Testing the Waters: Exploring Why Democracies Have More Maritime Conflict

Abstract

While the democratic peace literature finds that pairs of democracies face lower risks for interstate conflict than other regime pairings, the maritime conflict literature often finds that democratic dyads have the highest risks for maritime diplomatic conflicts out of all regime pairings. Despite this surprising finding, there remains a gap for understanding what specific political mechanisms are driving democracies to engage in maritime conflict with other democracies. We explore whether democracies have more opportunities for maritime conflict generally, whether specific dimensions of democracy influence maritime conflict (domestic interests and executive constraints), including distinguishing between presidential and parliamentary democracies, and whether territorial integrity norms are weaker at sea. We find that coastal states are more democratic than landlocked states and that coastal dyads with maritime claims are more democratic than peaceful coastal dyads. We also show that multiple dimensions for democracy help explain the pattern of democratic maritime conflicts and that dyads with stronger domestic interests and more constrained executives (especially presidential democracies) are more likely to experience maritime conflicts. Finally, we show that territorial integrity norms have weaker effects on maritime conflict behavior, which helps us understand why democracies may be less constrained in their revisionist behavior in the maritime arena.