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Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War (Belfer Center Studies in International Security)
 
 
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Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War (Belfer Center Studies in International Security) (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Jack Snyder (Author)
Key Phrases: autocratic transitions, incomplete democratic transition, incomplete democratization, New York, United States, Incomplete Demtransitioni (more...)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)


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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Electing to Fight is an important book. With analytical power and historical depth, Mansfield and Snyder argue for a simple conclusion: democratization can be dangerous, even if democracy, once achieved, is a good thing. Scholars, journalists, politicians, and citizens all need to hear this message, and to heed it. If Mansfield and Snyder are right, then policies that rely on war to promote elections are bound to produce disaster."
Joshua Cohen, Leon and Anne Goldberg Professor of the Humanities and Head of the Department of Political Science, MIT

"American foreign policy has been based on the premise that democracy promotes peace. Electing to Fight conclusively shows, however, that democratization, when mishandled, leads to war. Its challenge to the conventional beliefs of scholars and politicians makes it one of the most important books on international affairs in recent decades."
Samuel P. Huntington, Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor, Harvard University

"Everyone agrees that democracies make peace not war. But is that true? Jack Snyder and Edward Mansfield have posed the question and answered it with great rigor and sophistication. The result is an important book that describes a far more complicated relationship between democratization and peace than simple-minded rhetoric would suggest."
Fareed Zakaria, Editor, Newsweek International

"When, and how, does democratization increase the chances of war? No question is more important for domestic politics and international affairs in the twenty-first century. Mansfield and Snyder offer specific answers, combining statistical analyses with case studies to demonstrate the critical role played by domestic political institutions. The book provides the most comprehensive evidence on the topic to date. It is a must-read for anyone seriously interested in the theory and practice of democracy."
Cindy Skach, Assistant Professor of Government, Harvard University

"While the connections between democracy and peace are increasingly well understood, the process of transforming authoritarian regimes into liberal ones is inherently risky-both for the citizens of the states in question and for their neighbors. Mansfield and Snyder tackle one of the most profound foreign policy puzzles of our age: how to manage the process of political liberalization without creating unnecessary or unacceptable risks for the international community. This work will be of interest to scholars, students, and policymakers alike."
Allan C. Stam, Professor of Government, Dartmouth College

"With notable analytic agility and rigorous empiricism Mansfield and Snyder dissect the popular policy nostrum that promoting democracy abroad promotes peace in the world. Their incisive work will help policymakers steer clear of misleading, facile assumptions and impel scholars to dig deeper and think harder on a subject of critical contemporary importance."
Thomas Carothers, Director, Democracy and Rule of Law Project, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace


Product Description

Winner of Georgetown University's Lepgold Book Prize fro 2005, Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2006 and Gold Award Winner for Political Science in the 2005 ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Awards

Does the spread of democracy really contribute to international peace? Successive U. S. administrations have justified various policies intended to promote democracy not only by arguing that democracy is intrinsically good but by pointing to a wide range of research concluding that democracies rarely, if ever, go to war with one another. To promote democracy, the United States has provided economic assistance, political support, and technical advice to emerging democracies in Eastern and Central Europe, and it has attempted to remove undemocratic regimes through political pressure, economic sanctions, and military force. In Electing to Fight, Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder challenge the widely accepted basis of these policies by arguing that states in the early phases of transitions to democracy are more likely than other states to become involved in war.

Drawing on both qualitative and quantitative analysis, Mansfield and Snyder show that emerging democracies with weak political institutions are especially likely to go to war. Leaders of these countries attempt to rally support by invoking external threats and resorting to belligerent, nationalist rhetoric. Mansfield and Snyder point to this pattern in cases ranging from revolutionary France to contemporary Russia. Because the risk of a state's being involved in violent conflict is high until democracy is fully consolidated, Mansfield and Snyder argue, the best way to promote democracy is to begin by building the institutions that democracy requires—such as the rule of law—and only then encouraging mass political participation and elections. Readers will find this argument particularly relevant to prevailing concerns about the transitional government in Iraq. Electing to Fight also calls into question the wisdom of urging early elections elsewhere in the Islamic world and in China.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 312 pages
  • Publisher: The MIT Press; illustrated edition edition (August 1, 2005)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0262134497
  • ISBN-13: 978-0262134491
  • Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,040,392 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Edward D. Mansfield
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Scholarly, November 10, 2006
By Peter McCluskey (Mountain View, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This book makes a convincing argument that it's misleading to assume that democracies are less likely to wage wars. That assumption is true of mature democracies, but unstable nations that are trying to make a transition to democracy are more likely than autocracies to wage war. At least part of the reasons are increased nationalism, competition among politicians to be the most nationalist, and the weakness of stabilizing institutions.
The book offers some hints about how a transition to a democracy might be managed to minimize the risks, but this part of the book is more speculative and less convincing.
In spite of the book's relevance to current events, it devotes little attention to the present. It covers the time period from the French revolution to the present with the perspective of a historian, and says as much about Iraq in 1948 as it does about the recent experiment with democracy in Iraq. It is somewhat valuable for reminding us how many attempts at democracy failed and have largely faded from collective memories.
The dry, scholarly style of the book is a bit mind-numbing.
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