Does peace nurture democracy?

Liberal international relations theory proposes that peace fosters democracy. This research note tests this and a related hypothesis, that defeat in war makes an authoritarian state's transition to democracy more likely. It uses Weibull event history models to analyze both the transition to and survival of democracy for states from 1960 to 1992, using the MID, COW, and Pearson/Baumann intervention data sets to measure international conflict. Important control variables such as economic prosperity are also included. It finds that lower levels of participation in international conflict do not facilitate democratic transition or survival, with the limited exception that participation in an international war blocks democratic transition. Also, in most models examined defeat in war does not make democratic transition more likely. The implications for liberalism are mixed: peace in general does not cause democracy, but spreading democracy is likely to spread peace.