KANT WE ALL JUST GET ALONG - OPPORTUNITY, WILLINGNESS, AND THE ORIGINS OF THE DEMOCRATIC PEACE

Theory: Current theories of the democratic peace focus on the constrai ning power of political institutions, culture, or international trade. If instead democracies are much less likely to disagree about each ot her's policies, then we would expect them to seldom fight regardless o f whether they are constrained from acting on conflicts by institution s, culture, or other factors. While previous research on the democrati c peace has been careful to construct statistical models of ''opportun ity'' - the physical obstacles nations face in engaging in war - resea rch to date has failed to incorporate ''willingness'' - the psychologi cal incentives nations have to overcome obstacles in pursuit of their objectives. Hypothesis: I argue that a satisfactory assessment of the democratic peace requires controlling for willingness as well as oppor tunity. A measure of the affinity nations have for each other's intern ational policy should correlate with observations of the democratic pe ace. Methods: I present a statistical model of national preference usi ng data from the United Nations General Assembly 1950-85 to assess whe ther joint democracy still accounts for the democratic peace. I test t he model using logistic regression and by replicating recent quantitat ive studies of the democratic peace. Results: Results support the argu ment that national preferences account for the lack of conflict betwee n democracies.