WHY DONT DEMOCRACIES FIGHT EACH OTHER - AN EXPERIMENTAL-STUDY

Building upon the work of Maoz and Russett, Bueno de Mesquita and Lalm an, and Morgan and Campbell, the authors evaluate the ''democratic pea ce'' phenomenon in an experimental setting. They first introduce the ' 'political incentive'' explanation of why democracies don't fight each other in the context of the diversionary theory of war, and then repo rt results based on experiments with three groups of subjects: America n students, nonstudent adults, and Israeli students. The results of al l three experiments confirm the democratic peace findings and suggest that democracies do not fight each other because their leaders have ve ry few political incentives to do so.