Market Prosperity, Democratic Consolidation, and Democratic Peace

Abstract

A model is introduced that yields a single parsimonious explanation for a diverse range of political phenomena, including the processes of democratic consolidation and peace among democratic nations. The model predicts democratic values to arise from the norms of contract that are endemic in developed market economies and yields the novel contingent claim that the peace among democratic nations may be a pattern limited to those democracies with developed economies. Analyses of a large number of interstate dyads from 1950 to 1992 show strong support for this hypothesis. It seems that the pacifying impact of democracy is about twice as strong among developed countries compared with other dyads. Among conflict-prone contiguous dyads, the pacifying impact of democracy does not appear statistically significant among the poorest decile of joint democratic dyads. The study demonstrates the wide explanatory power of the simple postulate that social values and political preferences derive from socioeconomic norms.