Democratic Sanctions: Connecting the Democratic Peace and Economic Sanctions
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343306068104 |
| Author | A. Cooper Drury,Dan G. Cox |
| Published date | 01 November 2006 |
| Date | 01 November 2006 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
709
Introduction
Starting with Kant (1795/1969), scholars
have suggested, theorized, and tested the idea
that democracies do not go to war with one
another. This democratic peace focuses
almost solely on the use of militarized
conflict. Such a focus is justified when one
considers that wars have such devastating
consequences, but other forms of conflict
also have dramatic effects.
For the most part, the democratic peace
scholarship does not include economic
conflict, but it does suggest that many of its
implications extend, at least in part, to other
forms of hostility. Those factors which make
democracies peaceful toward each other
should also make most relations rather
cordial. That democratic dyads tend to
resolve their disputes more rapidly than non-
democratic dyads alone suggests that democ-
racies will be less likely to resort to economic
coercion. The empirical record shows,
however, that democracies do sanction one
© 2006 Journal of Peace Research,
vol. 43, no. 6, 2006, pp. 709–722
Sage Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA
and New Delhi) http://jpr.sagepub.com
DOI 10.1177/0022343306068104
Democratic Sanctions: Connecting the Democratic
Peace and Economic Sanctions*
DAN G. COX
Department of Government, Social Work, and Sociology, Missouri Western
State College
A. COOPER DRURY
Department of Political Science, University of Missouri-Columbia
The democratic peace literature has focused primarily on militarized conflict; however, aspects of the
democratic peace may influence how states use economic sanctions. This article investigates how
democracies sanction both each other and other non-democracies. Because economic sanctions are very
different from military force, some aspects of the democratic peace, such as the more peaceful nature
of democracies, do not apply to the decision to sanction. However, several democratic peace factors
should influence the use of economic sanctions, such as institutional constraints, shared values, and
quick resolutions often found between two democracies. Using updated economic sanction data from
1978 through 2000, the article employs rare-event logit analysis to show that the democratic peace does
influence the use of economic coercion – democracies are less likely to sanction each other. It also shows
that democracies employ sanctions more than other regime types, in part because democracies pursue
human rights and democratization goals with economic sanctions. The results further reveal that unlike
other countries, the United States is not hesitant to sanction its allies.
* The authors wish to thank Kimberly Elliott for sending
us a list of the sanction cases from Hufbauer et al. (forth-
coming), and Daniel Drezner, Melanie Taylor Drury, Tobin
Grant, and Nikolay Marinov for their helpful comments
and discussions on previous versions of this article. Dan
Cox may be reached at cox@missouriwestern.edu and
Cooper Drury may be reached at drury@missouri.edu.
The data used in this article are available from
http://www.prio.no/jpr/datasets as well as the second
author’s website (http://www.missouri.edu/~drurya).
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