Democracy or Demography? Sources of Victory in Modern War

Are democracies more likely to win international wars? Despite several widely circulated studies that suggest a democratic form of government significantly increases a country's prospects of winning an international war, a careful examination of the past two centuries of warfare shows that democracies fare no better in war than other regime types. Instead, population size has been and remains the overwhelming determinant of war victory since 1816. Population sizes of countries in the international system are so varied that it is virtually impossible for a small nation to withstand the military onslaught of a larger foe, a finding that reasserts basic tenets of realism to modern foreign policy discussions. The importance of the size and quality of a country's population is demonstrated via statistical analyses of a new dataset of 19th and 20th century international wars as well as case studies of Arab-Israeli Wars (1948-1973) and the German invasion of France in 1940.