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Democracy and War in E ast A sia
Author(s) -
Kivimäki Timo
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
pacific focus
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.172
H-Index - 12
eISSN - 1976-5118
pISSN - 1225-4657
DOI - 10.1111/j.1976-5118.2012.01087.x
Subject(s) - autocracy , democracy , belligerent , political science , political economy , development economics , sociology , economics , law , politics
This article will explore the relationship between democracy and conflict in E ast A sia (including current ASEAN countries, C hina, J apan, the K oreas, E ast T imor and M ongolia). It will shortly discuss the existing research on the relationship between conflict and peace in East Asia and explain why democracy, as a possible cause of peace, has been hiding from the eye of observers. It will look at developments after W orld W ar II, but will pay special attention to the emergence of relative peace in E ast A sia after 1979. The main conclusions of the article are the following: Democracy is associated with peace in a two‐way relationship. This association is neither very systematic nor linear. Countries tend to be more peaceful if they have a Polity2 score above 0 (while in previous studies a more demanding threshold has been found useful). For autocratic regimes the relationship between autocracy and conflict is curvilinear. The most autocratic and the least autocratic autocracies are the least belligerent, while the “murder is in the middle.”