Alliances, Arms Buildups and Recurrent Conflict: Testing a Steps-to-War Model

Colaresi, Michael P.; Thompson, William R.

doi:10.1111/j.1468-2508.2005.00320.x

Cited by 43 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…There is some strong evidence supporting Steps-to-War theory Vasquez, 2003, 2008;Colaresi and Thompson, 2005). We think they are right to be so, and an obvious next step for them would be to continue developing evidence about whether causal links from Territoriality to Escalation really exist.…”

Section: Analyses Of Escalationmentioning

confidence: 97%

Unpacking Escalation

Braithwaite

Lemke

2011

Conflict Management and Peace Science

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Past studies vary widely in how they measure conflict escalation. The use of different measures of escalation is understandable because theories about escalation do not specify how the concept should be measured. But the use of different measures of escalation hinders cumulation. We contribute to the literature on conflict escalation by comparing a variety of measures of escalation. We demonstrate how few robust relationships there are across different measures of escalation. Importantly, though, we find a consistent influence of territory on escalatory processes which is insensitive to how escalation is measured.

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Section: Analyses Of Escalationmentioning

confidence: 97%

Unpacking Escalation

Braithwaite

Lemke

2011

Conflict Management and Peace Science

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“…Research on international rivalry has examined differences between rivals driven by spatial issues versus those driven by positional issues (Thompson 1995, 2001; Colaresi and Thompson 2005; Colaresi et al. 2008).…”

Section: Issue Claims Among Strategic Rivalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Issue Conflict Accumulation and the Dynamics of Strategic Rivalry1

Dreyer

2010

International Studies Quarterly

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Although states at times contend over a single issue (such as territory), international rivals often contend over multiple issues simultaneously. Issue conflicts tend to accumulate among rivals due to the development of enemy images of the “other,” which causes states to view as threatening, behavior that was previously viewed as non‐threatening. Once multiple issues are on the agenda, issues become linked as states begin to view the “other” as the main problem in settling all disagreements. Issue accumulation also increases the stakes of rivalry, which likely increases the probability that states will choose to bear the costs of engaging in militarized conflict seeking the settlement of issues in one’s favor. An examination of strategic rivals supports the expectations that issue conflict accumulation tends to increase the likelihood of militarized disputes and war. The results also reveal that some paths of issue accumulation, in which certain types of issues come under contention, tend to be more dangerous than others.

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“…But scant evidence exists linking territorial issues to the types of domestic processes described by both theories. In fact, no single study has any type of domestic‐level change as a dependent variable predicted by external territorial threat or conflict; instead, the modal path of research for territorial scholars remains focused on demonstrating the conflict‐prone tendencies of territorial issues at the dyadic level (Colaresi and Thompson 2005; Senese and Vasquez 2003, 2005; Vasquez and Gibler 2001), largely assuming the domestic politics that contributes to the conflict.…”

Section: The Importance Of Territorial Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Political Tolerance and Territorial Threat: A Cross-National Study

Hutchison

Gibler

2007

The Journal of Politics

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The Steps-to-War theory of international conflict argues that territorial issues are more salient than other issues domestically. However, the evidence for this conclusion almost always rests with international conflict outcomes, assuming away the domestic political processes leading to greater salience. In the tolerance literature, several studies note that political attitudes, particularly toward unpopular groups, vary systematically across different states but provide few explanations that account for these differences. We believe these two observations are linked and argue that territorial threats serve as one factor conditioning individual political attitudes that privilege national unity over freedom of expression. Using World Values Survey data collected from 33 countries, and Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) techniques, our paper confirms this. We find evidence that the type of external threat facing a country matters in moderating individual attitudes, even after controlling for economic and institutional differences across the states sampled. Specifically, we demonstrate how the diffusion from territorial threats to domestic audiences results in a chilling effect on individual willingness to extend democratic freedoms. Thus, we show that territorial issues exhibit greater salience domestically than other types of international issues.

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Alliances, Arms Buildups and Recurrent Conflict: Testing a Steps-to-War Model

Cited by 43 publications

References 44 publications

Unpacking Escalation

Unpacking Escalation

Issue Conflict Accumulation and the Dynamics of Strategic Rivalry1

Political Tolerance and Territorial Threat: A Cross-National Study

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