Scientific approach in democratic peace theory

When speaking about the war and peace debate, probably the most powerful liberal contribution is the theory mentioned arguing that democratic states are as conflict- and war-prone as nondemocracies, however, they have rarely clashed with one another in violent conflict. It claims they share common norms of live-and-let-live and domestic institutions that constitute constraints to resources of war. Furthermore, it undermines both the realist claim that states are forced to exist in a constant state of security competition and that the structure of the international system, rather than state type, should be central to our understanding of state behavior – if it is correct. In addition, according to S. Rosato, the theory “ provides the intellectual justification for the belief that spreading democracy abroad will perform the dual task of enhancing American national security and promoting world peace”. Interestingly, the confirmatory answer is found in Maoz and Russett’s scientistic research. Using different data sets of international conflict and multiplicity of indicators they found that democracy has consistent and robust negative effect on the likelihood of conflict, both normative and structural models of democratic peace are supported by data, support for normative model is more robust. Asking the question of appropriateness of scientistic methods is not surprising as the discrepancy between natural and social science is a long-standing phenomenon, present in numerous polemics and theories. Scientists apply positivistic methods of “tough” natural sciences on the social reality. In this case, a theory is comprised of hypothesis stipulating an association between an independent and s dependent variable and a casual logic that explains the connection between those variables. The aim is to reveal a correlation or even causality between them, but even robust support in the theory, provided by data, the doubts are unavoidable. The fact that the relation may be controlled by third, unknown variable cannot be excluded concerning complexity of the social reality, that means peace among democracies may be caused by other factors than democratic nature. Moreover, as problematic emerge also validity, resources as they all are unique, existence of ideal conditions in the constant process (testability), manipulation, relativity, collection of data, evaluating criteria, possible autocorrelation as the authors acknowledged and even fact that analogy used in the research may not be even exist (unique environment). All things considered, I appreciate transparency, coherency and logic that the scientists provide, possibly thanks to developed technology. Although the criticism, the approach is valuable offering new information and insights. It is useful and supportive in examining new theoretical ideas though we cannot answer the introductory question absolutely positively.