The Liberal Imperial Paradox: The Propensity of Democratic Nations to Acquire and Maintain Distant Lands.

Substantial evidence supports the Democratic Peace, but little research has been conducted on the history of democratic nations acquiring overseas lands. This paper uses Goertz and Diehl’s Territorial Changes Dataset to find a relationship between distant territorial acquisitions and regime type. This paper finds a positive statistical relationship between democratic nations and overseas territorial holdings for all nations from 1815 to 1992. This evidence supports an institutional explanation for the Democratic Peace over a democratic norms explanation. A significant implication of this finding is that democratic nations might have more aggressive foreign policies under certain conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]