Brian M. Pollins

Conflict, Cooperation, and Commerce: The Effect of International Political Interactions on Bilateral Trade Flows

The public choice approach to political economy is employed to gain insight into the connection between international politics and trade flows. A model is constructed in which importers are assumed to be rational utility maximizers who seek to satisfy international security as well as economic welfare objectives. This model of bilateral trade flows reflects contemporary theory in the field of international economics, and it explicitly incorporates the general foreign policy orientation of importers among its determinants. The model is tested in 16 annual crosssectional estimations (1960-75) for a complete network of 25 countries. The findings show considerable support for the hypothesis that trade flows are significantly influenced by broad political relations of amity and enmity between nations. The author concludes that nations adjust trade ties to satisfy security as well as economic welfare goals and that a formal political economy of trade should reflect this fact.

DOES TRADE STILL FOLLOW THE FLAG

A public choice approach is used to build a model of bilateral trade flows employing international conflict and cooperation, as well as prices and income, to predict the level of imports. The model is consistent with neoclassical trade theory in economics, while employing data and measurement insights from the field of international relations to construct an indicator of bilateral diplomatic relations. The model is empirically tested using pooled, cross-section time-series analysis for six nations representing different worlds of development. Considerable empirical support is found for the model in general. The effects of diplomacy on commerce are significant and conform to model predictions in every instance. Estimation results also indicate possible cross-national differences in the political management of trade relations.

Trading Data: Evaluating our Assumptions and Coding Rules

Some scholars have rushed to judgment about the nature of the relationship between trade and conflict, making strong assumptions about the data upon which their conclusions rest. In this paper, we test these assumptions, showing that they are often not warranted and, thus, pose threats to many of our conclusions about trade’s impact on conflict. We discuss official trade statistics; the treatment of missing trade data; and problems with some decision rules being adopted within our research community. We introduce the new Correlates of War (COW) Trade Data Set; discuss the rationale behind our coding decisions; and compare this data set with other sets. The end result is a series of findings that should help our field advance its understanding of the often difficult issue of trade’s relationship with international conflict.

Trade Still Follows the Flag: The Primacy of Politics in a Simultaneous Model of Interdependence and Armed Conflict

While many scholars have posited a simultaneous relationship between trade and conflict, very few empirical studies have specified the relationship as such. Those that did employed samples that were relatively limited in spatial-temporal coverage. None have employed conflict indicators based on Militarized Interstate Dispute (MID) data due to the difficulty of including discrete dependent variables in a simultaneous equation framework. We overcome both limitations in this study and offer results with important theoretical implications. In line with the most recent published studies, we design our model to “condition” the estimates on recent histories of dyadic trade and conflict. We apply Maddalas estimator, which is designed for a two-equation system in which one endogenous variable is continuous and the other is dichotomous. While the signs of all control variable coefficients match those reported in mainstream trade-conflict literature, our main result does not. We find what we call the “primacy of politics”; i.e., that conflict indeed inhibits trade while the effect of dyadic interdependence on the likelihood of conflict is statistically insignificant. Extensive sensitivity analyses show the results to be consistent across estimators as well as alternative model specifications and trade data sets. We conclude that liberal claims about interdependence and conflict may be problematic.

The Study of Interdependence and Conflict Recent Advances, Open Questions, and Directions for Future Research

A burgeoning literature has emerged on the relationship between economic interdependence and political conflict. This literature is evaluated, and three issues are raised for future research. First, there is a need to improve the theoretical basis of claims about the influence of interdependence on conflict and to specify more clearly the causal mechanisms underlying any such relationship. Second, future research should identify the boundary conditions of the effects of interdependence on conflict. Third, much more attention must be paid to the definition and measurement of interdependence and conflict.

Global Political Order, Economic Change, and Armed Conflict: Coevolving Systems and the Use of Force

Several recent explanations for major-power war focus on purported cycles in global economic activity or in global political order. I shall argue that a better understanding of interrelationships among the economic long wave, the global leadership cycle, and armed conflict can be gained if we (1) expand the study of interstate conflict beyond the limited domain of great power or systemic wars and (2) treat the long wave and the leadership cycle as quasi-independent and interrelated processes, each contributing to the conflict dynamics of the interstate system. Theoretical foundations for these two recommendations are drawn from the core works in this field. A model based on this new approach is developed and tested empirically along with four formal representations of the core frameworks. Poisson regression is employed using data on interstate disputes (1816–1976) to test resulting hypotheses. Analysis shows that broadening the explanatory domains of existing frameworks is valid and that the “coevolving systems” model is measurably superior to all tested competitors. I conclude that these two global processes are best viewed as coevolving systems and that future studies of systemic conflict should take this approach.

Trade and Conflict: Proximity, Country Size, and Measures

The effect of trade on military conflict is one of the most important questions in international relations. Liberals argue that trade brings peace, neo-realists and neo-Marxists reason that trade brings conflict, while classical realists contend that trade has no impact on conflict. This article investigates theoretically and empirically some of the most important issues that remain in this literature: the roles of geographical proximity, country size, the handling of the trade data, and the conceptualization of conflict. Employing a simultaneous equations model, we find that the claim that trade brings peace is not robust, but rather it is conflict that reduces trade.

Where Hobbes Meets Hobson: Core Conflict and Colonialism, 1495–1985

This study explores the connections between the Long Wave and the Leadership Cycle by examining their possible effect on long-term patterns in major power war and colonial expansion. Building directly upon the Leadership Cycle work of Modelski and Thompson, Goldsteins Long Wave analysis, and the Modern World System School, a new analytical framework is developed. This framework treats the Leadership Cycle and Long Wave as separate, though interconnected processes, and permits derivation of empirically testable hypotheses concerning the effects of the Leadership Cycle and Long Wave on armed conflict in the system, and on the timing of colonial expansion by major powers into the periphery. This “phase-pair” framework also allows assessment of the effect of each systemic process while controlling for the effect of the other. The results of our analysis suggest that the Long Wave and Leadership Cycle not only are associated with the most severe or systemic wars, but may affect conflict more broadly within the system. We also find strong identifiable effects of these processes on colonization. Finally, all results taken together indicate the Long Wave and Leadership Cycle should be treated as distinct, though interrelated processes.

Globalization and Armed Conflict Among Nations

While the effects of globalization appear to be wide reaching, should we expect them to have a significant impact on international security relations? Yes, most certainly we should. But just what are these effects likely to be? Here, the picture is less clear, for some of the shifts and trends engendered by the phenomenon of globalization can be expected to draw nations together, increase the costs of using armed force, and decrease the benefits of doing so. In short, certain aspects of globalization will have a pacifying effect in global politics. But other forces unleashed by globalization will increase tensions and fractious relations among states, while destabilizing political orders that themselves have pacifying effects. Thus, greater chances for armed conflict are also created by the forces of economic globalization. Predicting the net effect of these positive and negative developments is most difficult. My purpose in writing this paper is to begin this task. What do we know about the ways in which economic change affects security relations among nations? Must concepts and hypotheses be reformulated, or new ones created? What are the most relevant aspects of globalization to study in order to understand its effect on security? How can our understanding of the political economy of security and likely economic trends allow us to envision possible, or even probable, futures? Subsequent sections of this paper will take a first look at these questions. First, I will take stock of theories in the field of international relations (IR), and sketch those that link aspects of economic growth, development, exchange, and distribution to prospects for war and peace. Next, I will look at those aspects of economic globalization that are most likely to affect the security domain. I will then offer an assessment of these economic trends in light

Breaking Trade Dependency: A Global Simulation of Third World Proposals for Alternative Trade Regimes

Calls for a New International Economic Order included proposals for revision of the Liberal trade system in ways which would facilitate Third World development. To assess possible costs and consequences of these proposals a simulation model of the international trade system is employed here to explore changes in trade patterns which could result from alternative trade orders. Specifically, two proposed alternatives are compared to the existing order: one relatively moderate strategy which calls for concessionary tariffs to be granted to developing countries by advanced nations, and a second, more radical strategy which counsels economic disengagement of the South from the North in favor of Collective Self-reliance for the developing nations. The simulation exercise reveals potential difficulties associated with these strategies, including highly unequal distribution of benefits and costs, and the internal incompatibility of the multiple development objectives which these proposals contain. Should global trade relations be governed by the classic liberal norms of openness, non-discrimination and reciprocity, or should the world trade system be structured to facilitate progress in developing areas? For four decades now, trade relations between the industrialized North and the developing South have been deeply politicized because antagonisms go well beyond the individual commercial policies of particular countries and revolve around the trade regime itself. The industrialized countries were largely successful in establishing a liberal world trade order shortly after World War II. Developing nations questioned the underlying norms of this order from the outset and developed proposed regime alternatives over the ensuing years. As scholars, our understanding of the postwar liberal order and proposed alternatives-and thus our understanding of the North-South debate-has been limited by the fact that our observations are quite naturally restricted to outcomes produced by that existing Authors note: The research reported in this paper was conducted while the author was a research scientist in the Global Modeling Group of the International Institute of Comparative Social Research, Science Center Berlin. The extensive support of that institution is gratefully acknowledged. The author would also like to thank the editors of ISQ and three anonymous reviewers for several constructive criticisms and suggestions, and wishes it were possible to have been more responsive to these. An earlier version of this paper was delivered at the 22nd Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, March 1981.