Quote Originally Posted by ipopescu View Post
Cavguy,

One of the weeks of my graduate seminar in international security here at Duke deals with the performance of democracies in wars in general. This question is larger than your specific topic, but I'm thinking you might find it useful to look over some of these readings (unless you've done so already) to get an idea of how the literature on this issue evolved and where it is right now.

Håvard Hegre, et al., “Toward a Democratic Civil Peace? Democracy, Political Change, and Civil War, 1816-1992,” APSR 95/1 (March 2001): 33-48.
Dan Reiter and Allan C. Stam, Democracies at War (Princeton, 2002).
David A. Lake, “Powerful Pacifists: Democratic States and War,” APSR 86/1 (March 1992): 24- 37.
Michael C. Desch, “Democracy and Victory: Why Regime Type Hardly Matters,” IS 27/2 (Fall 2002): 5-47.
Responses to Desch by Choi, Lake, and Reiter and Stam; and Desch’s reply, IS 28/1 (Summer 2003): 142-94.
Alexander B. Downes, “How Smart (and Tough) Are Democracies Anyway? Reassessing Theories of Democratic Victory in War,” IS (forthcoming; Blackboard).
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Alastair Smith, Randolph M. Siverson, and James D. Morrow, The Logic of Political Survival (MIT, 2003).
Christopher F. Gelpi and Michael Griesdorf, “Winners or Losers? Democracies in International Crisis, 1918-94,” APSR 95/3 (September 2001): 633-47.
Gil Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars: State, Society, and the Failures of France in Algeria, Israel in Lebanon, and the United States in Vietnam (Cambridge, 2003).

Recommended Critiques:
Michael C. Desch, Power and Military Effectiveness: The Fallacy of Democratic Triumphalism (Johns Hopkins, 2008).
Stephen Biddle and Stephen Long, “Democracy and Military Effectiveness: A Deeper Look,” JCR 48/4 (August 2004): 525-46.
Risa Brooks, “Making Military Might: Why Do States Fail and Succeed? A Review Essay,” IS 28/2 (Fall 2003): 149-91.

I personally find your topic highly interesting. Do you have any particular case-studies in mind as well?
Thanks. I had a similar IR class last semester covering all the major theories - balance of power, power transition, etc, and we spent time ad nauseum debating the effects of democracy. Some of the works above were in the course readings.

While working on another research paper on the effects of external support/sanctuary on insurgency I stumbled on the "Democratic Insurgency", and my advisor thinks it would make a worthwhile investigation.

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My alternate topic would have been to compare cases where nations have defeated insurgents with external sanctuary and contrasted the principles employed with "classical" COIN (i.e. Galula et.al) and see if there were differences - and also whether FM 3-24 holds up to it. One critique of our major COIN "success" case studies is that they lack real sanctuary and generally had little external support - Malaya, Kenya, Algeria, El Salvador. Obvious implications for Afghanistan. Figured I would save that for a potential MMAS.