Practicing Democratic Community Norms: Interventions, Settlements, and Commitments.

This paper considers the effects of systemic democracy on interstate activities. We investigate the effects of systemic democracy on the frequency of 3rd party interventions, the success of peace settlements, and the reliability of alliance commitments. Mitchell (2002) has previously demonstrated the positive contribution of democratic norms, for democracies and nondemocracies alike, on 3rd party interventions. Mitchell measures the level of democratic norms with the proportion of democratic states at a given point in time. We seek to extend her analysis by considering a more nuanced conceptualization and measure of systemic democracy, namely the strength of the democratic community (Kadera, Crescenzi, and Shannon 2003). In addition to accounting for the proportion of democracies, the strength of the democratic community variable incorporates a comparison of the intensities of democratic regimes and those of autocratic regimes and the power of democracies versus the power of autocracies. We also extend her analysis by considering systemic democracy’s effect on peace settlements (using ICOW data from Hensel and Mitchell) and the reliability of alliance commitments (using ATOP data from Leeds). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]