Order and disorder across geopolitical space: the effect of declining dominance on interstate conflict

Abstract

While scholars have long noted that violent conflicts appear to cluster in certain geographic spaces, we propose that the underlying contextual cause behind this empirical finding is the presence of dominance vacuums, where hierarchical relationships between states are unclear. The absence of a dominant state within these vacuums provides greater opportunity for all other states to engage in substantial conflicts in pursuit of their foreign policy objectives. Building on recent research that reconceptualises capabilities and hierarchy to incorporate the influence of geography, we provide a key contribution to hierarchical approaches to international politics by identifying geographic areas with a greater propensity for conflict. We test this approach to conflict through a series of statistical analyses using different units of analysis and provide findings suggesting that, within dominance vacuums, the odds of observing a conflict between states more than triple.