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The will to power (German: "der Wille zur Macht") is a prominent concept in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. The will to power describes what Nietzsche believed to be the main driving force in man; achievement, ambition, the striving to reach the highest possible position in life, these are all manifestations of the will to power.

Alfred Adler incorporated the will to power into his individual psychology. This can be contrasted to the other Viennese schools of psychotherapy: Sigmund Freud's pleasure principle (will to pleasure) and Victor Frankl's logotherapy (will to meaning). Each of these schools advocate and teach a very different main driving force in "man". The relevance of gender and cultural differences in the application of these theories to universal humanity and non-human life is a source for serious concern among many scholars. The "will to power" has been "identified" in nature in the dominance hierarchies studied in many living species.

Background

Friedrich Nietzsche found early influence from Schopenhauer, whom he first discovered in 1865. Schopenhauer puts a central emphasis on will and in particular has a concept of the "will to live". Writing a generation before Nietzsche, Schopenhauer explained that the universe and everything in it is driven by a primordial will to live, which results in all living creatures' desire to avoid death and procreate. For Schopenhauer, this will is the most fundamental aspect of reality—more fundamental even than being.

Another important influence is Roger Joseph Boscovich, whom Nietzsche discovered and learned about through his reading of Friedrich Albert Lange's 1865 Geschichte des Materialismus (History of Materialism), which Nietzsche read in 1866. As early as 1872, Nietzsche went on to study Boscovich’s book Theoria Philosophia Naturalis for himself.^[1] Nietzsche makes his only reference in his published works to Boscovich in Beyond Good and Evil where he declares war on "soul-atomism"^[2] Boscovich had rejected the idea of "materialistic atomism" which Nietzsche calls "one of the best refuted theories there are."^[3] The idea of centers of force would become central to Nietzsche's later theories of will to power.

Nietzsche began to speak of the "Desire for Power" (Machtgelüst), which appeared in The Wanderer and his Shadow (1880) and Daybreak (1881). Machtgelüst, in these works, is the pleasure of the feeling of power and the hunger to overpower.

Wilhelm Roux published his The Struggle of Parts in the Organism (Der Kampf der Theile im Organismus) in 1881, which Nietzsche first read the same year.^[4] The book was a response to Darwinian theory, proposing an alternative mode of evolution. Roux was a disciple of and influenced by Ernst Haeckel^[5] who believed the struggle for existence occurred at the cellular level. The various cells and tissue struggle for finite resources, so that only the strongest survive. Through this mechanism, the body grows stronger and better adapted. Lacking modern genetic theory and assuming a lamarckian or pangenetic model of inheritance, the theory had plausibility at the time.^{[citation needed]}

Nietzsche began to expand on the concept of Machtgelüst in The Gay Science (1882), where in a section titled “On the doctrine of the feeling of power,”^[6] he connects the desire for cruelty with the pleasure in the feeling of power. Elsewhere in The Gay Science,^[7] he notes that it is only “in intellectual beings that pleasure, displeasure, and will are to be found,”^[8] excluding the vast majority of organisms from the desire for power.

Léon Dumont (1837-77), whose 1875 book Théorie Scientifique de La Sensibilité, le Plaisir et la Peine Nietzsche read in 1883,^[9] seems to have exerted some influence on this concept. Dumont believed that pleasure is related to increases in force.^[10] In Wanderer and Daybreak, Nietzsche earlier had speculated that pleasures such as cruelty, are pleasurable because of exercise of power. But Dumont, in 1883, provided a physiological basis for Nietzsche’s speculation. Dumont’s theory also would have seemed to confirm Nietzsche’s theory that pleasure and pain are reserved for intellectual beings, since, according to Dumont, pain and pleasure require a coming to consciousness and not just a sensing.

In 1883 Nietzsche coined the phrase “Wille zur Macht” in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The concept, at this point, is no longer limited to only those intellectual beings that can actually experience the feeling of power; it applies to all life. The phrase Wille zur Macht first appears in part 1, "1001 Goals" (1883), then in part 2, in two sections, “Self-Overcoming” and “Redemption” (later in 1883). “Self-Overcoming” describes it in most detail, saying it is an “unexhausted procreative will of life.”^[11] There is will to power where there is life and even the strongest living things will risk their lives for more power. This suggests that the will to power is stronger than the will to survive.

Schopenhauer's "Will to life" thus became a subsidiary to the will to power, which is the stronger will. Nietzsche thinks his notion of the will to power is far more useful than Schopenhauer's will to live for explaining various events, especially human behavior—for example, Nietzsche uses the will to power to explain both ascetic, life-denying impulses and strong, life-affirming impulses in the European tradition, as well as both master and slave morality. He also finds the will to power to offer much richer explanations than utilitarianism's notion that all people really want to be happy, or the Platonist's notion that people want to be unified with the Good.^{[citation needed]}

Nietzsche read William Rolph’s Biologische Probleme probably in mid 1884 and it clearly interested Nietzsche;^[12] his copy is heavily annotated^[13] and he made many notes concerning Rolph. Rolph was another evolutionary anti-Darwinist like Roux, who wished to argue for evolution by different mechanism than the struggle for existence. Rolph argued that all life seeks primarily to expand itself. Organisms fulfill this need through assimilation, trying to make as much of what is found around them into part of themselves, for example by seeking to increase intake and nutriment. Life forms are naturally insatiable in this way.

Nietzsche's next published work is Beyond Good and Evil (1886), where the influence of Rolph seems apparent. Nietzsche writes, "Even the body within which individuals treat each other as equals ... will have to be an incarnate will to power, it will strive to grow, spread, seize, become predominant—not from any morality or immorality but because it is living and because life simply is will to power."^[14] The influence of Rolph and its connection to “will to power,” also continues in book 5 of Gay Science (1887) where Nietzsche describes will to power as the instinct for “expansion of power,” fundamental to all life.^[15]

Beyond Good and Evil has the most references to “will to power” in his published works, appearing in eleven aphorisms^[16] and this was the time of greatest development of the idea.

Karl Wilhelm von Nägeli's 1884 book Mechanisch-physiologische Theorie der Abstammungslehre, which Nietzsche acquired probably in 1886 and subsequently read closely,^[17] had considerable influence on his theory of will to power. Nietzsche wrote a letter to Franz Overbeck about it, noting that it has “been sheepishly put aside by Darwinists”.^[18] Nägeli believed in a “perfection principle,” which led to greater complexity. He called the seat of heritability the idioplasma, and argued, with a military metaphor, that a more complex, complicatedly ordered idioplasma would usually defeat a simpler rival.^[19] In other words, he is also arguing for internal evolution, similar to Roux, except emphasizing complexity as the main factor instead of strength.

Thus, Dumont’s pleasure in the expansion of power, Roux’s internal struggle, Nägeli’s drive towards complexity, and Rolph’s principle of insatiability and assimilation are fused together into the biological side of Nietzsche’s theory of will to power, which is developed in a number of places in his published writings.^[20] Having derived the “will to power” from three anti-Darwin evolutionists, as well as Dumont, it seems appropriate that he should use his “will to power” as an anti-Darwinian explanation of evolution. He expresses a number of times^[21] the idea that adaptation and the struggle to survive is a secondary drive in the evolution of animals, behind the desire to expand one’s power—the will to power.

Nonetheless, in his notebooks he continues to expand the theory of the will to power.^[22] Influenced by his earlier readings of Boscovich, he began to develop a physics of the Will to Power. The idea of matter as centers of force is translated into matter as centers of will to power. Nietzsche wanted to slough off the theory of matter, which he viewed as a relic of the metaphysics of substance.^[23]

These ideas of an all inclusive physics or metaphysics built upon the will to power does not appear to arise anywhere in his published works or in any of the final books published posthumously, except in the above mentioned aphorism from Beyond Good & Evil, where he references Boscovich (section 12). It does recur in his notebooks, but not all scholars want to consider these ideas as part of his thought.^[24]

Throughout the 1880s, in his notebooks, Nietzsche also developed an equally elusive theory of the “eternal recurrence of the same” and much speculation on the physical possibility of this idea and the mechanics of its actualization recur in his later notebooks, which becomes tied with his theory of will to power as a potential physics integrated with the “eternal recurrence of the same.” Nietzsche appeared to imagine a physical universe of perpetual struggle and force, which successively completes its cycle and returns to the beginning again and again.^[25]

Interpretations

In contemporary Nietzschean scholarship, some interpreters have emphasized the will to power as a psychological principle, because Nietzsche applies it most frequently to human behavior. However, Nietzsche sometimes seems to view the will to power as a more general force, underlying all reality not just human behavior—thus making it more directly analogous to Schopenhauer's will to live. For example, Nietzsche claims the "world is the will to power—and nothing besides!".^[26] Nevertheless, in relation to the entire body of Nietzsche's works, many scholars have insisted that Nietzsche's principle of the will to power is less metaphysical and more pragmatic than Schopenhauer's will to live: while Schopenhauer thought the will to live was what was most real in the universe, Nietzsche can be understood as claiming only that the will to power is a particularly useful principle for his purposes.

Some interpreters also upheld a biological interpretation of the Wille zur Macht, making it equivalent with some kind of social Darwinism. For example the concept was appropriated by some Nazis like Alfred Bäumler, etc., who may have drawn influence from it or used it to justify their expansive quest for power and world domination.

This reading was criticized by Martin Heidegger in his 1930s courses on Nietzsche—suggesting that raw physical or political power was not what Nietzsche had in mind. This is reflected in the following passage from Nietzsche's notebooks:

I have found strength where one does not look for it: in simple, mild, and pleasant people, without the least desire to rule—and, conversely, the desire to rule has often appeared to me a sign of inward weakness: they fear their own slave soul and shroud it in a royal cloak (in the end, they still become the slaves of their followers, their fame, etc.) The powerful natures dominate, it is a necessity, they need not lift one finger. Even if, during their lifetime, they bury themselves in a garden house!^[27]

Opposed to a biological and voluntary conception of the Wille zur Macht, Heidegger also argued that the will to power must be considered in relation to the Übermensch and the thought of eternal recurrence—although this reading itself has been criticized by Mazzino Montinari as a "macroscopic Nietzsche".^[28] Gilles Deleuze also emphasized the connection between the will to power and eternal return.

Opposed to this interpretation, the "Will To Power" can be understood (or misunderstood) to mean a struggle against one's surroundings that culminates in personal growth, self-overcoming, and self-perfection, and assert that the power held over others as a result of this is coincidental. Thus Nietzsche wrote:

My idea is that every specific body strives to become master over all space and to extend its force (its will to power) and to thrust back all that resists its extension. But it continually encounters similar efforts on the part of other bodies and ends by coming to an arrangement ("union") with those of them that are sufficiently related to it: thus they then conspire together for power. And the process goes on.^[29]

It would be possible to claim that rather than an attempt to 'dominate over others', the "will to power" is better understood as the tenuous equilibrium in a system of forces' relations to each other. While a rock, for instance, does not have a conscious (or unconscious) "will", it nevertheless acts as a site of resistance within the "will to power" dynamic. Moreover, rather than 'dominating over others' (a misinterpretation by Deleuze et al.), "will to power" is more accurately positioned in relation to the subject (a mere synecdoche, both fictitious and necessary, for there is "no doer behind the deed," (see On the Genealogy of Morals) and is an idea behind the statement that words are "seductions" within the process of self-mastery and self-overcoming. The "will to power" is thus a "cosmic" inner force acting in and through both animate and inanimate objects. Not just instincts but also higher level behaviors (even in humans) were to be reduced to the will to power. In fact, Nietzsche considered consciousness itself to be a form of instinct^{[citation needed]}. This includes both such apparently harmful acts as physical violence, lying, and domination, on one hand, and such apparently non-harmful acts as gift-giving, love, and praise on the other—though its manifestations can be altered significantly, such as through art and aesthetic experience. In Beyond Good and Evil, he claims that philosophers' "will to truth" (i.e., their apparent desire to dispassionately seek objective, absolute truth) is actually nothing more than a manifestation of their will to power; this will can be life-affirming or a manifestation of nihilism, but it is the will to power all the same.

Other Nietzschean interpreters (e.g. Abir Taha) dispute the suggestion that Nietzsche's concept of the will to power is merely and only a matter of narrow, harmless, humanistic self-perfection. They suggest that, for Nietzsche, power means self-perfection as well as outward, political, elitist, aristocratic domination. Nietzsche, in fact, explicitly and specifically defined the egalitarian state-idea as the embodiment of the will to power in decline:

To speak of just or unjust in itself is quite senseless; in itself, of course, no injury, assault, exploitation, destruction can be 'unjust,' since life operates essentially, that is in its basic functions, through injury, assault, exploitation, destruction and simply cannot be thought of at all without this character. One must indeed grant something even more unpalatable: that, from the highest biological standpoint, legal conditions can never be other than exceptional conditions, since they constitute a partial restriction of the will of life, which is bent upon power, and are subordinate to its total goal as a single means: namely, as a means of creating greater units of power. A legal order thought of as sovereign and universal, not as a means in the struggle between power complexes but as a means of preventing all struggle in general perhaps after the communistic cliché of Dühring, that every will must consider every other will its equal—would be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution and destruction of man, an attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret path to nothingness.^[30]

Individual psychology

Alfred Adler borrowed heavily from Nietzsche's work to develop his second Viennese school of psychotherapy called individual psychology. Adler (1912) wrote in his important book Über den nervösen Charakter (The Neurotic Constitution):

Nietzsche's "Will to power" and "Will to seem" embrace many of our views, which again resemble in some respects the views of Féré and the older writers, according to whom the sensation of pleasure originates in a feeling of power, that of pain in a feeling of feebleness (Ohnmacht).^[31]

Adler's adaptation of the will to power was and still is in contrast to Sigmund Freud's pleasure principle or the "will to pleasure", and to Viktor Frankl's logotherapy or the "will to meaning".^[32] Adler's intent was to build a movement that would rival, even supplant, others in psychology by arguing for the holistic integrity of psychological well-being with that of social equality. His interpretation of Nietzsche's will to power was concerned with the individual patient's overcoming of the superiority-inferiority dynamic.^[33]

In Man's Search for Meaning, Frankl compared his third Viennese school of psychotherapy with Adler's psychoanalytic interpretation of the will to power:

... the striving to find a meaning in one's life is the primary motivational force in man. That is why I speak of a will to meaning in contrast to the pleasure principle (or, as we could also term it, the will to pleasure) on which Freudian psychoanalysis is centered, as well as in contrast to the will to power stressed by Adlerian psychology.^[34]

—Viktor E. Frankl, M.D., Ph.D.

See also

Look up Power in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Power

• Schopenhauer's concept of will to live
• The philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche
• Each of the following Viennese schools of psychotherapy advocate a very different main driving force in man:
  • Sigmund Freud's will to pleasure – pleasure principle
  • Alfred Adler's will to power – individual psychology
  • Victor Frankl's will to meaning – logotherapy
• Heinz Ansbacher

Democratic peace theory

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Democratic peace theory (or liberal democratic theory^[1] or simply the democratic peace) holds that democracies, for some appropriate definition of democracy,^[2] rarely go to war with one another.

The wording "democratic peace theory" is often disputed since, even if the theory is accepted, it does not imply that the "peace" has the key characteristics of a "democracy" among countries. Some critics argue that it will be more accurate to label it the "democracies do not fight each other" hypothesis ^[3].

The democratic peace theory discusses the fact that democracies simply don't war with each other, but the issue of why will give you a better understanding of the theory. The most significant rationale for why democracies don't war is accountability. In a liberal democratic government elected officials must answer to the people in the form of free elections, which forces officials to consider alternatives to war.

The original theory and research on wars has been followed by many similar theories and related research on the relationship between democracy and peace, including that lesser conflicts than wars are also rare between democracies, and that systematic violence is in general less common within democracies.

History

Immanuel Kant

Although the philosophical idea has circulated since Immanuel Kant, it was not scientifically evaluated until the 1960s. Kant foreshadowed the theory in his essay Perpetual Peace written in 1795, although he thought that constitutional republics was only one of several necessary conditions for a perpetual peace. Kant's theory was that a majority of the people would never vote to go to war, unless in self defense. Therefore, if all nations were republics, it would end war, because there would be no aggressors. Other explanations have been proposed since, but the modern theory is principally the empirical claim that democracies rarely or never fight (Ray 1998). Dean Babst, a criminologist, was the first to do statistical research on this topic. He wrote an academic paper supporting the theory in 1964 in Wisconsin Sociologist; he published a slightly more popularized version, in 1972, in the trade journal Industrial Research. Both versions initially received little attention. Melvin Small and J. David Singer (1976: 50—69) responded; they found an absence of wars between democratic states with two "marginal exceptions", but denied that this pattern had statistical significance, starting the academic debate. This paper was published in the Jerusalem Journal of International Relations which finally brought more widespread attention to the theory, as did Michael Doyle's (1983) lengthy discussion of the topic. Rudolph J. Rummel was another early researcher and drew considerable lay attention to the subject in his later works. Maoz & Abdolali (1989) extended the research to lesser conflicts than wars. Bremer (1992) and Maoz & Russett (1993) found the correlation between democracy and peacefulness remained significant after controlling for many possible confounding variables. This moved the theory into the mainstream of social science. Supporters of Realism in international relations and others responded by raising many new objections. Other researchers attempted more systematic explanations of how democracy might cause peace (Köchler 1995), and of how democracy might also affect other aspects of foreign relations such as alliances and collaboration (Ray 2003). There have been numerous further studies in the field since these pioneering works.^[4] Most studies have found some form of democratic peace exists, although neither methodological disputes nor doubtful cases are entirely resolved (Kinsella 2005).

Definitions

Research on the democratic peace theory has to define "democracy" and "peace" (or, more often, "war"). Similarly, the main criticism contends that the theory is an example of equivocation, particularly, No true Scotsman fallacy.

Democracy

Political ratings of countries according to Freedom House’s Freedom in the World survey, 2008:

Free, electoral countries      Partially free, electoral countries

Partially free, not electoral countries      Not free, not electoral countries

Democracies have been defined differently by different theorists and researchers; this accounts for some of the variations in their findings. Some examples:

Kant (1795) opposed direct democracy since it is "necessarily despotism, as it establishes an executive power contrary to the general will; all being able to decide against one whose opinion may differ, the will of all is therefore not that of all: which is contradictory and opposite to liberty." Instead, Kant favors a constitutional republic where individual liberty is protected from the will of the majority.

Small and Singer (1976) define democracy as a nation that (1) holds periodic elections in which the opposition parties are as free to run as government parties, (2) allows at least 10% of the adult population to vote, and (3) has a parliament that either controls or enjoys parity with the executive branch of the government.

Doyle (1983) requires (1) that "liberal régimes" have market or private property economics, (2) they have polities that are externally sovereign, (3) they have citizens with juridical rights, and (4) they have representative governments. Either 30% of the adult males were able to vote or it was possible for every man to acquire voting rights as by attaining enough property. He allows greater power to hereditary monarchs than other researchers; for example, he counts the rule of Louis-Philippe of France as a liberal régime.

Ray (1995) requires that at least 50% of the adult population is allowed to vote and that there has been at least one peaceful, constitutional transfer of executive power from one independent political party to another by means of an election.

Rummel (1997) states that "By democracy is meant liberal democracy, where those who hold power are elected in competitive elections with a secret ballot and wide franchise (loosely understood as including at least 2/3rds of adult males); where there is freedom of speech, religion, and organization; and a constitutional framework of law to which the government is subordinate and that guarantees equal rights."

Non-binary classifications

The above definitions are binary, classifying nations into either democracies or nondemocracies. Many researchers have instead used more finely grained scales. One example is the Polity data series which scores each state on two scales, one for democracy and one for autocracy, for each year since 1800; as well as several others.^[5] The use of the Polity Data has varied. Some researchers have done correlations between the democracy scale and belligerence; others have treated it as a binary classification by (as its maker does) calling all states with a high democracy score and a low autocracy score democracies; yet others have used the difference of the two scores, sometimes again making this into a binary classification (Gleditsch 1992).

Young democracies

Several researchers have observed that many of the possible exceptions to the democratic peace have occurred when at least one of the involved democracies was very young. Many of them have therefore added a qualifier, typically stating that the peacefulness apply to democracies older than 3 years (Doyle 1983), (Russett 1993), (Rummel 1997), (Weart 1998). Rummel (1997) argues that this is enough time for "democratic procedures to be accepted, and democratic culture to settle in." Additionally, this may allow for other states to actually come to the recognition of the state as a democracy.

Mansfield and Snyder (2002, 2005), while agreeing that there have been no wars between mature liberal democracies, state that countries in transition to democracy are especially likely to be involved in wars. They find that democratizing countries are even more warlike than stable democracies, stable autocracies or even countries in transition towards autocracy. So, they suggest caution in eliminating these wars from the analysis, because this might hide a negative aspect of the process of democratization.^[6] A reanalysis of the earlier study's statistical results (Braumoeller 2004) emphasizes that the above relationship between democratization and war can only be said to hold for those democratizing countries where the executive lacks sufficient power, independence, and institutional strength. A review (Ray 2003) cites several other studies finding that the increase in the risk of war in democratizing countries happens only if many or most of the surrounding nations are undemocratic. If wars between young democracies are included in the analysis, several studies and reviews still find enough evidence supporting the stronger claim that all democracies, whether young or established, go into war with one another less frequently (Ray 1998), (Ray 2003), (Hegre 2004), while some do not (Schwartz & Skinner 2002).

Economic Peace Theory

A derivative of the democratic peace theory that a semi-autonomous territory uses to ameliorate a potential occupying power’s aggression through increased economic exchange in the hopes that these efforts will lead to political results. The whole relationship between the newly elected president of Taiwan Ma Ying Jeou and Chinese president Hu Jintao negotiating increased economic exchange through their respective representative bodies SEF and ARATS is contingent upon this theory.^[7]

Wars and lesser conflicts

Ongoing world conflicts

Quantitative research on international wars usually define war as a military conflict with more than 1000 killed in battle in one year. This is the definition used in the Correlates of War Project which has also supplied the data for many studies on war. It turns out that most of the military conflicts in question fall clearly above or below this threshold (Ray 1995, p. 103).

Some researchers have used different definitions. For example, Weart (1998) defines war as more than 200 battle deaths. Russett (1993, p. 50), when looking at Ancient Greece, only requires some real battle engagement, involving on both sides forces under state authorization.

Militarized Interstate Disputes (MIDs), in the Correlates of War Project classification, are lesser conflicts than wars. Such a conflict may be no more than military display of force with no battle deaths. MIDs and wars together are "militarized interstate conflicts" or MICs. MIDs include the conflicts that precede a war; so the difference between MIDs and MICs may be less than it appears.

Statistical analysis and concerns about degrees of freedom are the primary reasons for using MID's instead of actual wars. Wars are relatively rare. An average ratio of 30 MIDs to one war provides a richer statistical environment for analysis.^[8]

Monadic vs. Dyadic peace

Most research is regarding the dyadic peace, that democracies do not fight one another. Very few researchers have supported the monadic peace, that democracies are more peaceful in general. There are some recent papers that find a slight monadic effect. Müller and Wolff (2004), in listing them, agree "that democracies on average might be slightly, but not strongly, less warlike than other states," but general "monadic explanations is neither necessary nor convincing". They note that democracies have varied greatly in their belligerence against non-democracies.

Wars cited as evidence against

Historically, cases commonly cited as exceptions include the Spanish-American War, the Continuation War and more recently the Kargil War.^[9]

Some theorists cite these or other exceptions, but nevertheless regard them as marginal cases.^[10]

Rebuttals

Advocates of the theory who describe war between democracies only as "rare", "very rare", "rare or non-existent" account for the possibility of a very few or marginal exceptions, while undercutting their significance.^[11]

Some advocates also minimize the significance of any exceptions by stating the theory in a probabilistic form: since such a very great many wars have been fought since democracies first arose, we might expect some proportionately large number of wars to have occurred between democracies; however the historical record reveals this number to be either at or near zero, depending on interpretation^[12], with the finding that no wars at all have taken place between well-established liberal democracies being common^[13]. One review (Ray 1998) found that, in probabilistic terms, the correlation between democracy and peace is statistically significant. In broader terms, Jack Levy has famously characterized the strength of this correlation as being "as close as anything we have to an empirical law in international relations" (Levy 1988).

Bremer (Bremer 1992, 1993), a strong advocate of the theory, notes this issue of interpretation, but questions its relevance. He argues that it is "fruitless to debate the question of whether democracies never or only very rarely fight one another," since in either case, the central insight of the theory is valid. Most researchers incline to this view (Gleditsch 1992); an exception is Rummel (Rummel 1983).

Lesser conflicts

Number of nations 1800-2003 scoring 8 or higher on Polity IV scale. There have been no wars and in Wayman's (2002) listing of interliberal MIDs no conflict causing any battle deaths between these nations.

One problem with the research on wars is that, as the Realist Mearsheimer (1990, p. 50) put it, "democracies have been few in number over the past two centuries, and thus there have been few opportunities where democracies were in a position to fight one another". Especially if using a strict definition of democracy, as by those finding no wars. Democracies have been very rare until recently. Even looser definitions of democracy, such as Doyle's, find only a dozen democracies before the late nineteenth century, and many of them short-lived or with limited franchise (Doyle 1983), (Doyle 1997, p. 261). Freedom House finds no independent state with universal suffrage in 1900.^[14]

Wayman (1998), a supporter of the theory, states that "If we rely solely on whether there has been an inter-democratic war, it is going to take many more decades of peace to build our confidence in the stability of the democratic peace".

Many researchers reacted to this limitation by studying lesser conflicts instead, since they have been far more common. There have been many more MIDs than wars; the Correlates of War Project counts several thousand during the last two centuries. A review (Ray 2003) lists many studies that have reported that democratic pairs of states are less likely to be involved in MIDs than other pairs of states.

Another study (Hensel, Goertz & Diehl 2000) finds that after both states have become democratic, there is a decreasing probability for MIDs within a year and this decreases almost to zero within five years.

When examining the inter-liberal MIDs in more detail, one study (Wayman 2002) finds that they are less likely to involve third parties, the target of the hostility is less likely to reciprocate, if the target reciprocates the response is usually proportional to the provocation, and the disputes are less likely to cause any loss of life. The most common action was "Seizure of Material or Personnel".

Studies find that the probability that disputes between states will be resolved peacefully is positively affected by the degree of democracy exhibited by the lesser democratic state involved in that dispute. Disputes between democratic states are significantly shorter than disputes involving at least one undemocratic state. Democratic states are more likely to be amenable to third party mediation when they are involved in disputes with each other (Ray 2003).

In international crises that include the threat or use of military force, one study finds that if the parties are democracies, then relative military strength has no effect on who wins. This is different from when nondemocracies are involved. These results are the same also if the conflicting parties are formal allies (Gelpi & Griesdorf 2001). Similarly, a study of the behavior of states that joined ongoing militarized disputes reports that power is important only to autocracies: democracies do not seem to base their alignment on the power of the sides in the dispute (Werner & Lemke 1997).

Conflict initiation

Most studies have looked only at who is involved in the conflicts and ignored the question of who initiated the conflict. In many conflicts both sides argue that the other side was initiator. Several researchers, as described in (Gleditsch, Christiansen & Hegre 2004), have argued that studying conflict initiation is of limited value, because existing data about conflict initiation may be especially unreliable. Even so, several studies have examined this. Reiter and Stam (2003) argue that autocracies initiate conflicts against democracies more frequently than democracies do against autocracies. Quackenbush and Rudy (2006), while confirming Reiter and Stam's results, find that democracies initiate wars against nondemocracies more frequently than nondemocracies do to each other. Several following studies (Peceny & Beer 2003), (Peceny & Butler 2004), (Lai & Slater 2006) have studied how different types of autocracies with different institutions vary regarding conflict initiation. Personalistic and military dictatorships may be particularly prone to conflict initiation, as compared to other types of autocracy such as one party states, but also more likely to be targeted in a war having other initiators.

Internal violence and genocide

Most of this article discusses research on relations between states. However, there is also evidence that democracies have less internal systematic violence. For instance, one study finds that the most democratic and the most authoritarian states have few civil wars, and intermediate regimes the most. The probability for a civil war is also increased by political change, regardless whether toward greater democracy or greater autocracy. Intermediate regimes continue to be the most prone to civil war, regardless of the time since the political change. In the long run, since intermediate regimes are less stable than autocracies, which in turn are less stable than democracies, durable democracy is the most probable end-point of the process of democratization (Hegre et al. 2001). Abadie (2004) study finds that the most democratic nations have the least terrorism. Harff (2003) finds that genocide and politicide are rare in democracies. Rummel (1997) finds that the more democratic a regime, the less its democide. He finds that democide has killed six times as many people as battles.

Davenport and Armstrong (2004) lists several other studies and states: "Repeatedly, democratic political systems have been found to decrease political bans, censorship, torture, disappearances and mass killing, doing so in a linear fashion across diverse measurements, methodologies, time periods, countries, and contexts." It concludes: "Across measures and methodological techniques, it is found that below a certain level, democracy has no impact on human rights violations, but above this level democracy influences repression in a negative and roughly linear manner." Davenport and Armstrong (2003) states that thirty years worth of statistical research has revealed that only two variables decrease human rights violations: political democracy and economic development.

Explanations

These theories have traditionally been categorized into two groups: explanations that focus on democratic norms and explanations that focus on democratic political structures (Gelpi & Griesdorf 2001), (Braumoeller 1997). Note that they usually are meant to be explanations for little violence between democracies, not for a low level of internal violence in democracies.

Several of these mechanisms may also apply to countries of similar systems. The book Never at War finds evidence for an oligarchic peace. One example is the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, in which the Sejm resisted and vetoed most royal proposals for war,^[15] like those of Władysław IV Vasa.

Democratic norms

One example from the first group is that liberal democratic culture may make the leaders accustomed to negotiation and compromise (Weart 1998), (Müller & Wolff 2004). Another that a belief in human rights may make people in democracies reluctant to go to war, especially against other democracies. The decline in colonialism, also by democracies, may be related to a change in perception of non-European peoples and their rights (Ravlo & Gleditsch 2000).

Bruce Russett (1993, p. 5-11, 35, 59-62, 73-4) also argues that the democratic culture affects the way leaders resolve conflicts. In addition, he holds that a social norm emerged toward the end of the nineteenth century; that democracies should not fight each other, which strengthened when the democratic culture and the degree of democracy increased, for example by widening the franchise. Increasing democratic stability allowed partners in foreign affairs to perceive a nation as reliable democratic. The alliances between democracies during the two World Wars and the Cold War also strengthened the norms. He sees less effective traces of this norm in Greek antiquity.

Hans Köchler (1995) relates the question of transnational democracy to empowering the individual citizen by involving him, through procedures of direct democracy, in a country's international affairs, and he calls for the restructuring of the United Nations Organization according to democratic norms. He refers in particular to the Swiss practice of participatory democracy.

Mousseau (2000, 2005) argues that it is market-oriented development that creates the norms and values that explain both democracy and the peace. In less developed countries individuals often depend on social networks that impose conformity to in-group norms and beliefs, and loyalty to group leaders. When jobs are plentiful on the market, in contrast, as in market-oriented developed countries, individuals depend on a strong state that enforces contracts equally. Cognitive routines emerge of abiding by state law rather than group leaders, and, as in contracts, tolerating differences among individuals. Voters in marketplace democracies thus accept only impartial ‘liberal’ governments, and constrain leaders to pursue their interests in securing equal access to global markets and in resisting those who distort such access with force. Marketplace democracies thus share common foreign policy interests in the supremacy — and predictability — of international law over brute power politics, and equal and open global trade over closed trade and imperial preferences. When disputes do originate between marketplace democracies, they are less likely than others to escalate to violence because both states, even the stronger one, perceive greater long-term interests in the supremacy of law over power politics.

(Braumoeller 1997) argues that liberal norms of conflict resolution vary because liberalism takes many forms. By examining survey results from the newly-independent states of the former Soviet Union, the author demonstrates that liberalism in that region bears a stronger resemblance to 19th-century liberal nationalism than to the sort of universalist, Wilsonian liberalism described by democratic peace theorists, and that, as a result, liberals in the region are more, not less, aggressive than non-liberals.

Democratic political structures

The case for institutional constraints goes back to Kant (1795), who wrote:

"[I]f the consent of the citizens is required in order to decide that war should be declared (and in this constitution it cannot but be the case), nothing is more natural than that they would be very cautious in commencing such a poor game, decreeing for themselves all the calamities of war. Among the latter would be: having to fight, having to pay the costs of war from their own resources, having painfully to repair the devastation war leaves behind, and, to fill up the measure of evils, load themselves with a heavy national debt that would embitter peace itself and that can never be liquidated on account of constant wars in the future"

Democracy thus gives influence to those most likely to be killed or wounded in wars, and their relatives and friends (and to those who pay the bulk of the war taxes) Russett (1993, p. 30). This monadic theory must, however, explain why democracies do attack non-democratic states. One explanation is that these democracies were threatened or otherwise were provoked by the non-democratic states. Doyle (1997, p. 272) argued that the absence of a monadic peace is only to be expected: the same ideologies that cause liberal states to be at peace with each other inspire idealistic wars with the illiberal, whether to defend oppressed foreign minorities or avenge countrymen settled abroad. Doyle also notes (p. 292) liberal states do conduct covert operations against each other; the covert nature of the operation, however, prevents the publicity otherwise characteristic of a free state from applying to the question

Studies show that democratic states are more likely than autocratic states to win the wars. One explanation is that democracies, for internal political and economic reasons, have greater resources. This might mean that democratic leaders are unlikely to select other democratic states as targets because they perceive them to be particularly formidable opponents. One study finds that interstate wars have important impacts on the fate of political regimes, and that the probability that a political leader will fall from power in the wake of a lost war is particularly high in democratic states (Ray 1998).

As described in (Gelpi & Griesdorf 2001), several studies have argued that liberal leaders face institutionalized constraints that impede their capacity to mobilize the state’s resources for war without the consent of a broad spectrum of interests. Survey results that compare the attitudes of citizens and elites in the Soviet successor states are consistent with this argument (Braumoeller 1997). Moreover, these constraints are readily apparent to other states and cannot be manipulated by leaders. Thus, democracies send credible signals to other states of an aversion to using force. These signals allow democratic states to avoid conflicts with one another, but they may attract aggression from nondemocratic states. Democracies may be pressured to respond to such aggression — perhaps even preemptively — through the use of force. Also as described in (Gelpi & Griesdorf 2001), studies have argued that when democratic leaders do choose to escalate international crises, their threats are taken as highly credible, since there must be a relatively large public opinion for these actions. In disputes between liberal states, the credibility of their bargaining signals allows them to negotiate a peaceful settlement before mobilization.

An explanation based on game theory similar to the last two above is that the participation of the public and the open debate send clear and reliable information regarding the intentions of democracies to other states. In contrast, it is difficult to know the intentions of nondemocratic leaders, what effect concessions will have, and if promises will be kept. Thus there will be mistrust and unwillingness to make concessions if at least one of the parties in a dispute is a nondemocracy (Levy & Razin 2004).

The risk factors for certain types of state have, however, changed since Kant's time. In the quote above, Kant points to the lack of popular support for war - given that the populace will directly or indirectly suffer in the event of war - as a reason why republics will not tend to go to war. The number of American troops killed or maimed versus the number of Iraqi soldiers and civilians maimed and killed in the American-Iraqi conflict is indicative. This may explain the relatively great willingness of democratic states to attack weak opponents: the Iraq war was, initially at least, highly popular in the United States. The case of the American-Vietnamese war might, nonetheless, indicate a tipping point where publics may no longer accept continuing attrition of their soldiers (even while remaining relatively indifferent to the much higher loss of life on the part of the populations attacked).

Criticisms

There are several logically distinguishable classes of criticism. Note that they usually apply to no wars or few MIDs between democracies, not to little systematic violence in established democracies.

Statistical significance

Only one study (Schwartz & Skinner 2002) appears to have argued that there have been as many wars between democracies as one would expect between any other couple of states. However, its authors include wars between young and dubious democracies, and very small wars.

Others (Spiro 1994), (Gowa 1999), (Small & Singer 1976) state that, although there may be some evidence for democratic peace, the data sample or the time span may be too small to assess any definitive conclusions. For example, Gowa finds evidence for democratic peace to be insignificant before 1939, because of the too small number of democracies, and offers an alternate explanation for the following period (see the section on Realist Explanations). Gowa's use of statistics has been criticized, with several other studies and reviews finding different or opposing results (Gelpi & Griesdorf 2001), (Ray 2003). However, this can be seen as the longest-lasting criticism to the theory; as noted earlier, also some supporters (Wayman 1998) agree that the statistical sample for assessing its validity is limited or scarce, at least if only full scale wars are considered.

It can be interesting to consider the question of "how much" significance the evidence has. One study (Ray 2003) tries to answer this question in a straightforward way. According to Ray, who uses a rather restrictive definition of democracy and war, there have been no wars between jointly democratic couples of states in the period from 1816 to 1992. Assuming a purely random distribution of wars between states, regardless of their democratic character, the predicted number of conflicts between democracies would be around ten. So, Ray argues that the evidence is statistically significant, but that it is still conceivable that, in the future, even a small number of inter-democratic wars wipes out such evidence.^[16]

Definitions, methodology and data

Some authors criticize the definition of democracy by arguing that states continually reinterpret other states' regime types as a consequence of their own objective interests and motives, such as economic and security concerns (Rosato 2003). For example, one study (Oren 1995) reports that Germany was considered a democratic state by Western opinion leaders at the end of the 19th century; yet in the years preceding World War I, when its relations with the United States, France and Britain started deteriorating, Germany was gradually reinterpreted as an autocratic state, in absence of any actual regime change. Shimmin (Shimmin 1999) moves a similar criticism regarding the western perception of Milosevic's Serbia between 1989 and 1999. Rummel (Rummel 1999) replies to the above criticism by stating that, in general, studies on democratic peace do not focus on the "western" perception of democracy; and in the specific case of Serbia, by arguing that the limited credit accorded by western democracies to Milosevic in the early '90s did not amount to a recognition of democracy, but only to the perception that possible alternative leaders could be even worse.

Some democratic peace researchers have been criticized for post hoc reclassifying some specific conflicts as non wars or political systems as non democracies without checking and correcting the whole data set used similarly. Supporters and opponents of the democratic peace agree that this is bad use of statistics, even if a plausible case can be made for the correction (Bremer 1992), (Gleditsch 1995), (Gowa 1999). A military affairs columnist of the newspaper Asia Times has summarized the above criticism in a journalist's fashion describing the theory as subject to the no true Scotsman problem: exceptions are explained away as not being between real democracies or being real wars.^[17]

However, most researchers agree that an objective working definition of "democracy" and "war" can be given^{[citation needed]}. Even so, democracy is an evolving concept which has meant different things at different times, but in almost all cases researchers apply the same criteria to all history.^{[citation needed]}

Definitions of democracy that require an actual transfer of power between different political parties sometimes exclude long periods often viewed as democratic. For example, the United States until 1800, India from independence until 1979, and Japan until 1993 (Ray 1995, p. 100).

Some democratic peace researchers require that the executive result from a substantively contested election. This may be a restrictive definition: For example, the National Archives of the United States notes that "For all intents and purposes, George Washington was unopposed for election as President, both in 1789 and 1792". (Under the original provisions for the Electoral College, there was no distinction between votes for President and Vice-President: each elector was required to vote for two distinct candidates, with the runner-up to be Vice-President. Every elector cast one of his votes for Washington,^[18] John Adams received a majority of the other votes; there were several other candidates: so the election for Vice President was contested.)

Spiro (1994) made several other criticisms of the statistical methods used. Russett (1995) and a series of papers described by Ray (2003) responded to this, for example with different methodology.

Sometimes the datasets used have also been criticized. For example, some authors have criticized the Correlates of War data for not including civilian deaths in the battle deaths count, especially in civil wars (Sambanis 2001). Weeks and Cohen (2006) argue that most fishing disputes, which include no deaths and generally very limited threats of violence, should be excluded even from the list of military disputes. Gleditsch (2004) made several criticisms to the Correlates of War data set, and produced a revised set of data. Maoz and Russett (1993) made several criticisms to the Polity I and II data sets, which have mostly been addressed in later versions. These criticisms are generally considered minor issues.

Other explanations

If phenomenon A is found to be correlated with phenomenon B, there are in principle several possibilities regarding the origin of such correlation: A may cause B, B may cause A, both A and B may be caused by a third phenomenon C, or they may be caused by two different phenomena which are themselves correlated, and other, more complex, combinations. Many researchers, while accepting the empirical findings of democratic peace, have looked for different or complementary explanations, connections, and statistical variables which may account for such evidence.

Political similarity

One general criticism motivating research of different explanations is that actually the theory cannot claim that "democracy causes peace", because the evidence for democracies being, in general, more peaceful is very slight or non existent; it only can support the claim that "joint democracy causes peace". According to Rosato (2003), this casts doubts on whether democracy is actually the cause because, if so, a monadic effect would be expected.

Perhaps the simplest explanation to such perceived anomaly (but not the one the Realist Rosato prefers, see the section on Realist explanations below) is that democracies are not peaceful to each other because they are democratic, but rather because they are similar. This line of thought started with several independent observations of an "Autocratic Peace" effect, a reduced probability of war (obviously no author claims its absence) between states which are both non-democratic, or both highly so (Raknerud & Hegre 1997), (Beck & Jackman 1998), This has led to the hypothesis that democratic peace emerges as a particular case when analyzing a subset of states which are, in fact, similar (Werner 2000). Or, that similarity in general does not solely affect the probability of war, but only coherence of strong political regimes such as full democracies and stark autocracies.

Autocratic peace and the explanation based on political similarity is a relatively recent development, and opinions about its value are varied. Henderson (2002) builds a model considering political similarity, geographic distance and economic interdependence as its main variables, and concludes that democratic peace is a statistical artifact which disappears when the above variables are taken into account. Werner (2000) finds a conflict reducing effect from political similarity in general, but with democratic dyads being particularly peaceful, and noting some differences in behavior between democratic and autocratic dyads with respect to alliances and power evaluation. Beck, King and Zeng (2004) use neural networks to show two distinct low probability zones, corresponding to high democracy and high autocracy.^[19] Petersen (2004) uses a different statistical model and finds that autocratic peace is not statistically significant, and that the effect attributed to similarity is mostly driven by the pacifying effect of joint democracy. Ray (2005) similarly disputes the weight of the argument on logical grounds, claiming that statistical analysis on "political similarity" uses a main variable which is an extension of "joint democracy" by linguistic redefinition, and so it is expected that the war reducing effects are carried on in the new analysis. Bennett (2006) builds a direct statistical model based on a triadic classification of states into "democratic", "autocratic" and "mixed". He finds that autocratic dyads have a 35% reduced chance of going into any type of armed conflict with respect to a reference mixed dyad. Democratic dyads have a 55% reduced chance. This effect gets stronger when looking at more severe conflicts; for wars (more than 1000 battle deaths), he estimates democratic dyads to have an 82% lower risk than autocratic dyads. He concludes that autocratic peace exists, but democratic peace is clearly stronger. However, he finds no relevant pacifying effect of political similarity, except at the extremes of the scale.

To summarize a rather complex picture, there are no less than four possible stances on the value of this criticism:

1. Political similarity, plus some complementary variables, explains everything. Democratic peace is a statistical artifact. Henderson subscribes to this view.
2. Political similarity has a pacifying effect, but democracy makes it stronger. Werner would probably subscribe to this view.
3. Political similarity in general has little or no effect, except at the extremes of the democracy-autocracy scale: a democratic peace and an autocratic peace exist separately, with the first one being stronger, and may have different explanations. Bennett holds this view, and Kinsella mentions this as a possibility
4. Political similarity has little or no effect and there is no evidence for autocratic peace. Petersen and Ray are among defendants of this view.

Economic factors

World GDP/capita 1-2003 AD. The increase in the number of democratic nations has occurred at the same time as the increase in economic wealth.

A majority of researchers on the determinants of democracy agree that economic development is a primary factor which allows the formation of a stable and healthy democracy (Hegre, 2003; Weede, 2004). This in itself is not in contradiction with democratic peace theory; it is just a statement about the nature of democracy; however, if a causal link between some economic factor and peace could be found, one could hope to explain the findings of the theory on a purely economical basis.

Mousseau argues that a culture of contracting in advanced market-oriented economies may cause both democracy and peace (2000; 2002; 2003; 2005). These studies indicate that democracy, alone, is an unlikely cause of the democratic peace. A low level of market-oriented economic development may hinder development of liberal institutions and values. Hegre (2000) and Souva (2003) confirmed these expectations. Mousseau (2005) finds that democracy is a significant factor only when both democracies have levels of economic development well above the global median. In fact, the poorest 21% of the democracies studied, and the poorest 4-5% of current democracies, are significantly more likely than other kinds of countries to fight each other. Mousseau, Hegre & Oneal (2003) confirm that if at least one of the democracies involved has a very low level of economic development, democracy is ineffective in preventing war; however, they find that when also controlling for trade, 91% of all the democratic pairs had high enough development for the pacifying effect of democracy to be important during the 1885–1992 period and all in 1992. The difference in results of Mousseau (2005) and Mousseau, Hegre & Oneal (2003) may be due to sampling: Mousseau (2005) observed only neighboring states where poor countries actually can fight each other. In fact, fully 89% of militarized conflicts between less developed countries from 1920 and 2000 were among directly contiguous neighbors (Mousseau 2005:68-69). He argues that it is not likely that the results can be explained by trade: Because developed states have large economies, they do not have high levels of trade interdependence (2005:70 and footnote 5; Mousseau, Hegre & Oneal 2003:283). In fact, the correlation of developed democracy with trade interdependence is a scant 0.06 (Pearson's r - considered substantively no correlation by statisticians)(2005:77).

Both World Wars were fought between countries which can be considered economically developed. Mousseau argues that both Germany and Japan - like the USSR during the Cold War and Saudi Arabia today - had state-managed economies and thus lacked his market norms (Mousseau 2002-03:29). Hegre (2003) finds that democracy is correlated with civil peace only for developed countries, and for countries with high levels of literacy. Conversely, the risk of civil war decreases with development only for democratic countries.

Gartzke (2005) argues that economic freedom (a quite different concept from Mousseau's market norms) or financial dependence (2007) explains the developed democratic peace, and these countries may be weak on these dimensions too.^[20] Rummel (2005) criticizes Gartzke's methodology and argues that his results are invalid.^[21]

Several studies find that democracy, more trade causing greater economic interdependence, and membership in more intergovernmental organizations reduce the risk of war. This is often called the Kantian peace theory since it is similar to Kant's earlier theory about a perpetual peace; it is often also called "liberal peace" theory, especially when one focuses on the effects of trade and democracy. (The theory that free trade can cause peace is quite old and referred to as Cobdenism.) Many researchers agree that these variables positively affect each other but each has a separate pacifying effect. For example, in countries exchanging a substantial amount of trade, economic interest groups may exist that oppose a reciprocal disruptive war, but in democracy such groups may have more power, and the political leaders be more likely to accept their requests. (Russett & Oneal 2001), (Lagazio & Russett 2004), (Oneal & Russett 2004). Weede (2004) argues that the pacifying effect of free trade and economic interdependence may be more important than that of democracy, because the former affects peace both directly and indirectly, by producing economic development and ultimately, democracy. Weede also lists some other authors supporting this view. However, some recent studies find no effect from trade but only from democracy (Goenner 2004), (Kim & Rousseau 2005).

None of the authors listed argues that free trade alone causes peace. Even so, the issue of whether free trade or democracy is more important in maintaining peace may have potentially significant practical consequences, for example on evaluating the effectiveness of applying economic sanctions and restrictions to autocratic countries.

It was Michael Doyle (1983, 1997) who reintroduced Kant's three articles into democratic peace theory. He argued that a pacific union of liberal states has been growing for the past two centuries. He denies that a pair of states will be peaceful simply because they are both liberal democracies; if that were enough, liberal states would not be aggressive towards weak non-liberal states (as the history of American relations with Mexico shows they are). Rather, liberal democracy is a necessary condition for international organization and hospitality (which are Kant's other two articles) — and all three are sufficient to produce peace. Other Kantians have not repeated Doyle's argument that all three in the triad must be present, instead stating that all three reduce the risk of war.

Other explanations

Many studies, as those discussed in (Ray 1998), (Ray 2005), (Oneal & Russett 2004), supporting the theory have controlled for many possible alternative causes of the peace. Examples of factors controlled for are geographic distance, geographic contiguity, power status, alliance ties, militarization, economic wealth and economic growth, power ratio, and political stability. These studies have often found very different results depending on methodology and included variables, which has caused criticism. It should be noted that DPT does not state democracy is the only thing affecting the risk of military conflict. Many of the mentioned studies have found that other factors are also important. However, a common thread in most results is an emphasis on the relationship between democracy and peace.

Several studies have also controlled for the possibility of reverse causality from peace to democracy. For example, one study (Reuveny & Li 2003) supports the theory of simultaneous causation, finding that dyads involved in wars are likely to experience a decrease in joint democracy, which in turn increases the probability of further war. So they argue that disputes between democratizing or democratic states should be resolved externally at a very early stage, in order to stabilize the system. Another study (Reiter 2001) finds that peace does not spread democracy, but spreading democracy is likely to spread peace. A different kind of reverse causation lies in the suggestion that impending war could destroy or decrease democracy, because the preparation for war might include political restrictions, which may be the cause for the findings of democratic peace. However, this hypothesis has been statistically tested in a study (Mousseau & Shi 1999) whose authors find, depending on the definition of the pre-war period, no such effect or a very slight one. So, they find this explanation unlikely. Note also that this explanation would predict a monadic effect, although weaker than the dyadic one.

Weart (1998) argues that the peacefulness appears and disappears rapidly when democracy appears and disappears. This in his view makes it unlikely that variables that change more slowly are the explanation. Weart, however, has been criticized for not offering any quantitative analysis supporting his claims (Ray, 2000).

Wars tend very strongly to be between neighboring states. Gleditsch (1995) showed that the average distance between democracies is about 8000 miles, the same as the average distance between all states. He believes that the effect of distance in preventing war, modified by the democratic peace, explains the incidence of war as fully as it can be explained.

Realist explanations

Supporters of realism in international relations in general argue that not democracy or its absence, but considerations and evaluations of power, cause peace or war. Specifically, many realist critics claim that the effect ascribed to democratic, or liberal, peace, is in fact due to alliance ties between democratic states which in turn are caused, one way or another, by realist factors.

For example, Farber and Gowa (1995) find evidence for peace between democracies to be statistically significant only in the period from 1945 on, and consider such peace an artifact of the Cold War, when the threat from the communist states forced democracies to ally with one another. Mearsheimer (1990) offers a similar analysis of the Anglo-American peace before 1945, caused by the German threat. Spiro (1994) finds several instances of wars between democracies, arguing that evidence in favor of the theory might be not so vast as other authors report, and claims that the remaining evidence consists of peace between allied states with shared objectives. He acknowledges that democratic states might have a somewhat greater tendency to ally with one another, and regards this as the only real effect of democratic peace. Rosato (2003) argues that most of the significant evidence for democratic peace has been observed after World War II; and that it has happened within a broad alliance, which can be identified with NATO and its satellite nations, imposed and maintained by American dominance (see Pax Americana). One of the main points in Rosato's argument is that, although never engaged in open war with another liberal democracy during the Cold War, the United States intervened openly or covertly in the political affairs of democratic states several times, for example in the Chilean coup of 1973, the 1953 coup in Iran and 1954 coup in Guatemala; in Rosato's view, these interventions show the United States' determination to maintain an "imperial peace".

The most direct counter arguments to such criticisms have been studies finding peace between democracies to be significant even when controlling for "common interests" as reflected in alliance ties (Gelpi & Griesdorf 2001), (Ray 2003). Regarding specific issues, Ray (1998) objects that explanations based on the Cold War should predict that the Communist bloc would be at peace within itself also, but exceptions include the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, the Cambodian-Vietnamese War, and the Sino-Vietnamese War. Ray also argues that the external threat did not prevent conflicts in the Western bloc when at least one of the involved states was a nondemocracy, such as the Turkish Invasion of Cyprus (against Greek Junta supported Cypriot Greeks), the Falklands War, and the Football War. Also, one study (Ravlo & Gleditsch 2000) notes that the explanation "goes increasingly stale as the post-Cold War world accumulates an increasing number of peaceful dyad-years between democracies". Rosato's argument about American dominance has also been criticized for not giving supporting statistical evidence (Slantchev, Alexandrova & Gartzke 2005).

Some realist authors also criticize in detail the explanations given by supporters of democratic peace, pointing to supposed inconsistencies or weaknesses.

Rosato (2003) criticizes most explanations to how democracy might cause peace. Arguments based on normative constraints, he argues, are not consistent with the fact that democracies do go to war no less than other states, thus violating norms preventing war; for the same reason he refutes arguments based on the importance of public opinion. Regarding explanations based on greater accountability of leaders, he finds that historically autocratic leaders have been removed or punished more often than democratic leaders when they get involved in costly wars. Finally, he also criticizes the arguments that democracies treat each other with trust and respect even during crises; and that democracy might be slow to mobilize its composite and diverse groups and opinions, hindering the start of a war, drawing support from other authors. Another realist, Layne (1994) analyzes the crises and brinkmanship that took place between non-allied democratic great powers, during the relatively brief period when such existed. He finds no evidence either of institutional or cultural constraints against war; indeed, there was popular sentiment in favor of war on both sides. Instead, in all cases, one side concluded that it could not afford to risk that war at that time, and made the necessary concessions.

Rosato's objections have been criticized for claimed logical and methodological errors, and for being contradicted by existing statistical research (Slantchev, Alexandrova & Gartzke 2005), (Kinsella 2005). Russett (1995) replies to Layne by re-examining some of the crises studied in his article, and reaching different conclusions; Russett argues that perceptions of democracy prevented escalation, or played a major role in doing so. Also, a recent study (Gelpi & Griesdorf 2001) finds that, while in general the outcome of international disputes is highly influenced by the contenders' relative military strength, this is not true if both contenders are democratic states; in this case the authors find the outcome of the crisis to be independent of the military capabilities of contenders, which is contrary to realist expectations. Finally, both the realist criticisms here described ignore new possible explanations, like the game-theoretic one discussed below.^[22]

A different kind of realist criticism (see (Jervis 2002) for a discussion) is centered around the role of nuclear weapons in maintaining peace. In realist terms, this means that, in the case of disputes between nuclear powers, respective evaluation of power might be irrelevant because of Mutual assured destruction preventing both sides from foreseeing what could be reasonably called a "victory". An obvious rebuttal is that nuclear powers have been too few to account for the evidence in favor of democratic peace, except a very small part of it. The rebuttal remains valid even considering the mitigating argument that some advanced democracies, for example Germany and Japan, would be able to complete a nuclear program in a very brief period of time if a possible nuclear menace arose. The 1999 Kargil War between India and Pakistan has been cited as a counterexample to this argument (Page Fortna, 2004).

Some supporters of the democratic peace do not deny that realist factors are also important (Russett 1995). Research supporting the theory has also shown that factors such as alliance ties and major power status influence interstate conflict behavior (Ray 2003).

Marxist explanations

Immanuel Wallerstein has argued that it is the global capitalist system that creates shared interests among the dominant parties, thus inhibiting potentially harmful belligerence.^{[citation needed]}

Negri and Hardt take a similar stance, arguing that the intertwined network of interests in the global capitalism leads to the decline of individual nation states, and the rise of a global Empire which has no outside, and no external enemies. As a result, they write, "The era of imperialist, interimperialist, and anti-imperialist wars is over. (...) we have entered the era of minor and internal conflicts. Every imperial war is a civil war, a police action." (Hardt & Negri 2000).

Limited consequences

The peacefulness may have various limitations and qualifiers and may not actually mean very much in the real-world.

Democratic peace researchers do in general not count as wars conflicts which do not kill a thousand on the battlefield; thus they exclude for example the bloodless Cod Wars. However, as noted earlier, research has also found a peacefulness between democracies when looking at lesser conflicts.

Democracies were involved in more colonial and imperialistic wars than other states during the 1816-1945 period. On the other hand, this relation disappears if controlling for factors like power and number of colonies. Liberal democracies have less of these wars than other states after 1945. This might be related to changes in the perception of non-European peoples, as embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Ravlo & Glieditsch 2000).

Related to this is the human rights violations committed against native people, sometimes by liberal democracies. One response is that many of the worst crimes were committed by nondemocracies, like in the European colonies before the nineteenth century, in King Leopold II of Belgium's privately owned Congo Free State, and in Stalin's Soviet Union. The United Kingdom abolished slavery in British territory in 1833, immediately after the Reform Act 1832 had significantly enlarged the franchise. (Of course, the abolition of the slave trade had been enacted in 1807; and many DPT supporters would deny that the UK was a liberal democracy in 1833 when examining interstate wars.)

Hermann and Kegley (1995) argue that interventions between democracies are more likely to happen than projected by an expected model.^[23] They further argue (1996) that democracies are more likely to intervene in other liberal states than against countries that are non-democracies.^[24] Finally, they argue that these interventions between democracies have been increasing over time and that the world can expect more of these interventions in the future.^[23][24][25] The methodology used has been criticized and more recent studies have found opposing results (Gleditsch, Christiansen & Hegre 2004).

Rummel argues that the continuing increase in democracy worldwide will soon lead to an end to wars and democide, possibly around or even before the middle of this century.^[26] The fall of Communism and the increase in the number of democratic states were accompanied by a sudden and dramatic decline in total warfare, interstate wars, ethnic wars, revolutionary wars, and the number of refugees and displaced persons.^[27] One report claims that the two main causes of this decline in warfare are the end of the Cold War itself and decolonization; but also claims that the three Kantian factors have contributed materially.^[28]

Academic relevance and derived studies

Democratic peace theory is a well established research field with more than a hundred authors having published articles about it.^[29] Several peer-reviewed studies mention in their introduction that most researchers accept the theory as an empirical fact.^[30]

Imre Lakatos suggested that what he called a "progressive research program" is better than a "degenerative" one when it can explain the same phenomena as the "degenerative" one, but is also characterized by growth of its research field and the discovery of important novel facts. In contrast, the supporters of the "degenerative" program do not make important new empirical discoveries, but instead mostly apply adjustments to their theory in order to defend it from competitors. Some researchers argue that democratic peace theory is now the "progressive" program in international relations. According to these authors, the theory can explain the empirical phenomena previously explained by the earlier dominant research program, realism in international relations; in addition, the initial statement that democracies do not, or rarely, wage war on one another, has been followed by a rapidly growing literature on novel empirical regularities. (Ray 2003), (Chernoff 2004), (Harrison 2005). Many of these derived studies have been mentioned above, for example those examining lesser conflicts and minor incidents.

Other examples are several studies finding that democracies are more likely to ally with one another than with other states, forming alliances which are likely to last longer than alliances involving nondemocracies (Ray 2003); several studies including (Weart 1998) showing that democracies conduct diplomacy differently and in a more conciliatory way compared to nondemocracies; one study finding that democracies with proportional representation are in general more peaceful regardless of the nature of the other party involved in a relationship (Leblang & Chan 2003); and another study reporting that proportional representation system and decentralized territorial autonomy is positively associated with lasting peace in postconflict societies (Binningsbø 2005).

In The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas L. Friedman coins the "Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention" - that no two countries that both have a McDonald's franchise would be likely to fight a war. The 2008 South Ossetia war, however, is a counterexample.

Influence

The democratic peace theory has been extremely divisive among political scientists. It is rooted in the idealist and classical liberalist traditions and is opposed to the previously dominant theory of realism. However, democratic peace theory has come to be more widely accepted and has in some democracies effected policy change^{[citation needed]}

Presidents of both the major United States parties have expressed support for the theory. Former President Bill Clinton of the Democratic Party: "Ultimately, the best strategy to ensure our security and to build a durable peace is to support the advance of democracy elsewhere. Democracies don't attack each other."^[31] Former President George W. Bush of the Republican Party: "And the reason why I'm so strong on democracy is democracies don't go to war with each other. And the reason why is the people of most societies don't like war, and they understand what war means.... I've got great faith in democracies to promote peace. And that's why I'm such a strong believer that the way forward in the Middle East, the broader Middle East, is to promote democracy."^[32][33]

Former European Commissioner for External Relations Chris Patten: "Inevitable because the EU was formed partly to protect liberal values, so it is hardly surprising that we should think it appropriate to speak out. But it is also sensible for strategic reasons. Free societies tend not to fight one another or to be bad neighbours."^[34] The A Secure Europe in a Better World, European Security Strategy states: "The best protection for our security is a world of well-governed democratic states."^[35] Tony Blair has claimed the theory is correct.^[36]

As a pretense for initiating war

Some fear that the democratic peace theory may be used to justify wars against nondemocracies in order to bring lasting peace, in a democratic crusade (Chan 1997, p. 59). Woodrow Wilson in 1917 asked Congress to declare war against Imperial Germany, citing Germany's sinking of American ships due to unrestricted submarine warfare and the Zimmermann telegram, but also stating that "A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations" and "The world must be made safe for democracy."^[37] R. J. Rummel is a notable proponent of war for the purpose of spreading democracy, based on this theory.

Some point out that the democratic peace theory has been used to justify the 2003 Iraq War, others argue that this justification was used only after the war had already started (Russett 2005). Furthermore, Weede (2004) has argued that the justification is extremely weak, because forcibly democratizing a country completely surrounded by non-democracies, most of which are full autocracies, as Iraq is, is at least as likely to increase the risk of war as it is to decrease it (some studies show that dyads formed by one democracy and one autocracy are the most warlike, and several find that the risk of war is greatly increased in democratizing countries surrounded by nondemocracies). According to Weede, if the United States and its allies wanted to adopt a rationale strategy of forced democratization based on democratic peace, which he still does not recommend, it would be best to start intervening in countries which border with at least one or two stable democracies, and expand gradually. Also, research shows that attempts to create democracies by using external force has often failed. Gleditsch, Christiansen and Hegre (2004) argue that forced democratization by interventionism may initially have partial success, but often create an unstable democratizing country, which can have dangerous consequences in the long run. Those attempts which had a permanent and stable success, like democratization in occupied Japan after World War II, mostly involved countries which had an advanced economic and social structure already,^[38] and implied a drastic change of the whole political culture. Supporting internal democratic movements and using diplomacy may be far more successful and less costly. Thus, the theory and related research, if they were correctly understood, may actually be an argument against a democratic crusade (Weart 1998), (Owen 2005), (Russett 2005).

See also

• List of wars between democracies
• International relations theory
• Perpetual peace
• World peace
• Republican Security theory

Books:

• The End of History
• Never at War

Sources

Notes

External links

Supportive

• Rummell's website
• "Parliamentary Control of Security Policy" (paks) Parliamentary Control of Military Security Policy in the EU-25 and the Iraq War 2003. A DFG funded research project at the Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf, Germany

Critical

• The Myth of Democratic Pacifism
• The Missing Democratic Peace
• Democracies Do Not Make War on One Another ...or Do They?

European Union

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

European Union [show] Европейски съюз (Bulgarian) Evropská unie (Czech) Den Europæiske Union (Danish) Europese Unie (Dutch) Euroopa Liit (Estonian) Euroopan unioni (Finnish) Union européenne (French) Europäische Union (German) Ευρωπαϊκή Ένωση (Greek) Európai Unió (Hungarian) An tAontas Eorpach (Irish) Unione Europea (Italian) Eiropas Savienība (Latvian) Europos Sąjunga (Lithuanian) L-Unjoni Ewropea (Maltese) Unia Europejska (Polish) União Europeia (Portuguese) Uniunea Europeană (Romanian) Európska únia (Slovak) Evropska unija (Slovene) Unión Europea (Spanish) Europeiska unionen (Swedish)
Flag
Motto: United in diversity[1][2][3]
Anthem: Ode to Joy[2] (orchestral)
Political centres		Brussels Luxembourg Strasbourg
Official languages		23[show] Bulgarian Czech Danish Dutch English Estonian Finnish French German Greek Hungarian Irish Italian Latvian Lithuanian Maltese Polish Portuguese Romanian Slovak Slovene Spanish Swedish
Demonym		European[4]
Members		27[show]  Austria  Belgium  Bulgaria  Cyprus  Czech Republic  Denmark  Estonia  Finland  France  Germany  Greece  Hungary  Ireland  Italy  Latvia  Lithuania  Luxembourg  Malta  Netherlands  Poland  Portugal  Romania  Slovakia  Slovenia  Spain  Sweden  United Kingdom
Leaders
-	Commission	José Manuel Barroso
-	Council of Ministers	Spain
-	European Council	Herman Van Rompuy
-	Parliament	Jerzy Buzek
Establishment
-	Paris Treaty	23 July 1952
-	Rome Treaty	1 January 1958
-	Maastricht Treaty	1 November 1993
-	Lisbon Treaty	1 December 2009
Area
-	Total	4,324,782 km2  1,669,807 sq mi
-	Water (%)	3.08
Population
-	2010 estimate	501,259,840[5]
-	Density	115.9/km2  300.2/sq mi
GDP (PPP)		2009 (IMF) estimate
-	Total	$14.793 trillion
-	Per capita	$29,729
GDP (nominal)		2009 (IMF) estimate
-	Total	$16.447 trillion
-	Per capita	$33,052
Gini (2009)		30.7 (EU25)[6] (High)
HDI (2007)		0.937 (High)
Currency		Euro + 11[show] Euro (€) (EUR) (de jure) ---- National currencies British pound (£) (GBP) Bulgarian lev (лв) (BGN) Czech koruna (Kč) (CZK) Danish krone (kr) (DKK) Estonian kroon (kr) (EKK) Hungarian forint (Ft) (HUF) Latvian lats (Ls) (LVL) Lithuanian litas (Lt) (LTL) Polish złoty (zł) (PLN) Romanian leu (RON) (RON) Swedish krona (kr) (SEK)
Time zone		(UTC+0 to +2)
-	Summer (DST)	(UTC+1 to +3[7])
Internet TLD		.eu[8]
Website europa.eu
Calling code		See list

The European Union (EU) is an economic and political union between 27 member countries,^[9] located primarily in Europe. Committed to regional integration, the EU was established by the Treaty of Maastricht on 1 November 1993 upon the foundations of the European Communities.^[10] With over 500 million citizens,^[11] the EU combined generates an estimated 28% share (US$ 16.45 trillion in 2009) of the nominal gross world product and about 21.3% (US$14.8 trillion in 2009) of the PPP gross world product.^[12]

The EU has developed a single market through a standardised system of laws which apply in all member states, ensuring the free movement of people, goods, services, and capital.^[13] It maintains common policies on trade,^[14] agriculture, fisheries^[15] and regional development.^[16] Sixteen member states have adopted a common currency, the euro, constituting the Eurozone. The EU has developed a limited role in foreign policy, having representation at the World Trade Organization, G8, G-20 major economies and at the United Nations. It enacts legislation in justice and home affairs, including the abolition of passport controls by the Schengen Agreement between 22 EU and 3 non-EU states.^[17]

As an international organisation, the EU operates through a hybrid system of supranationalism and intergovernmentalism.^[18][19][20] In certain areas, decisions are made through negotiation between member states, while in others, independent supranational institutions are responsible without a requirement for unanimity between member states. Important institutions of the EU include the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, the European Council, the Court of Justice of the European Union, and the European Central Bank. The European Parliament is elected every five years by member states' citizens, to whom the citizenship of the European Union is guaranteed.

The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community formed among six countries in 1951 and the Treaty of Rome formed in 1957 by the same states. Since then, the EU has grown in size through enlargement, and in power through the addition of policy areas to its remit.

History

Robert Schuman proposing the Coal and Steel Community in 1950

The 1957 Rome Treaty created the European Economic Community.

After World War II, moves towards European integration were seen by many as an escape from the extreme forms of nationalism which had devastated the continent.^[21] One such attempt to unite Europeans was the European Coal and Steel Community which, while having the modest aim of centralised control of the previously national coal and steel industries of its member states, was declared to be "a first step in the federation of Europe".^[22] The originators and supporters of the Community include Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman, Paul Henri Spaak, and Alcide de Gasperi. The founding members of the Community were Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany.^[23]

In 1957, these six countries signed the Treaties of Rome which extended the earlier cooperation within the European Coal and Steel Community and created the European Economic Community, (EEC) establishing a customs union and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) for cooperation in developing nuclear energy.^[23] In 1967 the Merger Treaty created a single set of institutions for the three communities, which were collectively referred to as the European Communities (EC), although commonly just as the European Community.^[24]

In 1973, the Communities enlarged to include Denmark, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.^[25] Norway had negotiated to join at the same time but Norwegian voters rejected membership in a referendum and so Norway remained outside. In 1979, the first direct, democratic elections to the European Parliament were held.^[26]

Greece joined in 1981, and Spain and Portugal in 1986.^[27] In 1985, the Schengen Agreement led the way toward the creation of open borders without passport controls between most member states and some non-member states.^[28] In 1986, the European flag began to be used by the Community^[29] and the Single European Act was signed.

The Iron Curtain's fall enabled eastward enlargement. (Berlin Wall)

In 1990, after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the former East Germany became part of the Community as part of a newly united Germany.^[30] With enlargement towards Eastern and Central Europe on the agenda, the Copenhagen criteria for candidate members to join the European Union were agreed.

The European Union was formally established when the Maastricht Treaty came into force on 1 November 1993,^[10] and in 1995 Austria, Sweden, and Finland joined the newly established EU. In 2002, euro notes and coins replaced national currencies in 12 of the member states. Since then, the eurozone has increased to encompass sixteen countries. In 2004, the EU saw its biggest enlargement to date when Malta, Cyprus, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, and Hungary joined the Union.^[31]

On 1 January 2007, Romania and Bulgaria became the EU's newest members. In the same year Slovenia adopted the euro,^[31] followed in 2008 by Cyprus and Malta, and by Slovakia in 2009. In June 2009, the 2009 Parliament elections were held leading to a renewal of Barroso's Commission Presidency, and in July 2009 Iceland formally applied for EU membership. On 1 December 2009, the Lisbon Treaty came into force after a protracted and controversial birth. This reformed many aspects of the EU but in particular created a permanent President of the European Council, the first of which is Herman van Rompuy, and a strengthened High Representative, Catherine Ashton.

Treaties timeline

Signed In force Document

1948 1948 Brussels Treaty

1951 1952 Paris Treaty

1954 1955 Modified Brussels Treaty

1957 1958 Rome Treaties

1965 1967 Merger Treaty

1975 N/A European Council conclusion

1986 1987 Single European Act

1992 1993 Maastricht Treaty

1997 1999 Amsterdam Treaty

2001 2003 Nice Treaty

2007 2009 Lisbon Treaty

Three pillars of the European Union:

European Communities:

European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM)

European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC)

Treaty expired in 2002

European Union (EU)

European Economic Community (EEC)

European Community (EC)

TREVI

Justice and Home Affairs (JHA)

Police and Judicial Co-operation in Criminal Matters (PJCC)

European Political Cooperation (EPC)

Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP)

Unconsolidated bodies

Western European Union (WEU)

Treaty terminated in 2010

Member states

The continental territories of the member states of the European Union (European Communities pre-1993), animated in order of accession. Albania Austria Belarus Belgium Bos. & Herz. Bulgaria Croatia Cyprus Czech Rep. Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Hungary Iceland Ireland Italy Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Mac. Malta→ Moldova Mont. Netherlands Norway Poland Portugal Romania Russia Serbia Slovakia Slovenia Spain Sweden  Switz- erland Turkey Ukraine United Kingdom

The European Union is composed of 27 sovereign Member States: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.^[32]

The Union's membership has grown from the original six founding states–Belgium, France, (then-West) Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands–to the present day 27 by successive enlargements as countries acceded to the treaties and by doing so, pooled their sovereignty in exchange for representation in the institutions.^[33]

To join the EU a country must meet the Copenhagen criteria, defined at the 1993 Copenhagen European Council. These require a stable democracy that respects human rights and the rule of law; a functioning market economy capable of competition within the EU; and the acceptance of the obligations of membership, including EU law. Evaluation of a country's fulfilment of the criteria is the responsibility of the European Council.^[34]

No member state has ever left the Union, although Greenland (an autonomous province of Denmark) withdrew in 1985. The Lisbon Treaty now provides a clause dealing with how a member leaves the EU.

There are three official candidate countries, Croatia, Macedonia and Turkey. Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia and Iceland are officially recognised as potential candidates.^[35] Kosovo is also listed as a potential candidate but the European Commission does not list it as an independent country because not all member states recognise it as an independent country separate from Serbia.^[36]

Four Western European countries that have chosen not to join the EU have partly committed to the EU's economy and regulations: Iceland, which has now applied for membership, Liechtenstein and Norway, which are a part of the single market through the European Economic Area, and Switzerland, which has similar ties through bilateral treaties.^[37][38] The relationships of the European microstates, Andorra, Monaco, San Marino and the Vatican include the use of the euro and other areas of co-operation.^[39]

Geography

Mont Blanc in the Alps is the highest peak in the EU.

The territory of the EU consists of the combined territories of its 27 member states with some exceptions, outlined below. The territory of the EU is not the same as that of Europe, as parts of the continent are outside the EU, such as Switzerland, Norway, European Russia, and Iceland. Some parts of member states are not part of the EU, despite forming part of the European continent (for example the Isle of Man and Channel Islands (two Crown Dependencies), and the Faroe Islands (a territory of Denmark)). The island country of Cyprus, a member of the EU, is closer to Turkey than to continental Europe and is often considered part of Asia.^[40][41]

Several territories associated with member states that are outside geographic Europe are also not part of the EU (such as Greenland, Aruba, the Netherlands Antilles, and all the non-European British overseas territories). Some overseas territories are part of the EU even though geographically not part of Europe, such as the Azores, the Canary Islands, Madeira, Lampedusa, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Saint Barthélemy, Martinique, Réunion, Ceuta and Melilla. As well, although being technically part of the EU,^[42] EU law is suspended in Northern Cyprus as it is under the de facto control of the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus, a self-proclaimed state that is recognised only by Turkey.

The EU's climate is influenced by its 65,993 km (41,006 mi) coastline. (Crete)

The EU's member states cover an area of 4,422,773 square kilometres (1,707,642 sq mi).^[43] The EU is larger in area than all but six countries, and its highest peak is Mont Blanc in the Graian Alps, 4,807 metres (15,771 ft) above sea level. The landscape, climate, and economy of the EU are influenced by its coastline, which is 65,993 kilometres (41,006 mi) long. The EU has the world's second-longest coastline, after Canada. The combined member states share land borders with 19 non-member states for a total of 12,441 kilometres (7,730 mi), the fifth-longest border in the world.^[19][44][45]

Including the overseas territories of member states, the EU experiences most types of climate from Arctic to tropical, rendering meteorological averages for the EU as a whole meaningless. The majority of the population lives in areas with a Mediterranean climate (Southern Europe), a temperate maritime climate (Western Europe), or a warm summer continental or hemiboreal climate (Eastern Europe).^[46]

The EU's population is also highly urbanized, with some 75% of people (and growing, projected to be 90% in 7 states by 2020) living in urban areas. Cities are largely spread out across the EU, although with a large grouping in and around the Benelux and a large amount of urbanization in Spain since it joined the EU^{[citation needed]}. An increasing percentage of this is due to low density urban sprawl which is extending into natural areas. In some cases this urban growth has been due to the influx of EU funds into a region.^[47]

Governance

European Union

This article is part of the series: Politics and government of the European Union

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