List of wars between democracies

This is an incomplete list of wars between entities that have a constitutionally democratic form of government and actually practice it. Two points are required: that there has been a war, that there are democracies on at least two opposing sides. For many of these entries, whether there has been a war, or a democracy, is a debatable question; all significant views should be given. See also List of types of democracy.

Almost all of these depend on the definition of "democracy" (and of "war") employed. As James Lee Ray points out, with a sufficiently restrictive definition of democracy, there will be no wars between democracies: define democracy as true universal suffrage, the right of all – including children – to vote, and there have been no democracies, and so no wars between them.

On the other hand, Ray lists the following as having been called wars between democracies, with broader definitions of democracy: The American Revolution including the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War, the French Revolutionary Wars, the War of 1812, the Belgian Revolution, the Sonderbund War, the war of 1849 between the Roman Republic and the Second French Republic, the American Civil War, the Spanish–American War, the Second Philippine War, the Second Boer War, World War I, World War II (as a whole, and also the Continuation War by itself), the Israeli War of Independence, the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947–1948, the Six-Day War, the Yugoslav Wars, and the Armenia-Azerbaijan War. Most Native American tribes also had democratic forms of government, and they often fought each other up until the late 19th century, as did most tribes of Norsemen during the Middle Ages.

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