>>856
>1-Given Steven Pinker's research, society in general (murder and criminal rates) have been getting more peaceful. So, I'd be more interested in a more modern comparison of democratic peace theory. In other words, the fact that at the period in history where humans in general were more violent we had more trust in monarchism might skew the absolute scale of results, and thus the data should hold the specific year constant.
I know that this research exists, but I've never checked it out. Although it sounds like it points to the right direction, I wouldn't make too much of it. You can acknowledge that people in different times and places were more or less savage than in others, and you have to do that if you want to compare political or economic systems. What we shouldn't do is postulate a general law that societies got more peaceful as time has passed. There'll always societies for which this won't be true. Also, some particular forms of savagery get invented, forgotten, reinvented, and so on. Our age is the only age in which slavery is openly condemned by pretty much everyone, but also the age in which nuclear war is seen as alright. Perhaps worst, like with all historical trends, there's always the danger of forgetting the underlying causes and postulating a "historical law" of sorts.
Hope that didn't sound too confused. Basically, I'm skeptical of Pinkers research, but I think he's on to something, and I think that you're right in that we should take the eras and their conditions into account.
>2-I'm much more inclined to agree with the Dell Peace Theory, which is another issue of earlier times. Economic theory just wasn't at a state to which it is now, and like people thinking leeches were an amazing medical technology, they thought mercantilism was an economic cure-all, which probably was a big hamper on any machinations for peace.
Muh nigga! I agree fully with that.
>That said, I don't know any reasons to substantiate democratic peace theory anyways, and the facts to 'support' it do not seem cohesively compiled at all.
Like I said, Rummmel is a good scholar on democides, but the data with which he backs his theory of democratic peace is more than shifty. No idea where he got the numbers for Tzarist Russia, or how he could've overlooked the democides of Churchill. He also conflates democracy with freedom, as many scholars tend to do. I guess if you deny the status of democracy to every country that doesn't respect minority rights or freedom of speech, democracy does indeed look pretty peaceful, but that observation would be trivial.
>Especially in the last few centuries. Pax Americana, after all, is a joke. I mean, how many years of its history has the U.S. been at war?
This, too.