Participation in Conferences, Treaties, and Warfare in the European System, 1816-1915

Abstract

Intergovernmental cooperation in Europe has been operationalized by the number of participants in intergovernmental conferences and treaties. These data have been decomposed into two groups, one group containing the number of participants in conferences and treaties on war-related issues and the second containing the same data on peace-related issues. By applying time series analysis to these data sets and to data sets containing the number of participants in warfare and the number of nation-months of warfare, the neutralizing effects of both sets of data on conferences and treaties has been confirmed. An increase in the number of participants in conferences and treaties on war-related issues increased the number of participants in warfare, and vice versa. A large number of participants in conferences and treaties on peace-related issues decreased the number of participants in warfare, whereas the inverse relationship was positive; that is, the number of participants in conference and treaties on peace-related issues increased due to the large number of participants in warfare.