Why democracies don't lose insurgencies

[UrsaMaior]

I found the below study.

Lyall, John, ’Do Democracies Make Inferior Counterinsurgents?’, 2007, Available at: http://www.princeton.edu/~jlyall/DemoWar.pdf

I would appreciate your opinion about it.

THX in advance.

[Cavguy]

I found the below study.

Lyall, John, ’Do Democracies Make Inferior Counterinsurgents?’, 2007, Available at: http://www.princeton.edu/~jlyall/DemoWar.pdf

I would appreciate your opinion about it.

THX in advance.

Thanks for the good read. However, it is a little apples to oranges for the following reasons:

1) Dataset is 1800-present. I have a big issue equating democracy pre-1945 with democracy post-1945 in structure - lots of variables change in that period. One could successfully argue in the pol-sci sphere that the US was not a full democracy (in the pol-sci sense) until either 1920 or the 1960's, as significant populations (women and African Americans) were denied full voting rights - for example. Using this standard, there are actually very few democracies pre-1945 in the world. The post 1945 dataset helps compare apples to apples.

2) They count Malaya, Kenya, Vietnam (FR) , Algeria, India (UK), etc. as "insurgencies" against democracies. I would say they are insurgencies against colonial powers who tend to be democracies at home. The population of those countries were not participants in the democracy fought against. Therefore, I would exclude them from my test, as I am evaluating indigenous insurgent success against sovereign democracies.

In other words, the population generating the insurgents must have voting rights in the state.

My observation from the RAND data was based on those cases. I think introducing anti-colonial insurgencies where the affected population was denied suffrage into the mix skews the data heavily.

I'll take a harder look. Thanks!

[UrsaMaior]

Thanks for the good read. However, it is a little apples to oranges for the following reasons:

1) Dataset is 1800-present. I have a big issue equating democracy pre-1945 with democracy post-1945 in structure - lots of variables change in that period. One could successfully argue in the pol-sci sphere that the US was not a full democracy (in the pol-sci sense) until either 1920 or the 1960's, as significant populations (women and African Americans) were denied full voting rights - for example. Using this standard, there are actually very few democracies pre-1945 in the world. The post 1945 dataset helps compare apples to apples.

2) They count Malaya, Kenya, Vietnam (FR) , Algeria, India (UK), etc. as "insurgencies" against democracies. I would say they are insurgencies against colonial powers who tend to be democracies at home. The population of those countries were not participants in the democracy fought against. Therefore, I would exclude them from my test, as I am evaluating indigenous insurgent success against sovereign democracies.

In other words, the population generating the insurgents must have voting rights in the state.

My observation from the RAND data was based on those cases. I think introducing anti-colonial insurgencies where the affected population was denied suffrage into the mix skews the data heavily.

I'll take a harder look. Thanks!

Thank you very much for your answer sir.

In my really humble opinion statistics is not a good way to approach such a complex phenomenon with so high number of variables and so little number of cases (opposed to Entropy's opinion).