“民主联盟可靠论”是国际关系学“民主理论家族”中的新成员。它认为，民主制度可以缓解国际无政府状态中履行联盟承诺的难题，民主国家做出的联盟承诺更加可靠。其具体表现是：与含有专制国家的联盟相比，民主国家之间的联盟更加持久。因为民主国家的领导人受到的制度约束较高、政策制定的灵活性较低、国内施加的违约成本较高，并且具有遵守契约的文化规范。但是，正如其批评者所指出的，民主联盟可靠论采用了一种不准确的方法来衡量联盟承诺的可靠性，即以联盟持续时间代替联盟成员履行联盟承诺的实际行为；过于强调民主制度的优点，而忽视了民主制度的缺点，如委托—代理难题、适应国际环境变化的能力相对较弱和使用武力的难题。这些缺点使民主国家比专制国家更不可能履行联盟承诺。%Democratic alliance reliabilism is a new member of the family of democratic approaches in Inter-national Relations.It argues that democratic institution can mitigate the problem of fulfilling commitments under international anarchy and make democratic states'alliance commitments more reliable.The specific manifestation is that the alliances among democratic states are more durable than those containing autocratic states.By contrast to the leaders in autocratic states,the leaders in democratic states are encountered with higher degree of institution constraint,lower flexibility in policy decision and higher default cost imposed by domestic audience,and are endowed with a cultural norm of compliance with contract.But,as pointed out by its critics,democratic alliance reliabilism measured the reliability of alliance commitments in an inaccu-rate way,which was the duration of alliance instead of the actual actions of the members of alliance.Meant-hile,democratic alliance reliabilism overemphasized the merits of democracy and ignored the faults of it, such as the problem of principal-agent relationship,the difficulty of accommodating international changes, and the hardness in making a decision of using force.These faults that make democratic states less likely to fulfill alliance commitments than autocratic states.
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