Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T20:57:20.222Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2006

Andrew J. Enterline
Andrew J. Enterline
Affiliation:
University of North Texas
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War. By Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005. 300p. $32.95.

Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder's article “Democratization and War” (Foreign Affairs 74 [May/June 1995]: 79–97) arrived in 1995 like a thunderclap, riveting me to questions about domestic political changes and their implications for peace and conflict between states. The article appeared when the intellectual wars over the democratic peace were hot, and when research critical of democratic performance in general was receiving heightened scrutiny. In general, the early response to the authors' claim that democratization significantly increases the war-proneness of states focused narrowly on their research design. However, my review of Mansfield and Snyder's book-length treatment of the subject focuses on the broader weaknesses in the book, of which there are few, and the book's strengths, of which there are several.

Type
BOOK REVIEWS: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , September 2006 , pp. 634 - 635
Copyright
© 2006 American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)