Democracy and the Management of International Conflict

Abstract

The research reported here extends investigation of the democracy-war hypothesis by focusing on the norms of dispute resolution integral to the democratic process. If we extend these norms to the international arena, then it becomes reasonable to expect democratic states to adopt compromise solutions to international problems. One implication of this logic is that democracies are likely to be more amenable than others to efforts of third parties to resolve or ameliorate interstate disputes. This hypothesis is examined in the present study. A sample of strictly interstate disputes acquired from the Alker-Sherman disaggregated conflict set provide the basis for this inquiry. Democracy is assessed for each disputant party with the composite index from the Polity II data collection. In order to control for extraneous effects on the probability of management, the author develops a baseline model consisting of prior management activity, the costs of conflict, and the power of the disputants. Because the dependent variable in this analysis is a binary indicator, the author employs probit regression to estimate the effects of democracy while partialling out the controls. The empirical results show that democracy does carry the systematic positive influence on the probability of conflict management expected of it.

Does Trade Integration Contribute to Peace?

“…The democratic process necessitates more discussion and majority support from the public and the legislature in making major decisions such as war (Dixon 1993, andOneal et al 1997). For measurement, an index for joint democracy is used (Bremer, 1993).…”

Wer kommt als Vermittler zum Zuge?Überschätzte und unterschätzte Anforderungsfaktoren für Mediationstätigkeiten

“…Gerade diesen wenig mächtigen Vermittlern droht das Schicksal, Opfer des langfristigen Kalküls der Konfliktparteien zu werden. In bestimmten Fällen ist nämlich der Wunsch nach Vermittlung nicht ernst gemeint, da besonders "risikoträchtige Akteure" (Schneider und Weitsman 1996) Dixon (1993Dixon ( und 1994 nachweisen, dass Demokratien, die in militärische Dispute hineingezogen werden, eher für Vermittlungstätigkeiten zu haben sind als autoritär geführte Regime.…”

International Law and State Behavior: Commitment and Compliance in International Monetary Affairs

“…In this case the compliance decision is modeled using a logistical regression (logit) model; the dependent 19 This captures the flavor of some of the democratic peace literature, such as Doyle (1986), Dixon (1993), and Raymond (1994). 20 "International law is not unlike constitutional law in that it imposes legal obligations upon a government that in theory the government is not free to ignore or change" (Fisher 1981, 30).…”