THE LIBERAL PEACE - INTERDEPENDENCE, DEMOCRACY, AND INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT, 1950-85

The classical liberals believed that democracy and free trade would re duce the incidence of war. Here we conduct new tests of the 'democrati c peace', incorporating into the analyses of Maoz & Russett (1993) a m easure of economic interdependence based on the economic importance of bilateral trade. This allows us to conduct a simultaneous evaluation of the effects of regime type and interdependence on the likelihood th at a pair of states will become involved in a militarized interstate d ispute. We control in all our analyses for a number of potentially con founding influences: growth rates in per capita income, alliances, geo graphic contiguity, and relative power. Our logistic regression analys es of politically relevant dyads (1950-85) indicate that the benefits of the liberals' economic program have not been sufficiently appreciat ed. Trade is a powerful influence for peace, especially among the war- prone, contiguous pairs of states. Moreover, Kant (1991 [1795]) was ri ght: International conflict is less likely when external economic rela tions are important, executives are constrained, and societies are gov erned by non-violent norms of conflict resolution.