The Chicken or the Egg?: A Coevolutionary Approach to Disputed Issues and Militarized Conflict

Is state behavior influenced by the context in which it occurs, or does context arise because of the way in which states behave? I investigate these questions in the context of international disputes over issues and states’ militarized behavior. The prevalent assumption in interstate conflict research is that disputed issues are exogenous to militarization patterns. I question the validity of this assumption, arguing there are reasons to suspect certain states self-select into disputes. I use a coevolution modeling strategy to allow the existence of disputes and states’ behavior to mutually affect one another. I find disputes are not exogenous to states’ militarized behavior. States that resort to militarized behavior are more likely to dispute an issue than peaceful states. I also find evidence of behavioral contagion among states engaged in disputes: Militarized behavior begets militarized behavior.     

Arab national security in the 1980's. Threats and strategies

Scholars increasingly are accepting the empirical generalization that democracies almost never go to war with each other, and infrequently even engage in militarized disputes with each other. It has not been clear, however, whether the rarity of conflict between democracies is caused by some aspect of being democratic, or whether it is caused by some other variable or variables that may be correlated with democracy. Using data on all independent states for the period 1946–1986, we examine the effects of political system type, distance, wealth, economic growth, alliances, and political stability. The results suggest that, although most of the other variables do have an effect, as hypothesized, there still seems to be an independent effect of political system type: democracies engage in militarized disputes with each other less than would be expected by chance. The effect may be enhanced by political stability; that is, states which can be perceived as stable democracies are less likely to be involved in disputes with other democracies.     

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.     

The Liberal Peace Revisited: The Role of Democracy,Dependence, and Development in Militarized Interstate Dispute Initiation, 1950–1999

We test a model of the liberal peace by examining the initiation of militarized interstate disputes at the monadic level of analysis from 1950–1999. Liberal peace theory contends that both economic dependence and democratic political systems reduce conflict propensities. Extant empirical analyses of the monadic liberal peace, however, are under-specified. First, the concept of economic dependence not only includes trade, but also foreign investment. Second, existing models do not control for the influence of economic development. Previous research on the monadic liberal peace has also failed to distinguish between the initiation of conflict and participation in conflict. We find evidence for a liberal peace: trade dependence, foreign investment, and democracy reduce a state’s propensity to initiate militarized disputes.     

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.     

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.     

Contentious Issues and World Politics: The Management of Territorial Claims in the Americas, 1816–1992

This article studies the management of territorial claims using an issue-based approach that reconceptualizes processes of interstate conflict and cooperation as reflecting contention over issues. Hypotheses on issue management techniques are tested using newly collected data from the Issue Correlates of War (ICOW) research project. Empirical analysis of territorial claims in the Western Hemisphere supports the general model, with issue salience and past issue interactions systematically affecting states' choices between peaceful and militarized techniques for managing or settling their contentious issues. In particular, action over territorial claims is most likely when more valuable territory is at stake, in the aftermath of militarized conflict, and when recent peaceful settlement attempts have failed. Third parties are more likely to become involved in nonbinding activities when the claim appears more threatening to regional or global stability, and submission of claims to binding third-party decisions is most likely between adversaries that have begun to build up a legacy of successful agreements. The article concludes with a discussion of directions for future research on territory and on other issues.     

Kantian Dynamics Revisited: Time-Varying Analyses of Dyadic IGO-Conflict Relationships

ABSTRACT

The literature on international organizations (IGOs) and interstate conflict in world politics produces a series of contradictory theoretical arguments and empirical findings about how IGOs help to prevent conflict and promote peace between member states. Empirical studies find a range of inconsistent results, ranging from pacifying effects of shared IGO memberships on dyadic militarized disputes to conflict-inducing effects of shared IGO memberships to null relationships. Theoretically, we consider how IGOs promote the rule of peace preservation through the mechanisms of coercion, self-interest, and legitimacy, and we describe how these mechanisms help explain the time-varying relationships between shared IGOs memberships and militarized conflict since WWII. Analyses of time-varying parameter models of dyad-year data from 1948 to 2000 suggest that shared IGO memberships reduce the likelihood of militarized conflict in some historical periods (Cold War) but increase the chances for dyadic conflict in other periods (post-Cold War). The design of IGOs is relevant as well, with security-based, highly institutionalized IGOs best suited to prevent militarized conflict between member states. The results suggest that evolutionary dynamics in the Kantian peace vary across legs of the Kantian tripod and that we cannot understand the Kantian peace without considering dynamic relationships over time.     

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.     

Causes of Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations, 1885–1992

Previous studies provide strong evidence for the Kantian theory of peace, but a satisfactory evaluation requires establishing the causal influence of the variables. Here we focus on the reciprocal relations between economic interdependence and interstate conflict, 1885–1992. Using distributed-lags analyses, we find that economically important trade does have a substantively important effect in reducing dyadic militarized disputes, even with extensive controls for the influence of past conflict. The benefit of interdependence is particularly great in the case of conflict involving military fatalities. Militarized disputes also cause a reduction in trade, as liberal theory predicts. Democracy and joint membership in intergovernmental organizations, too, have im-portant pacific benefits; but we find only limited support for the role of costly signals in establishing the liberal peace. We find no evidence that democratization increases the incidence of interstate disputes; and contrary to realists' expectations, allies are not less conflict prone than states that are not allied. Democracies and states that share membership in many international organizations have higher levels of trade, but allies do not when these influences are held constant.     

Trade Interdependence and the Use of Force: Do Issues Matter?

In this project, we investigate the relationship between the use of military force and trade interdependence, suggesting that the influence of trade on militarized conflict varies based on the issue under dispute. For some issues, trade is likely to attenuate the chances that states escalate a dispute to the use of military force, while for others trade can intensify disputes so that military conflict is more likely. Specifically, we hypothesize that greater trade interdependence decreases the probability of military conflict over realpolitik issues like territory. On the other hand, greater trade interdependence increases the probability that states use military force when the issue under dispute concerns the regime, policies, and conditions in the target. To test our hypotheses, we employ new data on dyadic uses of force from the International Military Intervention data set that records the initiator’s reason(s) for using force against the target. The statistical tests support our hypotheses; trade decreases the use of force against a target for territorial and military/diplomatic reasons, which is consistent with arguments from the liberal paradigm. However, trade interdependence increases the use of force for humanitarian and economic reasons as well as to affect the regime or policy of the target. Thus, our study improves upon current research about the relationship between economic interdependence and foreign policy by specifying a conditional relationship based on the issues under contention.     

Turning down the heat: Influences on conflict management in enduring rivalries

Enduring rivalries represent the most difficult challenges for policy makers seeking to promote international peace and security. Once in place, enduring rivalries account for a disproportionate number of crises, militarized disputes, as well as wars, and include conflicts that are more likely to escalate than those falling in other conflict contexts. Unfortunately, we know very little about conflict management in enduring rivalries from either a theoretical or policy perspective. This study seeks to account for why some rivalries are successfully managed while others persist at high and unabated levels of conflict In addressing these concerns, we explore 35 enduring rivalries over the period 1945–1992. We find that although enduring rivalries are quite resistant to influences that produce changes in their dynamics, both endogenous and contextual influences can exercise a significant impact upon the prospects for conflict management between enduring rivals.     

Preferences and the Democratic Peace

A debate exists over whether (and to what degree) the democratic peace is explained by joint democracy or by a lack of motives for conflict between states that happen to be democratic. Gartzke (1998) applies expected utility theory to the democratic peace and shows that an index of states' preference similarity based on United Nations General Assembly roll-call votes ( affinity ) accounts for much of the lack of militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) between democracies. Oneal and Russett (1997b, 1998, 1999) respond by arguing that UN voting is itself a function of regime type—that democracy 'causes' affinity . Oneal and Russett seek to demonstrate their thesis by regressing affinity on democracy and other variables from a standard model of the democratic peace. I replicate results reported by Oneal and Russett and then extend the analysis in several ways. I find that the residuals from Oneal and Russett's regression of affinity remain highly significant as a predictor of the absence of MIDs. Further, significance for democracy is shown to be fragile and subject to variable construction, model specification, and the choice of estimation procedure.     

The Interdependence of U.S. Troop Deployments and Trade in the Developing World

The relationship between political conflict and trade has contributed to a riveting discussion in international relations about whether trade produces conflict, or whether conflict itself reduces trade. Most studies proxy "the flag" using militarized interstate disputes (MIDs). However, extensions of "the flag" might well obtain in environments short of MIDs. A more general way to proxy the flag is troop deployments. The deployment of military troops is an essential element of foreign policy. Using panel data for 126 developing countries from 1965 to 2002 and a two-stage least square approach, this essay investigates the relationship between trade and United States troop deployments. We find that trade and troops have a nonrecursive relationship: trade follows the flag and troops follow trade. Given the increased insecurity in the world today, the results are timely and reinforce previous research about the reciprocal relationship between the flag and trade.     

Militarized Interstate Disputes and United States Uses of Force

Research on questions such as whether national leaders use force in the international arena to divert attention from problems at home depends on a valid and reliable list of the incidents in which various states have used military force. In the case of the United States, several data sets have been used for this purpose. This research note compares two widely used data sets, the militarized interstate disputes (MID) data, which cover disputes involving all states between 1816 and 1992, and the data originally compiled by Stephen Kaplan and Barry Blechman, which cover only the United States since World War II. This comparison indicates that, in spite of its usefulness for other conflict research, the MID data are not appropriate for analyses of U.S. decisions to use force, including tests of the diversionary hypothesis. The MID data set excludes several categories of incidents relevant to major theoretical arguments about the use of force and includes many irrelevant incidents. These problems are likely to apply to similar analyses of other states as well. The Blechman and Kaplan data set also excludes some relevant events, but its omissions are less consequential. We offer a revised list of United States uses of force between 1870 and 1995.     

In the Nick of Time: Conflict Management, Mediation Timing, and the Duration of Interstate Disputes

This paper develops a theoretical argument linking time and the timing of conflict management efforts to dispute duration. We test competing hypotheses on conflict data drawn from disputes in the post-1945 period. Our analysis demonstrates that the effects of mediation vary substantially over the course of a dispute. Specifically, we note that mediation has a curvilinear relationship with time and the ending of disputes. Mediation efforts that occur soon after disputes begin have the best chance of reducing expected future dispute duration. Following this initial period, subsequent mediation efforts lead to longer rather than shorter disputes. After a long period, mediation again leads to shorter rather than longer disputes. We also find that there should be consistency in the mediators used to manage a conflict rather than shifting personnel to interject new ideas.     

Cantankerous Cooperation: Democracies,Authoritarian Regimes,and the Prisoner's Dilemma

One of the most important debates in the field of international relations is over the effect of regime type on militarized conflict. This debate, however, has rarely extended to how regime type influences other aspects of foreign policy. Using a computer simulated intergroup prisoner's dilemma, we investigate whether democratic decisionmaking groups are more cooperative than authoritarian decisionmaking groups. We argue that differences between cooperation tendencies of groups can be explained by the structure of the decision process. Repeated simulations show that democracies tend to be more consistent in their decisions in comparison to authoritarian groups. Implications for international relations theory and policy are discussed.     

Third-Party Intermediaries and Negotiated Settlements, 1946–2000

Past studies regarding the success and/or failure of conflict management activities have brought about a wide range of results. In this paper we attempt to gain more definitive conclusions about effectiveness by accomplishing two tasks. First, using a basic theoretical framework we identify expectations of efficacy as they relate to differences between states, coalitions, and IGOs. Second, we also examine the utility of different conflict management techniques in an effort to place in greater perspective the effectiveness of mediation, the most utilized technique of third party intermediaries. Using a new dataset on third-party intermediary behavior in militarized disputes from 1946 to 2000, we find that while all conflict managers are useful in assisting belligerents in reaching a negotiated settlement, IGOs are the most effective. Additionally, while mediation is an effective technique to produce settlements, military intermediary actions, such as peacekeeping, are much more useful.     

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.