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Sickened by War? Support Democracy. [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-10-10  

For folks now skeptical of democracy:

More democracy in the world = more peace in the world.

It's not an emotional appeal; it's an empirical fact.

OK, so it’s not quite that simple, but close:

"To put this number in context, the relationship between democracy and peace is at least five times as robust as that between smoking and lung cancer."

That quote is from a 2021 paper by political scientists Kosuke Imai and James Lo.

(https://imai.fas.harvard.edu/research/files/dempeace.pdf)

Some of the most robust evidence for any theory in international relations is for democratic peace theory, the finding that democratic countries tend not to fight wars with each other.

There is not a hard consensus about why democratic countries do not fight wars with each other, but the correlation is solid:

cogitariumlancaster.files.wordpress.com/…

“Upon analysing the structure and empiricalcharacteristics of the idea it proved difficult to establish a uniform definition of core terms,which proved detrimental to the falsifiability and the supposed parsimony. The theory ishowever successful in adapting to the realities of the modern world, in spite of thequestionable relevance of its intra- and supra-state aspects. Consequences of the normativeconnotations of the ideals are twofold; it can both facilitate lasting peace and justify war. Ithas to be noted though, that in the limited scope and with precise definitions the theory seemsto be empirically valid to this day.”

War plagues the world in this decade, but a worldwide poll by the Open Society Foundation found support for democracy dropping significantly among young people:

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/10/2198634/-Getting-Skeptical-of-Democracy-But-Like-Peace-More-than-War?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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