Targets of covert pressure: The hidden victims of the democratic peace

The expanding literature on the relationship between democracy and international conflict continues to focus on two questions: Are democracies inherently more peaceful than other forms of government? Why do democracies rarely, if ever, go to war with one another? The first question now appears settled. The empirical record is clear. Democracies are not inherently more peaceful than other forms of government. Although the second question is still subject to a wide‐ranging debate, there is a growing consensus that democracies almost never use force against each other. Presently, that is where agreement ends. Explanation of the relative lack of war among democratic nations is where the debate now rages. We suggest that, while violence among democratic states is scarce, these states do fight one another—just in ways that are more concealed. We use a modified version of the crisis subgame from Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman (1992) to demonstrate that relatively weak democracies that seek changes in structural dependency and are vulnerable to outside efforts at destabilization are likely to be the victims of covert attack by more powerful democratic states.