Influence of International Organizations on Great-Power War Involvement: A Preliminary Analysis

Abstract

Recent research shows that participation in international governmental organizations (IGOs) dampens interstate conflict. The relevant evidence for this causal attribution comes from shared memberships in IGOs and the incidence of disputes between pairs of states. This paper presents a preliminary attempt to determine whether participation in IGOs in general has had a pacifying effect on the major powers’ involvement in wars since 1945. That is, it studies the behavior of states as monads (rather than dyads), and it turns attention to wars (rather than disputes) that were the original focus of the democratic-peace theory. Moreover, this paper makes an initial effort to address two confounding factors that may be responsible for the pacifying effects of IGOs on state behavior. First, peaceful states are more likely to join IGOs. Thus, the alleged pacifying effects of IGOs may be due to this self-selection and, if so, IGOs may not have any independent impact on interstate peace. IGO membership will then be only a symptom of the original peaceful disposition of certain states and not a cause of this disposition. Second, states with common interests are more likely to form IGOs among themselves. Thus, the absence of war among these states may be more a reflection of these original common interests rather than any subsequent socialization attributable to their participation in IGOs. One needs therefore to account for a state's general subscription to international norms, and to separate the effects of this orientation from its willingness to accommodate partisan differences as a result of becoming socialized in an IGO's culture of collective decision-making. The veto record of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and their respective ratification of the major international conventions on human rights are considered in an initial assessment of these empirical possibilities. These data, however, fail to show any systematic pattern. While this null finding is disappointing, it suggests the need for further research to confirm the effects of IGOs on interstate peace and the causal paths responsible for these effects.