Thank you so much for these thoughtful comments! A few responses:
While there are of course differences of opinion on this issue outside of the research community, the social science research literature universally considers Russia and Iran to be non-democratic (see for example, the Polity IV project or the recent Acemoglu et. al. 2019 Democracy dataset). These regimes might be considered “competitive authoritarian” regimes (see Way and Levitsky) or hybrid regimes/”anocracies”—the benefits of democracy stated in the article do not apply to these states. While liberal democracy is likely preferable for outcomes like democratic peace, other outcomes like higher spending on public goods are linked primarily to electoral democracy, rather than to liberal norms.
In terms of the democratic peace—it’s true that not all scholars agree with the consensus about the democratic peace—though Mearsheimer is definitely an outlier to the extent of believing power politics to be the only thing that matters (i.e. he thinks Europe isn’t at war because of US troops in Germany). Scholars that have traditionally emphasized power politics (like Robert Jervis) acknowledge that the current situation—in which powerful countries in Europe/Japan/South Korea don’t even contemplate war against one another—is unique historically and likely linked to democratic norms.
I agree on China—I think pro-democracy aid can be effective when a country is in transition, like a mixed regime (and when a country actually needs aid enough to be influenced). Conditional aid can boost the fragile institutions of new democracies and make democratic consolidation more likely ( a very important long term outcome).
Thank you so much for these thoughtful comments! A few responses:
While there are of course differences of opinion on this issue outside of the research community, the social science research literature universally considers Russia and Iran to be non-democratic (see for example, the Polity IV project or the recent Acemoglu et. al. 2019 Democracy dataset). These regimes might be considered “competitive authoritarian” regimes (see Way and Levitsky) or hybrid regimes/”anocracies”—the benefits of democracy stated in the article do not apply to these states. While liberal democracy is likely preferable for outcomes like democratic peace, other outcomes like higher spending on public goods are linked primarily to electoral democracy, rather than to liberal norms.
In terms of the democratic peace—it’s true that not all scholars agree with the consensus about the democratic peace—though Mearsheimer is definitely an outlier to the extent of believing power politics to be the only thing that matters (i.e. he thinks Europe isn’t at war because of US troops in Germany). Scholars that have traditionally emphasized power politics (like Robert Jervis) acknowledge that the current situation—in which powerful countries in Europe/Japan/South Korea don’t even contemplate war against one another—is unique historically and likely linked to democratic norms.
I agree on China—I think pro-democracy aid can be effective when a country is in transition, like a mixed regime (and when a country actually needs aid enough to be influenced). Conditional aid can boost the fragile institutions of new democracies and make democratic consolidation more likely ( a very important long term outcome).