Democratic peace theory

A democratic peace theory, in political science, was originally a claim that democratic states - specifically, liberal democracies - never or almost never go to war with one another. The original democratic peace hypothesis referred to peace between democracies, the later pacifist democracy hypothesis to an inherently less warlike nature of democracies; some theories include both. The separate peace hypothesis implies that wars between unlike regimes (democracy and non-democracy) are more probable. The militant democracy hypothesis implies that democracies are inherently likely to go to war with non-democracies.

Related Topics:
Political science - Democratic states - Liberal democracies - War - Hypothesis

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Despite the variations, all such theories are referred to as democratic peace theory, abbreviated DPT. Often, that term is used to refer only to the original conjecture, disregarding later developments in the theory. Such theories have also been referred to as the "liberal peace" or the "Kantian peace" in honor of Immanuel Kant, who proposed an early version of the theory.

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