Sara McLaughlin Mitchell

Alliance Treaty Obligations and Provisions, 1815-1944

This article introduces the Alliance Treaty Obligations and Provisions (ATOP) dataset. We begin by describing the rationale for collecting the ATOP data, its scope, and some general coding rules for the project. Then we offer some descriptive statistics for phase one of the dataset, which covers the years 1815-1944, and reveal some interesting trends in alliance politics. Finally, we replicate a study of alliance formation originally conducted by Lai and Reiter (2000) to demonstrate the effect the use of ATOP data may have on past inferences about alliance politics.

Bones of Contention: Comparing Territorial, Maritime, and River Issues

Contentious issues are important sources of militarized conflict. This article advances an issue-based approach to world politics, focusing on disagreements over territory, maritime zones, and cross-border rivers. We characterize militarized conflict and peaceful techniques as substitutable foreign policy tools that states can adopt to resolve disagreements over issues, and we present hypotheses to account for issue management based on issue salience and recent interaction over the same issue. Empirical analyses reveal that states are more likely to use both militarized conflict and peaceful methods when the issue at stake is more salient, both when the general issue type is considered more salient and when the specific issue under contention has greater within-issue salience. Recent issue management also plays an important role, as histories of both militarized conflict and failed peaceful settlements increase pressure to take further action to settle the issue.

Reevaluating Alliance Reliability Specific Threats, Specific Promises

Previously reported empirical evidence suggests that when conflict arises, military alliances are not reliable; state leaders should only expect their alliance partners to join them in war about 25% of the time. Yet, theoretical arguments explaining the choices of leaders to form cooperative agreements are at odds with such empirical evidence. This puzzling gap between theory and evidence motivates a reconsideration of previous measures of alliance reliability. Many alliance treaties include specific language regarding the circumstances under which the alliance comes into effect, often limiting obligations to disputes with specific target states or in specific geographic areas, and many treaties do not go so far as to require states to join in active fighting. Considering the specific obligations included in alliance agreements provides an improved estimate of the propensity of states to honor their commitments. Results show that alliances are reliable 74.5% of the time.

A Kantian System? Democracy and Third-Party Conflict Resolution

While constructivist scholars have recognized an important role for norms in international relations, they have not considered the changing proportion of democratic states in the international system as a potential source of norm formation. I argue that democratic norms become international norms as the proportion of democratic states in the international system increases, focusing on the democratic norm of third party dispute resolution. I reach the novel conclusion that non-democratic states are more likely to behave like democratic states, adopting democratic norms, as the proportion of democracies increases. Empirical analysis of peaceful settlement attempts of territorial claims in the Americas supports this hypothesis. Third party settlement is sixteen times more likely for non-democratic dyads when the proportion of democracies in the system is 50% than when the proportion is zero. My theory and empirical results offer new insight into the democratic peace literature and the constructivist literature on international norms.

Rivalry and Diversionary Uses of Force

Scholars have argued for some time that the rally ’round the flag phenomenon creates incentives for political leaders to use military force to divert attention away from domestic turmoil. It is hypothesized that a state’s strategic or historical context conditions its use of military force abroad, and that the probability of diversionary uses of force is higher in opportunity-rich environments of enduring rivalry. Empirical analyses lend support to this hypothesis, showing that high levels of inflation increase the probability of militarized dispute initiation in settings of rivalry but actually decrease it in nonrival settings. However, the results are contingent on the regime type of the potential initiator. Consistent with recent strategic models of diversion, the analyses demonstrate that although democratic leaders have the greatest incentives to divert, they have fewer opportunities to do so due to the transparency of their regimes.

Evolution in Democracy-War Dynamics

This article explores the evolutionary and endogenous relationship between democracy and war at the system level. Building on Kant, the authors argue that the rules and norms of behavior within and between democracies become more prevalent in international relations as the number of democracies in the system increases. The authors use Kalman filter analysis, which allows for the parameters in the models to vary over time. The results support the propositions that democratization tends to follow war, that democratization decreases the systemic amount of war, and that the substantive and pacific impact of democracy on war increases over time.

The International Court of Justice and the World's Three Legal Systems

This paper seeks to understand why some countries accept the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) more readily than others. The theory focuses on institutional differences between the worlds major legal systems: civil law, common law, and Islamic law. Important characteristics of these legal systems (stare decisis, bona fides, pacta sunt servanda) are integrated in an expressive theory of adjudication, which focuses on how adjudication enhances interstate cooperation by correlating strategies, constructing focal points, and signaling information. The theory considers the ability of states to communicate with each other, using acceptance of ICJ jurisdiction as a form of cheap talk. Empirical analyses show (1) civil law states are more likely to accept the jurisdiction of the ICJ than common law or Islamic law states, (2) common law states place the greatest number of restrictions on their ICJ commitments, and (3) Islamic law states have the most durable commitments.

Presidential Uses of Force During the Cold War: Aggregation, Truncation, and Temporal Dynamics

A previous version of this article was presented at the 1999 North American Meeting of the Peace Science Society International, Ann Arbor, MI. A lengthier version of the article is available at http://www.fsu.edu/~polisci/wksp_papers/workingpapers/wp2000.htm. We would like to thank Matt Baum, Patrick Brandt, Ashley Leeds, and several anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on previous drafts. A replication data set will be deposited with the ICPSR’s Publication-Related Archive (http://www.icpsr.umich.edu).

IO Mediation of Interstate Conflicts: Moving Beyond the Global vs. Regional Dichotomy

Regional and global intergovernmental organizations have grown both in number and scope, yet their role and effectiveness as conflict managers is not fully understood. Previous research efforts tend to categorize organizations solely by the scope of their membership, which obscures important sources of variation in institutional design at both the regional and global levels. International organizations will be more successful conflict managers if they are highly institutionalized, if they have members with homogeneous preferences, and if they have more established democratic members. These hypotheses are evaluated with data on territorial (1816-2001), maritime (1900-2001), and river (1900-2001) claims from the Issue Correlates of War (ICOW) project in the Western Hemisphere, Europe, and the Middle East. Empirical analysis suggests that international organizations are more likely to help disputing parties reach an agreement if they have more democratic members, if they are highly institutionalized, and when they use binding management techniques.

Predicting Rank Attainment in Political Science: What Else Besides Publications Affects Promotion?

We report the results of hypotheses tests about the effects of several measures of research, teaching, and service on the likelihood of achieving the ranks of associate and full professor. In conducting these tests, we control for institutional and individual background characteristics. We focus our tests on the link between productivity and academic rank and explore whether this relationship reveals a gender dimension. The analyses are based on an APSA-sponsored survey of all faculty members in departments of political science (government, public affairs, and international relations) in the United States.