英文摘要 |
The popularity of the democratic peace theory—democracies rarely fightagainst each other—is derived from its theoretical and empirical support. However,since the 1990s the “dictatorial peace” argument, proposing that nondemocraciesare also less likely to engage in militarized disputes with eachother, has emerged. Failing to provide a unified approach to explain why bothregime types account for peace prevents us from advancing a unified explanationfor the polity-conflict nexus. This paper proposes that it is the institutionalcharacteristics, rather than regime characteristics, that determine the likelihoodof conflict onset among institutionally similar states in political terms. Institutionalsimilarity helps states identify friends or adversaries, provides informationfor behavior prediction, and reduces communication costs. Using the dataof the period spanning 1950–2001, this paper confirms that political institutionalsimilarity reduces the incidence of conflict. |