Daniel S. Morey

The Trade-Offs of Fighting and Investing: A Model of the Evolution of War and Peace1:

International competition occurs in many different forms. Just as a state would be in danger if it allowed its opponent to gain a military advantage, one that falls behind a rival in an economic contest similarly faces risks. States must weigh the trade-offs between economic and military growth, as well as deciding on the best strategy to follow should war erupt. We use a formal, dynamic model to explicitly capture the trade-offs that states face in their search for security and dominance. The deductions from the model demonstrate that by considering the long-run results of a peacetime rivalry, weaker states might conclude that their only hope of winning or surviving a rivalry lies in fighting a counterforce war, explain why and how stalemates evolve during counterforce wars, and indicate that targeting industrial objectives shortens the duration of wars.

Conflict and the Duration of Peace in Enduring Internal Rivalries

The question of how conflicts affect the nature of the peace forms a puzzle for students of civil conflict.Theoretical arguments and empirical evidence exist supporting the conclusion that increased violence leads to longer or shorter peace durations. Applying a model of rivalry that includes public support of conflict, this paper hypothesizes that the greater the concentration in fighting, the longer the subsequent peace between internal rivals lasts.This hypothesis receives support from tests on the duration of peace between Enduring Internal Rivalries.The implications from this finding provide new advice for policy makers seeking to invest scarce resources into civil conflict management.

The French “Petit Oui”: The Maastricht Treaty and the French Voting Agenda

Despite expectations of a landslide, the French public barely approved the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. Traditional explanations for the surprise outcome that rely on socioeconomic conditions, partisanship, regional characteristics, and domestic issues are inadequate. Analysis based largely on the French National Election Study of 1995 shows that the voters were largely concerned with foreign policy. Citizens who were friendly to Germany and supportive of the European Union greatly favored the treaty. French nationalists and those possessed of strong anti-immigrant sentiment were vehemently against it. These disparate views, united in their concern about the sovereignty of France, dominated the Maastricht vote and appear to have persisted in the European Union Constitutional referendum of 2005.