Understanding War and Peace

This chapter describes the relationships between domestic political institutions and war. Moving beyond older debates comparing democracies and autocracies, it presents a conceptual structure for differentiating among different types of autocracies. Autocracies vary as either being personalist or non-personalist, and also as being led by either military officers or civilians. Personalist regimes are less constrained by domestic audience costs, and military leaders are more likely to embrace the effectiveness and legitimacy of using force. The likely onset and outcome of conflicts vary across autocracy types. The chapter explores other ideas linking domestic politics and war, including the diversionary theory of war, coup-proofing (when autocrats take steps to reduce their risk of being overthrown in a military coup d’état), and the marketplace of ideas (when foreign policy issues can be freely debated in government and society). The chapter applies many of these ideas to a quantitative study on what kinds of political systems are more likely to win their interstate wars, and a case study of Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.