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.