A Quality of Government Peace? Explaining the Onset of Militarized Interstate Disputes, 1985–2001

That democracies do not wage wars against each other is one of the most widely accepted claims within the study of international relations, although challenged lately by the capitalist peace argument. In addition to confirming both the democratic and capitalist peace effects, this article finds that the impact of quality of government—that is, having an impartial, nonpoliticized, and noncorrupt bureaucracy—on the risk of interstate conflict is at least on par with the influence of democracy. This result draws on dyadic Militarized Interstate Disputes (MIDs) data in 1985–2001 and holds even under control for incomplete democratization and economic development, as well as for fatal MIDs, the Cold War era, and within politically relevant dyads. I argue that the causal mechanism underlying this finding is that quality of government reduces information uncertainty among potentially warring parties and improves their ability to credibly commit to keeping their promises. Both democratic and capitalist peace theory needs to be complemented by theories “bringing the state back in” to the study of interstate armed conflict.     

Does Democracy Promote Interstate Cooperation? Lessons from the Mercosur Region

A rapidly growing body of research suggests that democracy enhances prospects for the peaceful settlement of interstate conflicts. To what extent can democracy also be linked with increased international cooperation? Building upon the literature on political cooperation as well as recent discussions of the "democratic peace," this study offers a plausibility probe of the hypothesis that democracy increases the likelihood of interstate agreement. The analysis, which draws upon a data set covering dyadic interactions among Mercosur nations during the 1947–1985 period, utilizes both logistic regression and negative binomial regression methods to assess the relationship between democracy and cooperation. The findings offer only limited support for the hypothesis that democracy promotes cooperation and challenge the recent literature on the relative peace among democracies in several theoretically suggestive ways. The study points to the potential fruitfulness of more extensive and rigorous research on the nexus between domestic institutions and international cooperation.     

The Dearth of Jointly Dyadic Democratic Interventions

The Democratic Peace Proposition, which states that no two democracies have ever gone to war with each other, has been questioned by scholars who claim that such pacific behavior among free states does not apply to lower forms of conflict. In particular, Kegley and Hermann contend that democracies intervene in the affairs of other liberal states via overt military acts or covert machinations. In many cases, they argue that dyadic democratic interventions (DDIs) occur more frequently than would be expected given the number of jointly democratic dyads in the international system. I examine their research design and suggest changes to their concepts of states, interventions, and regime type, as well as their sample size and definition of dyads in the international system. I implement these changes and retest such arguments on a sample of interventions from 1945 to 1991. I find 11 cases where a democracy intervenes against another democracy, but these cases are rare in comparison to interventions conducted by democratic and/or autocratic states in undemocratic states, or by autocratic states against democratic states. Furthermore, these DDIs are less likely to occur than the presence of democracy in the international system would suggest.     

Time Remembered: A Dynamic Model of Interstate Interaction

Over time, states form relationships. These relationships, mosaics of past interactions, provide political leaders with information about how states are likely to behave in the future. Although intuitive, this claim holds important implications for the manner in which we construct and evaluate empirically our expectations about interstate behavior. Empirical analyses of interstate relations implicitly assume that the units of analysis are independent. Theories of interstate interaction are often cast in the absence of historical context. In this article we construct a dynamic model of interstate interaction that we believe will assist scholars in empirical and theoretical studies by incorporating a substantively interpretable historical component into their models of interstate relations. Our conceptual model includes both conflictual and cooperative components, and exhibits the basic properties of growth and decay that characterize dyadic relationships. In an empirical exposition, we derive a continuous measure of interstate conflict from the conflictual component of the model. We rely on Oneal and Russett's (1997) analysis of dyadic conflict for the period 1950–1985 as a benchmark, and examine whether the inclusion of our measure of interstate conflict significantly improves our ability to predict militarized conflict. We find empirical support for this hypothesis, indicating that our continuous measure of interstate conflict significantly augments a well-known statistical model of dyadic militarized conflict. Our findings reinforce the assertion that historical processes in interstate relationships represent substantively important elements in models of interstate behavior rather than econometric nuisances.     

The Joint Democracy–Dyadic Conflict Nexus: A Simultaneous Equations Model

Many statistical studies in international relations investigate the claim that democracies do not fight one another. Virtually all of these studies employ a single-equation design, where the dependent variable measures the presence or absence of a dyadic militarized interstate dispute (MID). A separate group of studies argues that conflict affects democracy and that its effect could be positive or negative. By and large, these two bodies of literature have not incorporated one another's insights. We argue that democracy and dyadic conflict affect each other significantly and that statistical models that ignore the reciprocal nature of these effects may make incorrect inferences. To test this argument, we develop a simultaneous equations model of democracy and dyadic conflict. Our sample includes all the politically relevant dyads from 1950 to 1992. We find that dyadic military disputes reduce joint democracy and joint democracy reduces the probability of MIDs. Compared with the single-equation estimates in the literature, the absolute effect of joint democracy in our paper is smaller while in relative terms, the effect is similar in size. The effect of joint democracy on MID involvement is considerably smaller for noncontiguous countries than for contiguous ones. The effects of a number of control variables in the MID equation are also found to differ from those reported previously in single- equation–based studies.     

Rebel Behavior in the Context of Interstate Competition: Exploring Day-to-Day Patterns of Political Violence in Africa

This study develops a day-to-day theory of political violence that predicts that rebels respond strategically to the onset of interstate conflict that is directly related to a civil war. Government-initiated interstate conflict is theorized to incentivize rebels to signal their resolve, willingness to bear costs, and vulnerability of government forces. In addition, this form of interstate conflict is predicted to decrease violence against civilian populations, as it makes it more likely that rebels will need to rely on civilians for resources in the future. This is contrary to interstate conflict initiated by an external state, as this signal of third-party support makes civilian support more dispensable from the perspective of a rebel movement. Using a country-day data set constructed from event data, evidence is presented that is consistent with this theoretical logic. Interstate conflict, therefore, is shown to play a significant role in explaining the variation of violent events that occur on a day-to-day basis during a civil conflict.     

Nationalism and war for territory: from ‘divisible’ territories to inviolable homelands

How did the rise of nationalism affect patterns of interstate wars? The conventional wisdom in mainstream security studies tends to treat the rise of nationalism as a ‘force amplifier’ that allowed states to wage war on an unprecedented scale, leading to deadlier—and, consequently, less frequent—wars. By building on emerging interdisciplinary research on territory and territoriality, this essay suggests that there was a second mechanism—complementary to the ‘force amplifier’ logic—through which the rise of nationalism affected the patterns of interstate war: nationalism changed the ‘character’ of territories in the modern state system, which, in turn, transformed state preferences over their territorial belongings. Before the rise of nationalism, state elites viewed their territories more as ‘divisible’ goods, which created strong incentives for states to wage frequent yet limited wars. The rise of nationalism, in this context, rendered territory controlled by a state more of an ‘inviolable homeland’, which then contributed to the increasing severity and decreasing frequency of interstate wars. The arguments presented in this essay have implications for not only the study of nationalism and war, but also bargaining models of war and the so-called ‘border fixity’ norm.     

The Escalation of Terrorism: Microlevel Violence and Interstate Conflict

Following the 9/11 attacks, transnational terrorism is seen as a potential catalyst for interstate war. Yet, the willingness of states to fight in response to terrorist violence is puzzling, given that the damage created by terrorism is relatively marginal. This raises the question: if terrorists are so weak and create such little damage, and interstate conflicts are so costly, why are states willing to initiate seemingly ruinous wars to fight terrorist groups? This essay proposes an explanation to address this question using current theoretical and empirical research on terrorism and interstate violence. Recent work indicates that while terrorists appear weak compared to states, terrorists can wield significant coercive power in smaller geographic areas. I argue that if these areas are strategically crucial to the government, such as areas with oil wells or mineral deposits, terrorist activity may precipitously weaken states relative to their rivals. I therefore argue that even if groups are only capable of killing at low levels, terrorism may lead to macrolevel power shifts, which may contribute to interstate violence.     

Party system stability and conflict initiation

The study of interstate conflict has yielded a voluminous literature to date, yet much of the recent work has only just begun to underscore the importance of domestic factors in predicting conflict initiation in democracies. In short, some of these studies find that when electoral accountability is greater—measured in a variety of ways—interstate conflict becomes less likely. Despite this burgeoning literature, scholars have spent far less time analysing the role linkage institutions, such as stable party systems, have played in foreign policy discussions. To address this gap, we argue that in more stable party systems conflict initiation becomes less likely due to the greater accountability present in these systems. This conjecture is supported by the results of a time-series cross-sectional analysis of 48 democracies from 1978 to 2000 that uses multiple measures of conflict initiation and party system stability.     

Clear and Present Strangers: The Clash of Civilizations and International Conflict

Huntington's (1993a, 1993b, 1996) clash of civilizations thesis suggests that states belonging to different civilizations are more likely to become involved in conflict with one another. To evaluate the empirical accuracy of Huntington's claims, we examined the relationship between civilization membership and interstate war between 1816 and 1992. We find that civilization membership was not significantly associated with the onset of interstate war during the Cold War era (1946–1988), which is consistent with one aspect of Huntington's thesis; however, we also find that for the pre–Cold War period (1816–1945) states of similar civilizations were more likely to fight each other than were those of different civilizations, which contradicts Huntington's thesis. Most importantly, our analysis reveals that during the post–Cold War era (1989–1992), the period in which Huntington contends that the clash of civilizations should be most apparent, civilization membership was not significantly associated with the probability of interstate war. All told, our findings challenge Huntington's claims and seriously undermine the policy recommendations that devolve from his clash of civilizations thesis.     

Democracy and Maturity: Deciphering Conditional Effects on Levels of Dispute Intensity

A good deal of recent research has focused on the possible dangers associated with young democracies that are trying to weave their way through modern interstate relations for the first time. Democratic transitions, and their immediate aftermath, have been isolated as periods plagued by all sorts of potential conflict. Further, some studies implicitly suggest that the maturity of the regime may matter at least as much as the type of regime. This research directly examines the interactive effects of both joint democracy and joint maturity on the levels of intensity reached in militarized conflict. The findings reveal the conditional importance of both factors. Joint democracy imparts disparate effects on the hostility intensification of disputes, in terms of direction and magnitude, depending on maturity levels. Similarly, the magnitude of the joint maturity impact is contingent on democracy levels, although the direction of its influence remains unchanged across varying degrees of democracy. These findings signal the necessity of explicitly considering linkages between the effects of regime type and regime maturity in theories and tests of dyadic conflict dynamics.     

What Determines Military Victory? Testing the Modern System

This paper assesses the relative importance of force employment as a cause of military victory. It focuses on the adoption of the modern system in interstate wars since 1917. Using cases, contingency tables, and regression analysis, we find that war participants who use the modern system are significantly more likely to succeed in decisive battlefield engagements. However, the modern system does not predict victory at a higher rate than more traditional unit-level explanations for combat effectiveness, suggesting that it might function as a causal mechanism linking factors like regime type and material endowments with martial capabilities. Exploring the possible links between unit-level explanations of military power and the organizational-level force employment indicators, we find that more materially powerful states and democracies tend to implement the modern system at a higher rate than other types of actors, but more extreme autocracies also frequently adopt. Combined, these findings suggest the relevance of continuing to explore how organizational-level variables impact military effectiveness.     

Beyond Territorial Contiguity: Issues at Stake in Democratic Militarized Interstate Disputes

Scholars of international politics have been slow to address the fundamental issues that ground interstate conflict. Territory has frequently been cited as a primary source of contention among states, but it remains only one issue and not even the one most prevalent in the post–World War II time period. We take the first step toward understanding the broader theoretical link between regime type, issues, and militarized conflict by collecting new data on the issues in dispute between democracies from 1946 to 1992. We findthat (1) a large proportion of the militarized disputes between democracies in the post-WWII period involve fisheries, maritime boundaries, and resources of the sea, (2) well-established democracies are able to remove territory as a contentious issue among them, (3) disputes between democracies have become less severe and shorter in duration over time, and (4) a majority of the post-WWII militarized disputes between democracies are not resolved. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these empirical findings for the democraticpeace literature.     

Impeachment and presidential politics in new democracies

Research on presidentialism has long assumed that presidential impeachment is a rare event, made difficult by design in order to enhance government stability. However, the experience of Third Wave democracies suggests that more presidents have been targets of impeachment attempts than the literature might lead us to expect. In this article I seek to identify the factors that make directly elected presidents more or less vulnerable to impeachment attempts in Third Wave presidential democracies from 1974 to 2003. I find several factors that mobilize deputies against the president: presidential involvement in political scandal, strong presidential powers, and a hostile civil society. Presidents are more likely to fend off such efforts when their party commands a higher share of seats. I also find that popular protest against a president helps to prompt a congressional impeachment drive. Frequent efforts to resolve presidential crises via such legal procedures may explain in part why extra-constitutional means of conflict resolution have become a less attractive option in new democracies.     

Toward a Multiprocess Model of Rivalry and the Democratic Peace

In this paper we examine recent efforts to combine quantitative research on the democratic peace with research on interstate rivalry. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we highlight problems with separately analyzing the processes associated with rivalry and the democratic peace. Specifically, we specify a multiprocess model and demonstrate that previous research on this topic may overestimate the pacifying effect of democracy on enduring rivalries. Since pairs of democracies are unlikely to experience interstate rivalry in the first place, the true effect of joint democracy is difficult to ascertain in a censored sample of interstate rivals. Our simulation results are consistent with historical data analysis that suggests that the pacifying effect of democracy is most pronounced in the enhanced probability of jointly democratic dyads averting the onset of rivalry. More generally, this article fits into a larger body of research that examines the confounding effect of selection bias on world politics research.     

An Experimental Test of Selectorate Theory

This article uses a laboratory experiment to test one of the main predictions of selectorate theory, that is, that democratic leaders invest more resources in public goods than autocratic leaders. The results of the experiment confirm this prediction and further show citizens are better off on average under democratic institutions than autocratic institutions. Meanwhile, autocratic leaders receive higher payoffs than democratic leaders. Additionally, this article attempts to bring domestic politics into international relations experimentation with a focus on how communication may allow democracies to organize more efficiently for war than autocracies. A game theoretical model shows democracies have the potential to organize optimally and use their citizens’ skills to their full advantage while autocracies do not. The results of the experiment reveal some evidence that democracies organize more efficiently than autocracies, but that this increased efficiency did not produce a higher percentage of conflict wins.     

"New Wars" and Rumors of "New Wars"

Recently, there has been a growing tendency to suggest "new" classes of wars that are presumably different from all wars we have known and studied. In this article, we discuss the extent to which the landscape of armed conflict has changed so dramatically that it has necessitated a revision of the prevalent typology of war, a reconsideration of the correlates of war, and a reconceptualization of the theoretical assumptions regarding the etiology of war. While it is clear that patterns of warfare shift across time and space, it is not clear that war itself has changed "fundamentally" and has become inexplicable in light of theoretical arguments in world politics as many "new war" theorists suggest. Our analysis demonstrates that many of the "new wars" are simply amalgamations of various interstate, extrastate, and intrastate wars-i.e., the "old wars"-that have been lumped into a single category. The result is a hodgepodge of armed conflicts whose different correlates derive from their diverse morphologies rather than their novelty as wars unlike any we have experienced previously.     

Assessing the statistical rarity of wars between democracies

The ‘small numbers objection’ to the democratic peace claims that the relative rarity of militarized conflict between democracies is due to their small numbers coupled with the infrequency of violent interstate conflict, not to an alleged pacifying effect of democracy. This study assesses this objection directly by treating the number of militarized disputes between democracies as a random variable. Since the historical record provides only one observation for this variable, full estimation of its distributional characteristics requires repeated simulation of the process by which dyads are ‘selected’ for conflict We employ Monte Cario techniques to carry out this process. The simulation results indicate no support for the small numbers objection. The results remain stable when important control variables are introduced and when the analysis employs a weaker definition of democracy. Finally, the simulation enables a precise identification of the point within the 1816–1992 temporal domain when the democratic peace moved from an apparent statistical artifact to significant phenomenon.     

A Unified Explanation of Territorial Conflict: Testing the Impact of Sampling Bias, 1919–1992

This article develops a new unified territorial explanation of conflict that accounts for the possibility of certain factors affecting the rise of a militarized dispute, as well as the probability that a dispute will escalate to war. In the past, research linking territorial disputes to a relatively high probability of war outbreak has been criticized for underestimating the potential problem of sampling bias in the militarized interstate dispute (MID) data. This study utilizes newly available data on territorial claims going back to 1919 to determine, using a two-stage estimation procedure, whether the presence of territorial claims in the dispute onset phase affects the relationship between territorial militarized disputes and war in the second stage. It is found that territorial claims increase the probability of a militarized dispute occurring and that territorial MIDs increase the probability of war, even while controlling for the effect of territorial claims on dispute onset. The effect of territory across the two stages is consistent with the new territorial explanation of conflict and war and shows no sampling bias with regard to territory in the MID data.