Freedom Under Fire Repression Context And The Fragility Of The Domestic Democratic Peace

For forty years research has supported the claim that political democracy decreases state repression - the so called “domestic democratic peace.” This work has not only generated scholarly attention but it is now the cornerstone of President George W. Bush's “War against Tyranny.” Several weaknesses exist within prior literature, however, which lead me to conclude that the democratic peace within the domestic context is somewhat less straightforward than we initially anticipated. For example, examining 137 countries from 1976 to 1996, I find that: 1) while certain aspects of democracy (measures of competition/participation and executive constraints) influence repression in the expected manner, some do not (suffrage and the number of veto players); 2) the pacifying influence of democracy on repressive behavior is increased in the context of interstate war, decreased in the context of violent dissent and mixed in the context of civil war; and 3) regional democratic contexts are not as strongly supportive as one would anticipate. While there is a domestic democratic peace, therefore, it is clearly not the cure-all, universally applied mechanism of pacification that it is commonly believed to be.