The Third Leg of the Kantian Tripod for Peace: International Organizations and Militarized Disputes, 1950–85

Abstract

Immanuel Kant believed that democracy, economic interdependence, and international law and organizations could establish the foundations for “perpetual peace.” Our analyses of politically relevant dyads show that each of the three elements of the Kantian peace makes a statistically significant, independent contribution to peaceful interstate relations. These benefits are evident even when the influence of other theoretically interesting factors—such as relative power, alliances, geographic contiguity, and economic growth—is held constant. Increasing the number of shared memberships in intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) by one standard deviation reduces the incidence of militarized disputes by about 23 percent from the baseline rate for a typical pair of bordering states. If both members of a dyad are democratic, conflict is 35 percent less likely than the baseline; increasing both the dyadic trade–GDP ratio and the trend in trade by a standard deviation reduces the chance of conflict by 38 percent. Together, all the Kantian variables lower the probability of a dispute by 72 percent. We check for reverse causation and find reason to believe that a feedback system is at work, with IGOs reducing conflict and low-conflict dyads joining IGOs. Democracies and interdependent states are more likely to join IGOs with one another, bringing together the three elements of a system for Kantian peace.

Spatial Effects in Dyadic Data

“…The modeling of spatial dependence in undirected data strongly resembles that of monadic data+ The only difference is that instead of contagion stemming from other units, it comes from other dyads+ Hence, to model spatial dependence in undirected dyadic data researchers make the dependent variable in a dyad between i and j a function of the weighted sum of the dependent variable of all other dyads: 17+ Undirected dyadic data are commonly used in the international conflict literature~see Russett, Oneal, and Davis 1998;and Gartzke, Li, and We have denoted the connectivity or weighting matrix as v pq + Later we will discuss six different specifications of the weighting matrix, such that v pq ʦ $w ik , w ki , w jm , w mj , w~i j !~km! , w~k m!~ij !…”

Testing the Value of the Postwar International Order

“…190-191;and HafnerBurton, von Stein, and Gartzke, 2008, p. 177. See also Russett, Oneal, and Davis, 1998;Simmons, 2002;and Shannon, Morey, and Boehmke, 2010. commitments from participating states helped to reduce the length of militarized interstate disputes. 17 One important recent study, drawing on both theory and empirical assessments of conflict trends, argues that institutions are the critical mechanisms for dampening conflict among democracies.…”

A Choice between Dependence and Interdependence: The Baltic States in Quest for Peace and Prosperity

“…For example, contemporary interpretations of Kant speak about the Kantian tripod -either in form of a synergy between democracy, international law/organizations and economic interdependence (see, e.g. Russett, Oneal & Davis 1998;Russett 2000 andChoi 2010). …”