Moments in time: Temporal patterns in the effect of democracy and trade on conflict

Abstract

Building on economic norms theory, I argue that the causes of international conflict may be contextual rather than constant over time. I explore the temporal patterns in the predictors of conflict in data on European conflict between 1870 and 2001, using an endogenous Markov chain Monte Carlo Poisson change-point model. I find that the period can be divided into two time periods, different in terms of the direction of the effect of the main conflict predictors. While democracy has a positive effect on conflict in the period between 1870 and 1938, it has a negative effect from 1938 to 2001. Likewise, trade initially has no impact on conflict, but later exerts a pacifying effect. Post-estimation analyses suggest that such patterns are best explained by the externalization of contractual norms, which is consistent with economic norms theory.

Property Rights Regimes, Technological Innovation, and Foreign Direct Investment

“…These results are consistent with recent work highlighting the importance of modeling the changing impact of explanatory variables, rather than assuming a constant effect, for example, Nieman (2016) and Park (2012).…”

Grasping the scientific evidence: The contractualist peace supersedes the democratic peace

“…The economic norms account for how contractualist economy can cause both democracy and peace has been explicated in numerous prior studies and need not be repeated here (Mousseau, 2000, 2009, 2012a, 2013). An abundance of prior studies have also corroborated various novel predictions of the theory in wider domains (Ungerer, 2012), and no one has disputed the multiple reports that contractualist economy is the strongest non-trivial predictor of peace both within (Mousseau, 2012b) and between nations (Mousseau, 2013; see also Nieman, 2015). The only matter in controversy is whether democracy has any observable impact on peace between nations after consideration of contractualist economy.…”

“…Instead, it is market-oriented development that creates a culture of contracting, and this culture legitimates democracy within nations and causes peace among them. The policy implications could hardly be more divergent: to end war (and support democracy), the contractualist democracies should promote the economies of nations at risk (Krieger and Meierrieks, 2015; Meierrieks, 2012; Mousseau, 2000, 2009, 2012a, 2013; Nieman, 2015).…”

Democracy, Conscription, and War: The Effects of Political Regimes and Types of Military Recruiting on the Initiation of Militarized Interstate Disputes

“…However, the theory suggests that a democratic country should be less likely to initiate conflict than an autocratic country. One possible reason for such a counterintuitive result is that the impacts of regime types and recruiting types vary among time periods, as argued by Nieman (2016). Therefore, we conduct an additional analysis, applying our model to (1) the whole period, (2) the period before World War Ⅱ, (3) the Cold War, and 4) post-1989.…”