Is the liberal peace just an artifact of cold war interests? Assessing recent critiques

Abstract

Recent research indicates that democracy and economic interdependence reduce the probability that a pair of states will engage in a militarized interstate dispute. These analyses were largely confined to the cold war era, however, leading some to argue that the results are an artifact of the particular bipolar configuration of alliances and interests characteristic of that period. To determine whether this is so, we present two sets of analyses here. First, with new trade data for sixteen countries, 1870–1989, we use logistic analysis of cross‐sectional and time‐series data to test whether democracy and economic openness (total exports as a proportion of gross domestic product) had the same conflict‐reducing effects before World War II as after. We find they did, while the effect of alliances is weak. Moreover, our theoretical model offers a plausible explanation of the outbreak of World War I that is consistent with the liberal peace. Second, for the cold war era, we address the question of whether states’ interests or preferences offer a better explanation of interstate conflict than do democracy and interdependence. We conclude that states’ preferences, as indicated by the similarity of states’ voting in the UN General Assembly, are closely associated with the probability of a dispute; but these preferences are in turn significantly influenced by the character of states’ political regimes and their economic relations. Liberal states do not fight because they have little to fight about, but they have little to fight about because of the shared interests reflected in democratic institutions and open markets.