Interstate Peace Research Articles

The Effects of Economic Crisis, Domestic Discord, and State Efficacy on the Decision to Initiate Interstate Conflict

Studies of diversionary conflict typically claim that lower rates of economic growth and domestic unrest increase the risk of militarized interstate conflict. Research shows that these factors are also related to regime changes. Lower rates of economic growth and domestic conflict should increase the risk that governments are overthrown. This article investigates the comparative risk of economic growth and domestic turmoil on militarized interstate conflict and regime changes on a sample of over 100 countries from 1920‐92. I find that higher rates of economic growth are related to violent militarized interstate conflicts and reduce the risk of regime changes. Democracy and economic development likewise provide internal stability and interstate peace. Yet the risk of regime change increases rapidly relative to involvement in an interstate conflict for states affected by high levels of domestic conflict, suggesting that any diversionary strategies are a risky gambit that have a high chance of failure.

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

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.

The Conservative Peace: An Institutional Explanation of Post-Cold War Stability

In this article we argue that post-Cold War interstate peace in Eastern Europe can be explained by the presence of strongly institutionalized states which, by their very nature, tend to be risk-averse and thus avoid military conflict. Modern states, as rationalized bureaucratic structures, tend to be dominated by mechanisms and routines that view war as threatening to the status quo. In other words, it is the nature of the modern state, rather than regime type or a balance of power, which explains why nations go to war. We consider how the construction and maintenance of modern state structures in Eastern Europe before and after communism helped promote stability in the face of increased nationalist pressure. We specifically investigate the case of Hungarian-Romanian relations, often cited as having the greatest potential for interstate militarized conflict.

Through a Glass Darkly: Afrocentrism, War, and World Politics

While the two dominant Eurocentric paradigms of world politics, realism and idealism, place greater emphasis on power and regime type, respectively, in their analyses of war, a recently promulgated Afrocentric paradigm of world politics suggests that cultural characteristics of states are significantly associated with the likelihood of interstate war. Drawing on these competing perspectives, I conduct a data analysis of the relationship between cultural homogeneity and interstate conflict in order to determine the extent to which Afrocentric theses on international conflict are borne out empirically. I find that cultural factors are significant correlates of interstate war as Afrocentrists suggest, although realist and idealist factors are more strongly associated with the likelihood of interstate war. In addition, the findings suggest that multiculturalism—especially ethnic diversity—is a more auspicious path for interstate peace.

Through a Glass Darkly: Afrocentrism, War, and World Politics

While the two dominant Eurocentric paradigms of world politics, realism and idealism, place greater emphasis on power and regime type, respectively, in their analyses of war, a recently promulgated Afrocentric paradigm of world politics suggests that cultural characteristics of states are significantly associated with the likelihood of interstate war. Drawing on these competing perspectives, I conduct a data analysis of the relationship between cultural homogeneity and interstate conflict in order to determine the extent to which Afrocentric theses on international conflict are borne out empirically. I find that cultural factors are significant correlates of interstate war as Afrocentrists suggest, although realist and idealist factors are more strongly associated with the likelihood of interstate war. In addition, the findings suggest that multiculturalism—especially ethnic diversity—is a more auspicious path for interstate peace.

The Long Peace of ASEAN

According to the constructivist theory of liberal democratic peace, intersubjective social realities are often more important in the construction of pacific unions of interstate peace. In order to demonstrate the importance of social construction rather than objective matters as a source of peace, previous studies have discussed cases where democracies appear to have fought one another. This article, instead of showing how objective factors fail to contribute to liberal democratic peace if the intersubjective consensus is lacking, shows how the intersubjective consensus about the common interests, norms, and identity has contributed to the interstate peace among the illiberal non-democracies of Southeast Asia. The long peace among the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in 1968-94 is compared to the bellicose period of the Malaysian confrontation, when most of the objective bases for the perception of common interests, common commitment to democratic procedures and liberal norms, and institutional restraints on war were arguably stronger than during the long peace. The intention is to show how even the political elite groups of illiberal non-democracies can manipulate the social consciousness for the purpose of creating a pacific union, similar to the one which has been socially constructed by liberal democracies. At the same time the study provides indirect support for the constructivist theory of liberal democratic peace.

War and (the Democratic) Peace: Military Service, Citizenship, and the International Environment

Is there a significant relationship between military structure and political liberalization? If so, can military structure and organization be manipulated to influence the process of democratization for the purpose of enhancing inter-state peace? To test the implications of these questions, I will investigate a decidedly contentious premise. Military factors traditionally considered destabilizing in the international environment (to include large, well-trained armed forces organized for offensive or out-of-country operations) have, at critical junctions in the Western experience, had a distinctly positive impact on the emergence and maintenance of the liberal democratic state. If this is indeed the case, and liberal democracy can be shown structurally and normatively to produce inter-state peace, then the preferred policy of peace-desiring states should be to promote and implement military reform at home and abroad that most efficiently generates democratic structures and values, regardless of intuitive fears of international instability. In short, I will argue that if liberal democratic states do not go to war with each other, then the size, proficiency, and strength of their military forces should not be a security dilemma issue.

Economic Interdependence: A Path to Peace or a Source of Interstate Conflict?

This article investigates the long-standing liberal hypothesis that trade ties facilitate interstate peace. Rather than assuming that trade will always promote peace, the author highlights the need to consider both the nature and context of economic linkages in assessing whether such ties are more likely to dampen or amplify interstate conflict. The study encompasses a diverse group of dyadic relationships for the period 1870-1938, 14,341 dyad years, and includes 270 militarized interstate disputes and 14 wars. After controlling for the potentially confounding influences of contiguity, regime type (joint democracy), relative capabilities, and alliance commitments, the author finds evidence that economic linkages have a dramatic influence on whether or not dyads engage in militarized disputes, but no influence on the occurrence of wars. Rather than inhibiting conflict, extensive economic interdependence increases the likelihood that dyads will engage in militarized interstate disputes. Peace through trade is most likely to arise among dyads composed of mutually dependent trading partners. Even then, the relationship between interdependence and conflict appears to be curvilinear, where low to moderate degrees of interdependence reduce the likelihood of dyadic disputes, and extensive economic linkages increase the probability of militarized disputes. Extreme interdependence, whether symmetrical or asymmetrical, has the greatest potential for increasing the likelihood of conflict.

Enlightened Self-Interest in the Peloponnesian War: Thucydidean Speakers on the Right of the Stronger and Inter-State Peace

AbstractThe speakers in Thucydides who give voice to the sophistic thesis that might is right do not generally think that what they are releasing upon the world is a war of all against all. On the contrary, they are hopeful, like the modern utilitarians they anticipate, that their realistic assessment of human motives can serve as the foundation of an inter-state order based not on justice but on clear and certain power relations. The most perceptive of these speakers is Diodotus, who addresses his theory of imperial management to the difficult problem of the rise and fall of states. But the psychology upon which this theory rests points toward confederation in place of empire and toward constitutional government in place of democracy, run by demagogues. It also implies a reasoner, perhaps Diodotus himself, who is master of his own desires. In the end Diodotus seems somewhat at odds with the sophistic rationalism he so ably espouses.