Electing to Fight : Why Emerging Democracies Go to War

This title offers a challenge to the view that the spread of democracy contributes to international peace.

Does the spread of democracy really contribute to international peace?

Successive U.S. administrations have justified various policies intended to promote democracy not only by arguing that democracy is intrinsically good but by pointing to a wide range of research concluding that democracies rarely, if ever, go to war with one another.

In "Electing to Fight", Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder challenge this as a basis for policy, arguing that states in the early phases of transitions to democracy are more likely than other states to become involved in war.

The best way to promote democracy, Mansfield and Snyder argue, is to begin by building the institutions that democracy requires - such as the rule of law - and only then encouraging mass political participation and elections.

Readers will find this argument particularly relevant to concerns about the transitional government in Iraq and the wisdom of urging early elections elsewhere in the Islamic world and in China.