Do democratic institutions constrain or inform? Contrasting two institutional perspectives on democracy and War

I contrast two perspectives on how democratic institutions affect international crisis behavior and offer an empirical test designed to discriminate between them. The institutional constraints argument suggests that democratic leaders face greater political risks in waging war because voters can easily sanction them for failed or costly policies. The informational perspective suggests that democratic institutions help reveal information about a government's preferences either by increasing the transparency of decision making or by enhancing the credibility of its signals. A formal model of crisis bargaining shows that the two perspectives make opposite predictions about how target states respond when challenged by a democratic state. Competing hypotheses are tested using a data set of militarized disputes, and the results are consistent with the predictions of the informational perspective. In particular, challenges made by democratic states are less likely to be resisted militarily than those made by nondemocratic states.