One aspect which may (or may not) bear on the problem in Europe is the, for lack of a better term, "moral inequality" problem. The progressive elite has always known (not merely thought) they know better, and they have largely imposed their version of societal rules in western Europe. Those rules have generally led to economic sclerosis and we are seeing the political fallout precipitate ever faster.

The social conditions they "knew" would lead to the equality of outcomes, vice the required equality of opportunities, has instead led to more grievous inequality of outcomes, as evidenced by the Gini coefficients of the various members of the OECD.

The older I get, the more I appreciate Edmund Burke's caution.

There is a strong case to be made that democracy, and the resulting economic progress, create conditions that dramatically reduce the chances of war.

For example, no two countries with both democracy and high per capita incomes have ever gone to war against each other. This article has some great points.

The spread of democracy corelates to the drop in overallk warfare we have seen over the last 15 years.

I think the situation facing Muslims in Europe reinforces this thesis. The Muslims were 'imported' to do low-wage jobs, and even then many are unemployed. They form a discernable 'lower class' in Europe, in at least three ways: Socially (they will never be assimilated), economically (rampant unemployment and generally low wages), and politically (does anyone truly represent them?).

The Muslims 'stick out' like a sore thumb. They assemble only amongst themselves (at the mosques), they live only amonst themselves (in the ghettos), they are visually identifyable in a crowd, making social separation even more stark. Many even have a separate economic/banking system to avoid the forbidden usury. The very tenets of Islam effectively isolate them from other Europeans, in poor, increasingly lawless enclaves.

Contast that with Muslims in this country. Economically, they are certainly not 'lower class' (quite the oppostite!). Socially, there is more mixing with the general population (since they are economic peers, they rub shoulders with ordinary Americans at the workplace and marketplace more often than their European counterparts). The best analog in the US to the Muslims in Europe would be the illegal latino immigrants -- which are now showing similar signs of social unrest.

There is a strong case to be made that democracy, and the resulting economic progress, create conditions that dramatically reduce the chances of war.

For example, no two countries with both democracy and high per capita incomes have ever gone to war against each other. This article has some great points.

The spread of democracy corelates to the drop in overallk warfare we have seen over the last 15 years.

Hmm. He says that democracy works among equals.

Then you ask, how come we get undemocratic pockets in europe, full of noncitizens and second-class citizens.

I don't see why you'd ask that, given the claim.

Well, Quantum Defect and J Thomas make me clarify a bit. Boix's study mainly dealt with the inequality of conditions as resulting from massive immobile economic resources: oil, for example. He didn't really get into the inequality of opportunity too much.

I think the status of Muslims in Europe does seem to reinforce something akin to Boix's thesis, but it is not explicity studied in his research.

Does that help at all . . . ?

In other words, I don't think Boix's thesis is either proved or disproved by the case of Muslims in Europe, though, as J Thomas and Quantum Defect attempt, one could make another corollary thesis that was similar. If one were to use his thesis without the corollary, one would have to ask what sort of natural resource the immigrant communities are attempting to horde by use of authoritarian policies: and it seems one would come up short in looking for an answer.

All that might be more confusing than helpful. Perhaps a visit to Boix's original article would be best for those truly interested.

To annlee, and other relatively uninformed proponents of the not properly understood "democratic peace theory":

Democractic Peace Theory is a theory with no mechanisms, making it a poor theory at best. At the moment it is nothing really more than a series of observations, based almost entirely on the relatively new phenomenon of Western democracy. No one knows why democracies have not gone to war with each other, but because the answers seem to be only spuriously related to democracy itself (ie that the countries that happen to be democracies have unrelated reasons for not going to war with each other -- NATO comes to mind, for instance), it is a theory that has lost many adherents in International Relations, its point of origin.

However, it is a very nice sound bite theory for policy, and one could argue that it forms the basis for the neoconservative vision of a transforming Middle East, or at least a non-threatening Iraq. But if it's not about democracy and is about other factors, then the instantiation of democracy absent those other factors will not create the situation the neocons intended. This is one reason academics are careful about the policy implications of their work, as Fukuyama's recent statements have made clear.

So I'd suggest holding off on spouting about democratic peace theory until there's at least some understanding of what it actually is attempting to demonstrate.

Democractic Peace Theory is a theory with no mechanisms, making it a poor theory at best.

No mechanisms? That's ridiculous. If anything, it suffers from a surfeit of proposed mechanisms. Besides, the main point of the theory is the simple observation that liberal democracies are far less likely to go to war or commit democide; how this is explained is secondary.

No one knows why democracies have not gone to war with each other

Again, silly. We know of many reasons: the difficulty of persuading democratic majorities to support war, intertwining economic dependence because of free trade agreements that democracies tend to enter into, inability of democratic governments to control public opinion and propagandize like autocrats can, lack of the need for democratically elected governments to scapegoat other countries to explain their problems... I could go on.

But if it's not about democracy and is about other factors, then the instantiation of democracy absent those other factors will not create the situation the neocons intended.

Well, no one is arguing simply holding elections in a panacea, and everyone agrees other institutions are necessary.

Fukuyama generally just embraces whatever conventional wisdom happens to be at any given moment. He offers little in the way of insight.

Rudy Rummel has far more here.

The truth is that the politics surrounding the control of natural resources, rather than any religious or cultural factor, is what explains the preponderance of authoritarianism in the Middle East
So it IS all about oil, huh?

Great post, overall, very thought-provoking. I think both neocons and neocon-haters will find it interesting.

The best analog in the US to the Muslims in Europe would be the illegal latino immigrants -- which are now showing similar signs of social unrest.

But it is a limited analogy. The Aztlan Reconquista meme is the only similar sign of social unrest.

Socially, they can assimilate if they choose to. They certainly assimilate into the legal immigrant community which serves as an interface.

Economically, they are here because US poverty beats Latin America poverty all hollow. If there is no employment for them they relocate (New Orleans, at the moment) or go back home.

Politically, there is plenty of representation within our system speaking on their behalf.

Democratic Peace Theory depends entirely on redefining democracy until it works.

So for example both the north and the south in the american civil war had elections and all the other trappings of democracies, but they don't count because....

The War of 1812 involved a quasi-democracy in the USA and a quasi-democracy in britain, so one or the other of them must be defined as nondemocratic.

Etc.

If you define democracy down far enough, then there are so few democracies left and they are so scattered that they're unlikely to go to war with each other.

There may be something to the idea, but in the form it's getting presented it's bogus.

It's not (quite) just the Arab world where democracy is notably absent. If you include the non-democracies in Iran and Pakistan-- despite democratic interludes, democracy has failed in Pakistan over and over again DESPITE the British heritage that has helped make democracy so successful in India-- what you really have is this rule: There is a complete absence democracy in ALL OF THE LANDS OF THE EARLY ISLAMIC EMPIRE, i.e. those that were conquered before 800 AD. This is a bit less hard to explain. The problem is not so much Islam as OLD Islam, the Islam with the deepest roots, the Islam of the Prophet Muhammad, as opposed to that spread later by mercenary adventurers or a commercial diaspora.

The natural resource explanation doesn't work. Natural-resource-rich countries OUTSIDE the Muslim world have no particular tendency to be non-democratic. The natural resource correlation just shows up because the countries in Islam's historic heartland have a lot of natural resources.

There is a correlation between poverty and non-democracy, which explains why sub-Saharan Africa is relatively lacking in democracy (though less so lately). Interestingly, IN THE MUSLIM WORLD THE WEALTH-DEMOCRACY CORRELATION HOLDS IN REVERSE: it is the RICHEST Muslim countries (Gulf Arabs) that are least free and democratic, while impoverished Muslim countries like Mali and Bangladesh are more so.

Democracy has spread to regions that seemed "culturally" unsuited to it before. But at least for the present, the more carefully you look at them, the more strongly the data confirm the opposition between Islam and democracy.

Boix says "if we take into account the large Muslim populations of countries such as India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Turkey, the majority of the world’s Muslims live now under democratic regimes." A slightly disingenous point, given the the powerful non-Moslem influences which shaped these governments. The British Raj, in India and Bangladesh - the westernizing Ataturk in Turky, and the Dutch influence combined with westernizing strongmen in Indonesia. When Islam is left to itself, it is pure Third World.

I elaborate on this very point, here:

http://forgottenprophets.blogspot.com/2006/04/providence.html

Specifically, we "cannot know for a certainty what a Moslem world would be [if it had conquered the world in any of its various jihads], but we know what it would not be. We do know slavery would still exist throughout the world, as it still does in the hinterlands of Islam – and here we find a use for the infidels who might still remain. No Wilberforce, to preach a Moslem gospel of liberty. There is no such doctrine. We know women would be chattel, as the Koran, frankly, requires. No suffragettes are tolerated, in Mecca. Wealth would be the right of Sheiks, and favor would be the means to advancement; for so does the non-Westernized Moslem world function, today. Sharia would be enforced, or not enforced, but it would be the law, the constitution of the world. That’s what the world would be. What would it not be? Free."

Upshot? It's not the economy, stupid. It's the culture.

J

The thesis that only polities with relatively equal levels of income can be democracies may be missing the point. The US has widely divergent levels of income, but an excellently (at least by historical/world standards) functioning democracy. One caveat. Vast economic inequalities in the prescence of high poverty can be inimical to democracy as class warfare is tempting for those on the outside. If the vast majority of society is relatively well off (as in the developed world), the incentive to engage is said class warfare is much lower and democracy can function.
However, social inequalities (e.g. the prescence of aristocratic classes) can cause tremendous social dislocation. In America, the rich do not act especially different than the middle class, hence this economic difference causes much less strain in the political system. These ideas are shamelessly plagarized from an entry at http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/.

doesnt this all suppose that economics is the product of, say, economics? no, economics is a product of morality that then results in rule of law etc. the west has lost its mind and has embraced determinism to the exclusion of any talk about morality etc.
its like this: there's a bucket, the bucket has holes, it rains and the water runs out. its going to rain again so instead of fixing the holes you start talking about weather forecasts etc completely IGNORING the fact that rain comes fromt he sky but the holes in your bucket decide wether or not you cna hang with people that have whole buckets full...

how many times have you heard a reporter say that the insurgents in iraq are jsut trying to survive and that blowing up a tank can pay them $500 so who can blame them, or how many times have you heard that the vietnamese "were just farmers, dude"?

detrminism is based on the denila of man's free will to choose. determinism is a religion and the basis of marx, freud, etc.
forgive me for being so rash as to say that your argument is specious and circular.

America is great because America is good, America will no longer be great when America is no longer good.
Europe is no longer good.
Talk about everything else but the truth.

doesnt this all suppose that economics is the product of, say, economics? no, economics is a product of morality that then results in rule of law etc. the west has lost its mind and has embraced determinism to the exclusion of any talk about morality etc.
its like this: there's a bucket, the bucket has holes, it rains and the water runs out. its going to rain again so instead of fixing the holes you start talking about weather forecasts etc completely IGNORING the fact that rain comes fromt he sky but the holes in your bucket decide wether or not you cna hang with people that have whole buckets full...

how many times have you heard a reporter say that the insurgents in iraq are jsut trying to survive and that blowing up a tank can pay them $500 so who can blame them, or how many times have you heard that the vietnamese "were just farmers, dude"?

detrminism is based on the denila of man's free will to choose. determinism is a religion and the basis of marx, freud, etc.
forgive me for being so rash as to say that your argument is specious and circular.

America is great because America is good, America will no longer be great when America is no longer good.
Europe is no longer good.
Talk about everything else but the truth.