Network Power and Militarized Conflicts

Abstract

This study argues that a state’s power is best conceptualized by considering how a state interacts with all other states in different networks within the international system. This social network explanation for national power is applied to militarized conflicts, one of the most widely studied empirical phenomena in international relations, focusing on their power explanations. The empirical analysis of militarized conflicts at the dyadic level produces findings that strongly support power preponderance theory over balance of power theory. The evidence from nonparametric model discrimination statistics and information criteria measures also shows that our conflict models with new social network power measures have greater explanatory power than or statistically outperform models relying on attributional power measures, such as Correlates of War index and Gross National Product (GNP).