Democratization in Medieval and Early-Modern City Councils and its Effects on Conflict

Despite the great effort which has been expended to test the effects of democratization on conflict at a variety of different levels, and the wide array of theories which have been proposed to illustrate this relationship, these efforts have almost invariably relied on a highly limited set of cases drawn from the last two hundred or so years at most. The vast majority have, moreover, focused primarily on states and conflicts active within the 20th century, and thus from the perspective of the norms and systems shaped by these states. This in turn led to the emergence of several significant competing theories asserting that the influence of democratization could be instead attributed to factors including the hegemonic power of prominent states, such as the United States, in international competition and conflict. To truly assess the impact of democratization on conflict, then, it is necessary to control for these alternatives to whatever degree possible. A growing number of authors have made an effort to overcome or eliminate the challenges emerging from competing theories reliant on the specific context of the modern period by looking further into the past for total or partial analogues to modern cases. This paper therefore emulates the research design of such authors by primarily considering the impact of early democratization efforts on subsequent conflict initiation patterns to assess the monadic relationship between democratization and conflict in a case set expanded to include medieval and early modern German cities. Although the ultimate effect is small, there is a clear indication that, in accordance with many of the expectations of the literature on democratization and conflict, these German cities exhibit a lower relative tendency to initiate conflict as time passes since their initial introduction of democratization as a function of citizens' capacity to vote for members of their city councils. However, they likewise exhibit a strong tendency to initiate conflict as time passes since their inclusion on these councils of representatives from local guilds.