Kelly M. Kadera

Transmission, Barriers, and Constraints

This article offers a systemic and dynamic model of the spread of civil and interstate war. The model is based on three components: transmission mechanisms, barriers, and resource constraints. Trasmission mechanisms and barriers are based on our existing notions about the contagious effects of alliances and borders. Resource constraints are designed to capture the social welfare trade-off associated with military spending. Deductions from the model include a positive equilibrium value for the amount of war and the level of resources devoted to war fighting and preparations, the finding that additional transmission mechanisms increase the equilibrium level as well as the speed at which the equilibrium level is approached, and the conclusion that extraordinarily high levels of war will eventually decrease. Recommendations for decreasing a high-war equilibrium focus on the strengths of constraints relative to barriers.

Heeding Ray's Advice: An Exegesis on Control Variables in Systemic Democratic Peace Research

We submit our recent systemic democratic peace research to the control variable doctrine of James Lee Ray, as codified in his 2003 treatise. In particular, we seek to determine whether international institutions intervene in the relationship between the democratic communitys strength and the use and effectiveness of third party conflict management, whether hegemony is a competing explanation of third party settlement, and whether our extant model is robust when several control variables are specified. Two important conclusions are reached: (1) the democratic communitys strength and institutional vitality promote third party mediation and its success, regardless of hegemonic might and other controls; and 2) Rays teaching is properly understood as an exhortation for scholars to more carefully consider the theoretical role of each control variable and its proper treatment in statistical models, not as an edict banning the use of control variables.

Practicing democratic community norms: Third-party conflict management and successful settlements

1: New Approaches, Methods, and Findings in the Study of Mediation Jacob Bercovitch and Scott Gartner Part I: Mediation Strategy 2: Is There Method in the Madness of Mediation? Some Lessons for Mediators from Quantitative Studies of Mediation Jacob Bercovitch and Scott Gartner 3: Third-Party Intermediaries and Negotiated Settlements, 1946-2000 Derrick V. Frazier and William J. Dixon Part II: Mediator Type A. Bias and Information 4: Credibility and Strategy in International Mediation Zeev Maoz and Lesley G. Terris 5: Mediator Types and the Effectiveness of Information Provision Strategies Burcu Savun B. UN & Neutrality 6: Guaranteeing Peace: The Credibility of Third-Party Mediators in Civil Wars Isak Svensson 7: Choosing Sides: UN Resolutions and Non-Neutrality Michelle Benson and Nil Satana Part III: Dispute and Crisis Types 8: Softening Up: Making Conflicts More Amenable to Diplomacy J. Michael Greig and Paul F. Diehl 9: Power Play: Mediation in Symmetric and Asymmetric International Crises David Quinn, Jonathan Wilkenfeld, Kathleen Smarick and Victor Asal 10: Protracted Conflict and Crisis Mediation: a Contingency Approach David Carment, Yiagadeesen Samy and Souleima EL Achkar Part IV: The Conflict Management Environment 11: Practicing Democratic Community Norms: Third Party Conflict Management and Successful Settlements Sara McLaughlin Mitchell, Kelly M. Kadera, Mark J.C. Crescenzi 12: Philippine and Taiwanese Legal Mediation James Wall, Tsungting Chung, Daniel Druckman and Wan Yan Part V: Data 13: Conflict and Mediation Event Observations (CAMEO): An Event Data Framework for a Post Cold War World Deborah J. Gerner, Philip A. Schrodt and Omur YilmazIn this paper we investigate the methods by which aggregate democratic forces influence dyadiclevel interactions. We examine the causal linkage between a global democratic community and the involvement of third parties in attempts to settle dyadic claims that may otherwise lead to violence. We hypothesize that a strong democratic community and its institutions make third party settlement attempts more frequent and successful, and that these third party mediators are likely to be democracies or international institutions. Using data from the ICOW project as well as from Kadera, Crescenzi and Shannon (2003), we test these hypotheses and find broad but not universal support for the notion that when the democratic community has the ability to influence international politics, it does so through the propagation of democratic societal norms of dispute resolution. ince the classic Liberals proposed republican governance of states as a foundation for a “perpetual peace,” a plethora of empirically minded scholars have investigated this claim. Almost without exception, they have found little support at the monadic level of analysis and strong support at the dyadic level: although democracies are just as likely as nondemocracies to participate in conflicts, they do not fight each other (e.g., Chan 1984, Maoz and Russett 1993, Morgan and Schwebach 1992, Russett and Oneal 2001). Kant ([1784] 1991, [1795] 1991, and [1797] 1991) exemplifies the original vision of the democratic peace as a systemic phenomenon, a tranquility produced by a developed international society of republican (representative) governments (Harrison, 2002; Huntley, 1996). Yet, rigorous systemic democratic peace analyses have only recently been conducted. These recent investigations indicate that augmenting global democracy ultimately has a pacifying effect, though there is some debate about whether the path to peace involves a monotonic lessening of conflict or initial increases in warfare up to some critical value after which war levels subside (cf. Crescenzi and Enterline 1999; Gleditsch and Hegre 1997; Kadera, Crescenzi, and Shannon 2003; Mitchell, Gates, and Hegre 1999). Nonetheless, much is left to learn. We do not yet know much about the mechanisms by which systemic peace is achieved. This paper seeks to investigate the processes by which aggregate democratic forces produce pacific benefits. S We theorize that a “strong democratic community” (Kadera, Crescenzi, and Shannon 2003) nurtures the expansion of democratic norms in international society. While there are multiple ways to practice democratic norms, we focus this paper on conflict alleviation strategies. In particular, we ask how does the strength of the democratic community affect the willingness of states to allow third party involvement in the resolution of contentious issues?

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.

Manna from Heaven or Forbidden Fruit? The (Ab) Use of Control Variables in Research on International Conflict

Model specification is a ubiquitous challenge in the social sciences. While this issue of Conflict Management and Peace Science is dedicated to addressing this topic in the context of research on international conflict, the discussion among the contributors also contains general lessons and debates relevant to statistical analyses of political, economic, and social phenomena. The reader might suspect that when Glenn Palmer first approached us with the idea of putting together a roundtable and special issue on using control variables, we yawned. Nothing could be further from the truth. Not only did we think the topic warranted some good debate and dialogue, but we already had in mind some lively, articulate, and bright scholars who would offer clever insight.1 We apparently were not alone in our estimation: a record-breaking, spirited audience attended a roundtable featuring these individuals at the 2004 Peace Science Meeting in Houston, Texas. We are confident that the readers of this volume will similarly be engaged and will find the dialogue on the contributions and weakness of control variables useful for their own research. The origins of this special issue can be traced to James Lee Ray’s 2002 Presidential Address to the Peace Science Society (published in 2003). In that address, Ray argued that international conflict scholars had become obsessed with control variables. He warned us of the perils of interpreting results from models with too many independent variables and set down five guidelines for assessing whether to use controls and how to do so if one must. Returning to that theme, Ray leads off this issue with a paper demonstrating what he would consider the pitfalls of multivariate analysis by examining a particular research program, namely a series of dyadic democratic peace papers. John Oneal and Bruce Russett take Ray to task in the next paper, arguing that their own democratic peace research would not have progressed, especially in terms of being able to evaluate alternative theories, without the use of control variables. In our own contribution to this issue, we make a leap of faith and submit some of our own research on the systemic democratic peace to Ray’s five guidelines,

Reevaluating Gender and IR Scholarship Moving beyond Reiter’s Dichotomies toward Effective Synergies

We seek a more accurate review of, and reflection on the gender and international relations (IR) literature than that offered by Reiter. Our evaluation corrects misunderstandings related to key dichotomies (mis)used in analyzing scholarship: sex/gender, positivism/nonpositivism, and epistemology/ontology. It also underscores the comparative strengths and weaknesses of different types of research in order to identify more fruitful possibilities for synthesis. We make the pluralist case that gender and IR research is at its best when it is multimethod, epistemologically pluralist, multisited, and carefully navigates the differences between feminist analyses and large-n statistical studies. The potential payoff of careful, synergistic engagement is worth any risks.

Gendered participation, well-being, and representations in political violence: An introduction

Since the October 2000 adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security, scholarly study and policy attention on the inclusion of women and gender into peace and conflict processes has grown tremendously. Although UNSCR 1325 advocates presumed that incorporating women and gender issues into peace processes would improve the prospects of peace and security around the globe, critics point to its core tenets’ reliance on an essentialist view of women (e.g. Sjoberg and Gentry, 2007). All the articles in this collection question the assumption that ‘‘women’’ constitute a monolithic group. The authors see, examine, and query variation in the impacts of war and conflict on women’s statuses and lives as well as in the effect women have on war, conflict, and post-conflict environments. Research on women and politics similarly focuses on disaggregating women’s experiences and interactions with politics, because women are rarely a cohesive group with a single unifying set of political priorities or preferences (e.g. Childs and Krook, 2009; Htun, 2004). This collection’s authors critique and challenge both the portrayals and the empirical reality of women’s involvements in conflict and peace, focusing on the differentiated ways that institutions, agency, and conflict dynamics condition how women are affected by and affect conflict and the post-conflict setting. In particular, the articles examine the diverse ways in which women participate and are portrayed participating in conflict and war (e.g. as victims, perpetrators, and as variously positioned in hierarchies), how conflict and the threat of conflict affects women’s security and welfare, and how the integration of gender into security and legal frameworks influences the post-conflict environment. The first article investigates the social contexts of how women participate in conflict. In ‘‘The social origins of female combatants,’’ Jakana Thomas and Reed Wood focus on the social gender norms and economic conditions that create opportunities for women to be recruited by and join rebel organizations, not only in supportive roles but also as combatants. The authors conclude that societal gender expectations and equality condition the