An exploration of multi‐country political conflict/cooperation interdependence

Abstract

Previous investigations of dynamic conflict actions and reactions among major countries have generally assumed the unit of analysis to be either a dyad or a triad. Our objective of the papais to explore this assumption. The empirical analysis employs quarterly political conflict/cooperation among the United States, the (former) Soviet Union, China, Japan, and (West) Germany from 19S0 to 1991. The model consists of a system of dynamic multiple regression equations. Various groups formed among mese countries are tested to find out whether they can be considered an autonomous unit of analysis. The analysis reveals several groups of countries whose political relations can be considered to be autonomous. In particular, either the United States-the Soviet Union dyad or the United States-the Soviet Union-China triad is not an appropriate, autonomous unit of analysis in dynamic conflict 129 Downloaded by [North Dakota State University] at 17:01 07 December 2014 130 H. KANG AND R. REUVENY action-reaction models, because these countries are significantly influenced by the presence of other countries. New directions for future research are also suggested.

The cooperative and conflictual interactions between the United States, Russia, and China: A quantitative analysis of event data

“…The VAR model was initially proposed by Sims (1980) to explore the interactions among macro-economic variables and it was introduced to study the interactions between countries (e.g. Goldstein, 1991;Kang and Reuveny, 2000;Pang and Liu, 2019). We selected the VAR model for its flexible nature that does not require any presumptions (or restrictions) on the direction of the causality between variables (Lu, 2001).…”

“…Goldstein and Freeman (1991) and Goldstein (1992) combined event data-COPDAB, WEIS, and ASHLEY-to quantitatively investigate USA-Soviet-China interactions from the 1950s to the 1980s, and showed the importance of reciprocity and the third country's influence in their interactions. Kang and Reuveny (2000) studied the political interactions among the USA, Soviet, China, Japan, and (West) Germany from 1980 to 1991 based on the COPDAB and WEIS data. They found that minor powers significantly influenced bilateral or trilateral relations between the superpowers.…”