In a newly published article, Jason Lyall notes a puzzle. On the one hand, democracies are presumed to be bad at fighting counterinsurgency wars:
bq. It is commonly argued, for example, that democratic publics are cost-intolerant and highly casualty-sensitive, especially if the war turns protracted, Voters are also thought highly responsive to spectacular attacks that, when amplified by a democracy’s media freedoms, can shift voting patterns while enabling insurgents to fan the flames of public dissent over the war’s course. Indeed, terrorists have targeted democracies with disproportionate frequency. Democratic leaders, held accountable to their publics through the specter of electoral defeat, are thus constrained in their ability to wage war, resulting in higher and faster rates of defeat than those attained by autocratic states.
But they’re supposed to be good at fighting conventional wars for these same reasons:
bq. What makes the apparent ineffectiveness of democracies so puzzling is that these same attributes—namely, rational publics, accountable leaders, and open media—are cited as responsible for democracies’ unmatched success rate in conventional wars. Democracies have won a staggering 93 percent of the interstate wars they initiated since 1815, a trend due largely to democratic leaders choosing to fight wars only when the odds of victory are high.
Using a new dataset and research design, Lyall finds that being a democracy has _no effect_ on the likelihood of winning a COIN war or on the duration of the war. Other factors are more important:
bq. It appears that prior studies have conflated the risks of occupation with the risk of being a democracy; while democracies are much more likely to be external occupiers than are comparable autocracies, it is the act of occupation itself, rather than the fact of being a democracy, that is most influential in shaping war duration…
bq. …emphasizing battlefield dynamics — the “how” of fighting may prove a better theoretical bet than focusing on regime-specific variables — the “who” of fighting!+ Indeed, the degree of a military’s mechanization, its status as an external occupier, and the level of material support for insurgents all proved more consequential for explaining outcomes and duration+ In short, democracies do struggle to defeat insurgents—but not because they are democracies.
An ungated copy of the paper is here.
