The nice thing about Arafat's death and the upcoming Palestinian elections is that they should provide us with an interesting test of the democratic peace theory.
Of course, if it doesn't work out the proponents will argue that the conflict does not meet the definition of war.
posted by alex @ 11:40 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Right - I was alluding to the 1,000 deaths requirement when I said this arguably does not pass as a war.
[Though the figure commonly tossed for the second intifada is 3,500 deaths from 2000 to 2003 - since there was a sharp dropoff in casualties, I think 2000,2001, and 2002 would most likely meet the cutoff - though I don't have access to the data to say this for certain.]
But why wouldn't Palestinian elections qualify the PA as a democracy? Arafat was elected in '96 after all. Do you mean because Arafat died, rather than peacefully transferred power on his own?
am i the person responsible for introducing you to dpt, the singer & small data set, doyle, spiro, and the whole bloody cottage industry in american ir?
yeah. the definition of war is restrictive, and they tend to let new democracies off the hook because of the pseudo-kantian side of the theory which maintains that like a good bottle of barolo, liberal values need time to ferment.
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