Douglas M. Gibler

Measuring Alliances: the Correlates of War Formal Interstate Alliance Dataset, 1816–2000

This article serves as a companion to the release of Version 3.0 of the Correlates of War Formal Interstate Alliance Dataset, 1816–2000. First released in 1966, the Correlates of War alliance data have greatly influenced quantitative studies of conflict, providing an important variable in the study of international conflict and cooperation. The article begins by describing the historical development and the major characteristics of the alliance dataset. The second section then discusses the procedures used to both identify and code each alliance in this revised and extended version of the data, and this is followed by a description of several important changes made to the original coding rules in order to develop this dataset, with the most notable of these changes being a more determined reliance on treaty texts rather than historical accounts for identification of alliances and alliance types. To show the effects of the revised coding decisions and the enlarged temporal domain, the final section of the article presents summary statistics for the new data and then uses the dataset to revisit two existing studies on democracy and alliance behavior. The findings indicate that jointly democratic dyads are likely to be allied only after 1945; joint democracy is negatively related to alliance formation during the 1816–1944 time period.

The Costs of Reneging Reputation and Alliance Formation

Reputations are supposed to matter. Decision makers consistently refer to reputations for resolve, and international relations theories confirm the value of being able to credibly signal intentions during times of crisis. However, empirical support for the effects of reputation has been lacking. Problems of strategic selection have hampered previous quantitative tests, and the qualitative literature provides scant support for the concept in individual crises. In this article, the author shifts the focus from crisis behavior to alliance commitments and examines the effects that opportunities to uphold previous commitments have on future alliance commitments and conflicts. The results demonstrate that alliance reputations do affect both alliance formation and dispute behavior.

Alliances, Then Democracy

Previous studies have not established a consistent link between regime type and alliance formation, despite the relevance of the decision to ally in a number of arguments about regime type and alliance behavior. The inconsistency in these findings turns largely on choice of research design and variable definition; when the dependent variable is alliance formation, democratic dyads are unlikely to ally, but when the dependent variable is the presence of an alliance tie, democratic dyads are likely to be allied. Under a standard research design, the authors find both claims to be true and propose a test of an explanation for this tendency of autocratic states to democratize in alliances. They show that the presence of a defense pact with all neighboring states reduces the likelihood that a state will be targeted with a territorial militarized dispute, reduces the level of state militarization, and increases the likelihood of democratic transitions.

Political Tolerance and Territorial Threat: A Cross-National Study

The Steps-to-War theory of international conflict argues that territorial issues are more salient than other issues domestically. However, the evidence for this conclusion almost always rests with international conflict outcomes, assuming away the domestic political processes leading to greater salience. In the tolerance literature, several studies note that political attitudes, particularly toward unpopular groups, vary systematically across different states but provide few explanations that account for these differences. We believe these two observations are linked and argue that territorial threats serve as one factor conditioning individual political attitudes that privilege national unity over freedom of expression. Using World Values Survey data collected from 33 countries, and Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) techniques, our paper confirms this. We find evidence that the type of external threat facing a country matters in moderating individual attitudes, even after controlling for economic and institutional differences across the states sampled. Specifically, we demonstrate how the diffusion from territorial threats to domestic audiences results in a chilling effect on individual willingness to extend democratic freedoms. Thus, we show that territorial issues exhibit greater salience domestically than other types of international issues.

Uncovering the Dangerous Alliances, 1495–1980

The empirical literature has found that interstate alliances are, with the exception of the nineteenth century after 1815, usually followed by war rather than by peace. This analysis tries to identify theoretically the characteristics of alliances that distinguish those that are followed by war from those that are followed by peace. It is argued that alliances that embody settlements of territorial disputes are most peaceful. Alliances consisting exclusively of major states or of states that have been successful in their last war are predicted to be war prone, while those that have the opposite characteristics are predicted to be followed by peace. An empirical analysis of the data shows that all of the above expectations are confirmed. The analysis concludes by using these characteristics to reexamine the classic Levy, 1981, study.

Alliances That Never Balance: The Territorial Settlement Treaty

An extensive body of evidence has been accumulated showing that alliances are more often followed by war than by peace (Singer and Small, 1966b; Levy, 1981). It has also been convincingly demonstrated that alliances are associated with the expansion of war (Siverson and King, 1979; 1980; Siverson and Starr, 1990), and alliance polarization and the buildup of alliances in the system are associated with world wars (Kegley, 1994; Wayman, 1984; Midlarsky, 1983; 1986). Nevertheless, a significant number of alliances are not followed by war. Levy (1981) reports that 44 percent of neutrality and defense pacts in the 17th century, 33 percent in the 18th century, 72 percent in the 19th century, and 13 percent in the 20th century are not followed by a war involving an ally within five years. The variation across centuries, especially the large percentage of peaceful 19th century alliances, suggests that not all alliances are created equal. This article identifies a large portion of the peaceful alliances as territorial settlement treaties. By resolving territorial disputes between alliance members, these treaties remove one of the most contentious issues from the agenda of states and pacify some of the most traditionally belligerent states in the system. It is argued that the identification of these alliances is an important step toward re-conceptualizing the alliance variable since the territorial settlement treaties behave very differently from what realist theories would predict. Instead of trying to balance power in a region or in the system, these alliances exhibit the robust and multifaceted nature of diplomacy, demonstrating that a common practice having the same form (forming an alliance) can have very different motivations behind it. Therefore, it is strongly recommended that researchers remove these alliances from their data analyses (or, at the very least, control for them) if they are investigating the paths or correlates to war. The presence of these irenic alliances would tend to mute most findings.

Control the issues, control the conflict: The effects of alliances that settle territorial issues on interstate rivalries

Research has shown that a large number of interstate disputes frequently occur between the same pairs of states and that these rivalries tend to include wars more often than not. This article examines whether states involved in rivalry can take steps to manage disputed issues and decrease the probability of the rivalry escalating to war. The analyses presented here suggest that states can and do take steps to manage their disputes. It is shown that certain alliance commitments are actually attempts to manage conflict between rival states by removing territorial issues from their agendas. These territorial settlement treaties fundamentally change the nature of the rivalry by changing the issues of contention. Once this occurs, the nature of future disputes is altered and the probability of repeated disputes decreases. Even in enduring rivalries, rivals that have formed prior territorial settlements experience much less conflict than other rivals. Lastly, it is also shown that major‐major, enduring rivalrie...

Outside-In: The Effects of External Threat on State Centralization

Although centralization is thought to be a common response to external threats to the state, few theories develop the mechanisms by which domestic centralization occurs. Fewer still consistently demonstrate that centralization is indeed a common response to external threats in all states. This article therefore develops a comprehensive theory of domestic change in the shadow of external threat. Salient threats to the state create strong incentives for opposition forces to support the leader in power, even in non-democracies. The leadership then uses these favorable domestic political climates to decrease the number of institutional veto points that can stop future leader-driven policy changes. Collectively, this two-part theory provides a unified model of domestic behavioral change (also known as rally effects) and institutional centralization (defined by a declining number of veto players). In addition, by defining salient threats as challenges to homeland territory, the article provides some of the first domestic-level evidence that territorial disputes are fundamentally different from other types of international conflicts.

Taking Arms Against a Sea of Troubles: Conventional Arms Races During Periods of Rivalry

This article revisits the arms race to war relationship with the hope of resolving a lingering debate in international relations over the effects of arms races. Previous empirical studies in this area suffered from a possible selection effect, rendering them unable to differentiate between the escalatory and deterrent effects of arms races. Specifically, earlier quantitative investigations were unable to test deterrence hypotheses, because the unit of analysis (dispute) presupposed that deterrence had already failed in preventing dispute onset. In order to take the possibility of deterrence seriously, a dataset is constructed that identifies arms races independently of dispute occurrence. This article improves on previous studies in that a measure of interdependent arming exogenous to dispute initiation allows for a test of whether arms races actually deter the onset of militarized disputes or contribute to dispute escalation. Both the deterrence and escalation hypotheses are tested using a sample of ‘strategic rivals’ from 1816 to 1993. The analyses reveal that arms races increase the likelihood of disputes and war. Furthermore, to account for the possibility that the arms race to war relationship may be spurious to dyadic hostilities accounting for both arms races and war, a selection model is employed that differentiates between dispute and war processes. This indicates that arms races do not contribute to deterrence and are instead associated with both disputes and war.

Individual Identity Attachments and International Conflict The Importance of Territorial Threat

This article provides some of the first individual-level evidence for the domestic salience of territorial issues. Using survey data from more than 80,000 individual respondents in 43 separate countries, we examine how conflict affects the content of individual self-identification. We find that international conflict exerts a strong influence on the likelihood and content of individual self-identification, but this effect varies with the type of conflict. Confirming nationalist theories of territorial salience, territorial conflict leads the majority of individuals in targeted countries to identify themselves as citizens of their country. However, individuals in countries that are initiating territorial disputes are more likely to self-identify as members of a particular ethnicity, which provides support for theories connecting domestic salience to ethnic politics. That conflict has variegated effects on identity formation suggests the relationship is not endogenous. Our within-case analysis of changes in Nigerian self-identifications further demonstrates that individuals are quite susceptible to the types and locations of international conflict.