Christopher Gelpi

Assessing the Dyadic Nature of the Democratic Peace, 1918–88

The literature on the democratic peace has emerged from two empirical claims: (1) Democracies are unlikely to conflict with one another, and (2) democracies are as prone to conflict with nondemocracies as nondemocracies are with one another. Together these assertions imply that the democratic peace is a dyadic phenomenon. There is strong support for the first observation, but much recent scholarship contravenes the second. This paper assesses whether the democratic peace is a purely dyadic, a monadic, or perhaps a mixed dyadic and monadic effect. Our analysis offers two important advances. First, our model directly compares the dyadic and monadic explanations by using the state as the unit of analysis rather than the potentially problematic dyad. Second, our model controls for an important but overlooked confounding variable: satisfaction with the status quo. Our results indicate that the initiation of violence within crises is predominantly a dyadic phenomenon, but we also find evidence suggesting a strong monadic effect regarding the emergence of crises.

Success Matters: Casualty Sensitivity and the War in Iraq

Since the Vietnam War, U.S. policymakers have worried that the American public will support military operations only if the human costs of the war, as measured in combat casualties, are minimal. Although the public is rightly averse to suffering casualties, the level of popular sensitivity to U.S. military casualties depends critically on the context in which those losses occur. The publics tolerance for the human costs of war is primarily shaped by the intersection of two crucial factors: beliefs about the rightness or wrongness of the war, and beliefs about the wars likely success. The impact of each belief depends upon the other. Ultimately, however, beliefs about the likelihood of success matter most in determining the publics willingness to tolerate U.S. military deaths in combat. A reanalysis of publicly available polls and a detailed analysis of a series of polls designed by the authors to tap into public attitudes on casualties support this conclusion.

Paying the Human Costs of War: American Public Opinion and Casualties in Military Conflicts

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS viii LIST OF TABLES ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii CHAPTER ONE: Theories of American Attitudes toward Warfare 1 CHAPTER TWO: Americas Tolerance for Casualties, 1950-2006 23 CHAPTER THREE: Measuring Individual Attitudes toward Military Conflict 67 CHAPTER FOUR: Experimental Evidence on Attitudes toward Military Conflict 98 CHAPTER FIVE: Individual Attitudes toward the Iraq War, 2003-2004 125 CHAPTER SIX: Iraq the Vote: War and the Presidential Election of 2004 167 CHAPTER SEVEN: The Sources and Meaning of Success in Iraq 188 CHAPTER EIGHT: Conclusion 236 BIBLIOGRAPHY 265 INDEX 283

Democratic Diversions Governmental Structure and the Externalization of Domestic Conflict

Students of international politics have often argued that state leaders initiate the use of force internationally to divert attention away from domestic problems. The author contends that these arguments concerning the relationship between domestic unrest and international conflict are not supported empirically because they focus too narrowly on the incentives state leaders have to use external force as a diversionary tactic without considering alternative solutions to quieting domestic unrest. It is hypothesized that democratic leaders will respond to domestic unrest by diverting attention by using force internationally. On the other hand, authoritarian leaders are expected to repress the unrest directly, and these acts of repression will make them less likely to use force internationally. An analysis of the initiation of force by the challenging states in 180 international crises between 1948 and 1982 strongly supports these hypotheses. The results of the analyses and their implications for the literature on diversionary conflicts and the rapidly growing literature on democratic peace are discussed.

Winners or Losers? Democracies in International Crisis, 1918 -94

We attempt to explain when and why democratic states will prevail in international crises. We review several of the prominent theories about democratic political structures and derive hypotheses from each framework about crisis outcomes. These hypotheses are tested against the population of 422 international crises between 1918 and 1994. Our findings provide further evidence that the democratic peace is not a spurious result of common interests. Moreover, we also begin the difficult task of differentiating among the many theories of the democratic peace. In particular, we find strong evidence that democratic political structures are important because of their ability to generate domestic audience costs. Our findings also support the argument that democratic political structures encourage leaders to select international conflicts that they will win.

System Uncertainty, Risk Propensity, and International Conflict among the Great Powers

The authors investigate the relationship between system structure and the initiation of militarized disputes among Great Powers. The central hypotheses concern the interaction between system uncertainty and the risk propensity of national decision makers. The authors employ a research design that enables them to incorporate explanatory variables from various levels of analysis into their theoretical model. The model is tested by probit analysis on a pooled time series of Great Power rival dyads from 1816 to 1975. The empirical results support the central hypothesis that the effects of the international system are mediated by the risk propensity of decision makers. In addition, the authors find that dyadic- and unit-level variables such as arms races, power transitions, and the current and past dispute behavior of rivals also have significant effects on conflict behavior. Finally, the results indicate that nuclear weapons do not seem to have a systematic impact on the initiation of militarized disputes among Great Powers.

The Escalation of Great Power Militarized Disputes: Testing Rational Deterrence Theory and Structural Realism.

realism. We test the relative explanatory power of these two theoretical approaches on the escalation of deterrence encounters among great powers from 1816 to 1984. We derive a set of hypotheses from each model, operationalize them for systematic empirical analysis, and test the hypotheses on 97 cases of great-power deterrence encounters by means of probit analysis. The results are that the hypotheses derived from deterrence theory receive considerable support, whereas none of the hypotheses derived from structural realism are supported. In contemporary research on the causes of international conflict, the realist paradigm has been the dominant theoretical approach. Within this broad framework, however, scholars have developed at least two prominent alternative models of the conditions under which conflict is likely to arise. The first approach, structural realism,1 focuses on the attributes of the international system while the second, deterrence theory, is largely dyadic and emphasizes the resolve and relative military capabilities of adversarial states. While both theoretical approaches attempt to identify the conditions under which international crises and wars are likely to arise, their

Attracting Trouble Democracy, Leadership Tenure, and the Targeting of Militarized Challenges, 1918-1992

Otherwise powerful, formidable democracies are tempting targets for international violence because they have leaders who, on average, have been in office for shorter periods of time than leaders of autocracies. Domestic incentives may make resistance more costly than offering concessions for inexperienced leaders of both democratic and authoritarian states. Over time, however, resistance may become domestically less costly, causing experienced leaders to be more likely to prefer resistance. Anticipating this response, potential challengers may be more likely to target inexperienced leaders. Because democracies generally have high rates of leadership turnover, they are tempting targets for international violence. Statistical analysis of crisis initiation between 1918 and 1992 confirms the perception that democracies are more likely to be targets of militarized challenges. Results are also consistent with the proposition that the relatively short tenure in office served by democratic leaders helps to account for the observed pattern of democratic attraction of foreign challenges.

Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick? Veterans in the Political Elite and the American Use of Force

Other research has shown (1) that civilians and the military differ in their views about when and how to use military force; (2) that the opinions of veterans track more closely with military officers than with civilians who never served in the military; and (3) that U.S. civil–military relations shaped Cold War policy debates. We assess whether this opinion gap “matters” for the actual conduct of American foreign policy. We examine the impact of the presence of veterans in the U.S. political elite on the propensity to initiate and escalate militarized interstate disputes between 1816 and 1992. As the percentage of veterans serving in the executive branch and the legislature increases, the probability that the United States will initiate militarized disputes declines. Once a dispute has been initiated, however, the higher the proportion of veterans, the greater the level of force the United States will use in the dispute.

Performing on Cue? The Formation of Public Opinion Toward War

The public’s inability to gain direct personal experience or information about American military operations means that individuals must rely on cues to form opinions about war. But in an environment filled will potential cues, which ones do Americans tend to rely on when deciding whether to support an ongoing military operation? This experimental study uses two distinct cues within the context of a newspaper story about the Iraq War to test four theoretical models of the American public’s reliance on cues. The results provide fairly consistent support for the “surprising events” model of opinion formation, which suggests that individuals will attend to news events that conflict with their expectations in an effort to update their attitudes toward the war. These results also provide support for the cost/benefit perspective on the formation of public opinion toward war that underpins much of the literature on casualty tolerance during military conflicts.