An Institutional Explanation of the Democratic Peace

Mesquita, Bruce Bueno de; Morrow, James D.; Siverson, Randolph M.; Smith, Alastair

doi:10.2307/2586113

Cited by 753 publications

(625 citation statements)

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“…The finding that only democratic leaders never suffer a higher hazard after defeat would seem to lend support for the modified selection effect hypothesis H.2 (Bueno de Mesquita et al 1999;Reiter and Stam 2002). However, the selection effects logic is not entirely vindicated: democratic leaders do not gain at home from victory abroad.…”

Section: The Effects Of International Conflict On Leaders' Tenurementioning

confidence: 93%

See 1 more Smart Citation

International Conflict and the Tenure of Leaders: Is War Still "Ex Post" Inefficient?

Chiozza¹,

Goemans²

2004

American Journal of Political Science

152

242

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Recent work in comparative politics and international relations has shown a marked shift toward leaders as the theoretical unit of analysis. In most of the new theoretical models a core assumption is that leadersW hen testing theories, researchers would like the theoretical and empirical units of analysis to match. In international relations, however, this is often not the case. On the one hand, neo-realists and others who focus on the system as their unit of analysis as well as scholars who base their theories on the unitary rational actor assumption usually rely on the statements and memoirs of leaders in their empirical research (Copeland 2000). Whereas their theoretical unit of analysis is the system or the state as a unitary rational actor, their empirical unit of analysis is the leader. On the other hand, scholars of diversionary war and, recently, the democratic peace employ leaders as their theoretical unit of analysis. In their statistical research, however, these scholars tend to rely on the country or country-year as the empirical unit of analysis (Gelpi 1997;Leeds and Davis 1997;Reiter and Stam 2002). Such mismatches between the theoretical and empirical unit of analysis can significantly weaken empirical tests and produce faulty inferences. A fundamental hurdle for scholars who focus on leaders as their theoretical unit of analysis has been the lack of appropriate data on leaders. Earlier drafts of this article were presented at the PIPES seminar at the University of Chicago, the University of Virginia, and the Annual Convention of the American Political Science Association, Washington D.C. We thank the commentators at those presentations; in particular we thank Thomas Blackwell, Chris Gelpi, Jessica Hardesty, Bob Keohane, Craig Koerner, Jeff Legro, Thomas Lumley, Kevin Morrison, Davide Raggi, Dan Reiter, Sebastian Rosato, Angelo Secchi, Randolph Siverson, Alastair Smith, David Soskice, Allan Stam, and Terry Therneau. Mistakes, omissions, and other assorted infelicities are our own responsibility. Authors' names are in alphabetical order. theories on the appropriate empirical unit of analysis and to promote further theoretical work on the role of leaders in international and comparative politics, we introduce a new data set of all leaders between 1919 and 1999.Recent work in international relations and comparative politics attempts to build powerful new theories on a solid methodologically individualist basis by focusing on the incentives and constraints of leaders (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003;Cheibub and Przeworksi 1999). A central assumption in much of this new research is that leaders act to stay in power (Downs 1957). Very little is empirically known, however, about the factors that affect the tenure of leaders (Bienen and van de Walle 1991;Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2001). To provide some baseline, this article analyzes the new data to assess how a broad range of domestic and international factors affect the tenure of leaders.To promote further theoretical and empirical research on the role of ...

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Section: The Effects Of International Conflict On Leaders' Tenurementioning

confidence: 93%

“…Alternatively, it could be argued that war will prove not ex post inefficient because of selection effects (Bueno de Mesquita et al 1999;Schultz 2001). Leaders pursue time in office as their goal and take decisions to improve their political careers.…”

Section: H1: War Is Ex Post Inefficient Hypothesismentioning

confidence: 99%

International Conflict and the Tenure of Leaders: Is War Still "Ex Post" Inefficient?

Chiozza¹,

Goemans²

2004

American Journal of Political Science

152

242

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“…For example, scholars have argued that democracies are likely to spend less on the military because democratic leaders are accountable to the broader public who generally tend to prioritize social spending (Rosh 1988;Hewitt 1992). In addition, scholars have found evidence that democratic leaders are more risk-averse towards war in general than dictators are (Bueno de Mesquita, et al 1999). Finally, autocracies often lack popular legitimacy, relying instead on 4" " the military to maintain power.…”

Section: Studying Military Expenditures Is Important For Many Reasonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The demand for military expenditure in authoritarian regimes

Bove

Brauner

2014

Defence and Peace Economics

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This paper examines whether there are systematic differences in military spending between different types of autocratic regimes. We view military expenditure as an instrument a dictator can exploit in order to stay in power. How he utilises this instrument depends on the institutional set up of his regime. We distinguish between military regimes, single party states and personalist regimes and predict that military regimes should have the highest, whereas personalist dictatorships should have the lowest level of military spending. Using panel data on 64 dictatorships from 1960 to 2000, we find empirical evidence that our hypotheses are not rejected.

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“…Consequently, the ability and incentives for replacing a leader might vary across regimes. Denote by φ RP the probability that the ruler in the home country is reselected conditional on the regime type R ∈ {D, A} and on a pacific outcome of the conflict game, and let φ RW and φ RL be the reselection probabilities following a win and defeat, respectively, under regime type R. 8 Write Φ R = {φ RP , φ RW , φ RL } and Φ R 0 the vector of reselection probabilities in the home country and the foreign country, respectively. As the leader tends to go to war too often, the selectorate could use the reselection probabilities as a disciplining device against the leader.…”

Section: The Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Democracy, autocracy and the likelihood of international conflict

Tangerås

2008

Econ Gov

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This is a game-theoretic analysis of the link between regime type and international conflict. The democratic electorate can credibly punish the leader for bad conflict outcomes, whereas the autocratic selectorate cannot. For the fear of being thrown out of office, democratic leaders are (i) more selective about the wars they initiate and (ii) on average win more of the wars they start. Foreign policy behaviour is found to display strategic complementarities. The likelihood of interstate war, therefore, is lowest in the democratic dyad (pair), highest in the autocratic dyad with the mixed dyad in between. The results are consistent with empirical findings.JEL Classification: D72, D74, D82.

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An Institutional Explanation of the Democratic Peace

Cited by 753 publications

References 50 publications

International Conflict and the Tenure of Leaders: Is War Still "Ex Post" Inefficient?

International Conflict and the Tenure of Leaders: Is War Still "Ex Post" Inefficient?

The demand for military expenditure in authoritarian regimes

Democracy, autocracy and the likelihood of international conflict

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