Democratic nations are involved in hostilities and wars about as often as non-democratic nations. However, hostilities and wars between democracies are rare events. A fundamental proposition has emerged to explain why democracies rarely engage in hostile acts with one another. Namely, contending democratic nations avoid war with one another by successfully employing mediation and other efforts of third parties to resolve or ameliorate conflicts between them. The goal of this research is to investigate the impact of democratic governance on the use of conflict management techniques and peaceful settlement in approximately 250 postwar interstate security disputes. It represents the first attempt to subject this fundamental proposition to direct empirical investigation. The researcher will begin by developing an integrated data base drawing together diverse information on interstate disputes and their outcomes, attributes of contending parties in the disputes, any third parties seeking amelioration, and specific actions taken by both disputants and third parties. Using these data, the researcher will construct and estimate a theoretical model incorporating democracy as a factor promoting the use of conflict management techniques and then, focus on more complex models of how democracy works in conjunction with conflict management techniques in the peaceful settlement of disputes. The final phase of the project involves post-hoc examination of selected disputes in a series of comparative case studies. These stages of inquiry assure that the proposition about why democracies rarely engage in wars with one another is rigorously tested.
