A Crisis-Based Evaluation of the Democratic Peace Proposition* JEAN-SEBASTIEN RIOUX Universite de Montreal and McGill University One of the most provocative statements in political science is that "the closest thing to an empirical law of international relations we have is that democracies do not fight each other."' There has been much atten- tion during the last decade to the democratic peace proposition, in large part because of the potential foreign policy implications of such an empirical finding if it holds up to scrutiny. 2 Based on prior research, we can identify at least two variants of the argument: what is called the "monadic variant," which argues that democratic states are more peaceful in their external relations with other states in general, and the "dyadic variant" (to which the above quotation from Jack S. Levy might refer), stating that democracies are more peaceful in their rela- tions with each other. 3 Most quantitative studies on this subject focus Statistics Canada generously granted the author leave to pursue a postdoctoral fellowship with the Research Group in International Security (REGIS/GERSI) in Montreal. The author thanks Michael Brecher, Patrick James, James Lee Ray, Joe Eyerman, the par- ticipants of the REGIS/GERSI Workshop on International Security and Political Econ- omy and the JOURNAL'S reviewers for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. Jack S. Levy, "Domestic Politics and War," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18(1988), 654. Thompson and Tucker state that there were "approximately 100 empirical demo- cratic peace articles published in journals and presented at conferences" in the last 10 years (William R. Thompson and Richard Tucker, "A Tale of Two Demo- cratic Peace Critiques," Journal of Conflict Resolution 41 [1997], 428). These represent arguments based on different levels of analysis; a third argument could be based on a systemic level: the international system will be more peace- ful as the number of democratic states increases. See Nils Petter Gleditsch and Havard Hegre, "Peace and Democracy: Three Levels of Analysis," Journal of Conflict Resolution 41 (1997), 283-310. Jean-S6bastien Rioux, Groupe d'&ude et de recherche sur la sfcuritd internationale/ Research Group in International Security, University de Montreal and McGill Univer- sity, D6partement de science politique, Universite' de Montreal, Montreal, Quebec H3C 3J7. E-mail: jsrioux@freestamp.com; Jean-Sebastien.Rioux@umontreal.ca Canadian Journal of Political Science I Revue canadienne de science politique XXXI:2 (June/Juln 1998) 263-83 © 1998 Canadian Political Science Association (I' Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Socie'te' qudb&oise de science politique