amazing thing, considering that 100 years ago, you could not say such a thing.

I would say that in the last 100 years, democracies or "small r" republican states haven't fought one another very often because they had common enemies who were powerful autocratic states. With the end of the cold war, this could very well change. Democratic societies (I'm looking at France here) may well work against other democratic states if it is in their own interest.

Just my two cents.

There's a good web page discussing this question here

Matthew:
India and Pakistan in 1970. At no other time, they fought as democracies. Not even minimal democracies
India is (and has been since 1947) democracy. Pakistan just had elections and the talks for formation of government have broken down. Its military dragged it to the war and lost.