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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> There are literally dozens of modern democracies that have been free since WWII, how can that be too few "pairs"?

There's a little under 200 countries now. The number of democracies by any definition that leaves no inter-democracy wars is a small fraction of that (though, yes, in the dozens). The ratio of democracy-democracy dyads to total dyads is smaller (for reasons which should be mathematically obvious) than the ratio of democracies to countries.

> Uh, Soviet ended 1989. Then the Balkan got free -

Uh, Yugoslavia split from the Soviet bloc in 1948, and Tito died in 1980.

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I know a lot of scholars count Serbia as a democracy, but it wasn't until 2001. Milosevic was a classic post-soviet Eastern European autocratic strongman. While Serbia had a parliament, electoral fraud was rife.

Milosevic's popular support was likely around 10% at the end. The country was governed by a weird coalition of financial interests that made up a ruling class of a few tens of thousands of people - many ex-communists.

In terms of success as a kleptocrat, Milosevic is only beaten out by Suharto, Marcos and a small number of others - he likely stole in excess of a billion.

That said - the Balkan wars do present another case of democracy v democracy at war as at some points Croatia and Bosnia (the Muslim canton) were at a state of war yet both were democracies (altho also arguably ruled by strongmen).

dragonwriter know that Serbia wasn't a stable democracy at the time. He just refuses to discuss it because he is trolling.

Also, Croatia/Bosnia/Serbia were civil wars.

Anyway, how many free elections had Croatia and Bosnia had at that time, to be defined as democratic? :-)

How many peaceful transitions of power had there been at the time (the real gold test)? :-)

If just one reasonably free election is needed, then Hamas in Gaza is a democratic government... :-)

AGAIN: You claim that Yugoslavia was democratic before the civil war, since you claim that exact Balkan war (?) is a counterexample to the claim that democracies don't wage war.

How many free elections did they have? :-) How many free transfers of power did they have? :-)

(The next point here is that the democratic peace theory didn't say anything about civil wars?)

EDIT: I am NOT going to comment on Dragonwriter's answer to this and for a THIRD TIME ask for references about how Yugoslavia and Serbia are stable democracies that have been doing transfer of power after free elections AT THAT TIME PERIOD. :-( I am disappointed over a 30+K karma account for this bullshit.

> (The next point here is that the democratic peace theory didn't say anything about civil wars?)

The NATO-Yugoslavia war was not a civil war, even if it was motivated by one.

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