Timothy Nordstrom

The Correlates of War 2 International Governmental Organizations Data Version 2.0

This article summarizes the new Correlates of War 2 International Governmental Organizations (IGOs) data. The data in the Correlates of War IGO data sets capture state memberships in the network of international governmental organizations. The expanded version 2.0 updates the original Wallace and Singer (1970) data set to provide membership information from1964 to 2001. Following a brief review of the literature pertaining to IGOs and world politics, we provide descriptions of all three versions of the data (country-year, IGO-year, and joint dyadic membership), discuss coding rules and subsequent changes to the data, and present graphical representations of changes in the network of IGOs over time using all three versions of the data.

Economic Performance, Institutional Intermediation, and Democratic Survival

The breakdown of democracies has long been associated with poor economic performance. This study attempts to determine whether different configurations of democratic institutions can mediate the effects of poor economic performance. Using an original data set that includes all democracies from the period 1919 to 1995, we use continuous-time duration analysis to test hypotheses derived from the literature on democratization. Specifically, we test the interaction of party system and the configuration of legislative and executive power (parliamentarism and presidentialism) with economic performance to explain the likelihood of breakdown. Results suggest that majoritarian variants of democracy are more resistant to economic contraction than pluralist ones. Under conditions of economic growth, pluralist democracies outperform majoritarian ones.

Foreign Policy Substitutability and Internal Economic Problems in Enduring Rivalries

The authors advance a general perspective on how to incorporate the notion of foreign policy substitutability in probabilistic models of international politics. They suggest that substitutability may be dealt with in one of two ways, namely, (1) through better specification or (2) through the use of multinomial logit analysis techniques. Their solution is applied to the substantive problem of how internal economic conditions affect the behavior of states in enduring rivalries. States in rivalries might react to worsening economic problems by either (1) escalating conflict within the rivalry to gain the benefits of a diversionary conflict or (2) seeking to settle the rivalry to free up resources that can be directed toward dealing with economic problems. The possibility that seemingly contradictory policies may be undertaken requires the use of a model for analysis that takes into account substitutability. The authors perform empirical analysis to determine how economic conditions may simultaneously affect the probabilities of dispute initiation and rivalry termination.

Democratic Variants and Democratic Variance: How Domestic Constraints Shape Interstate Conflict

Recent work on democratic processes (elections, parties, etc.) and foreign policy behavior makes a variety of claims about how those processes influence the decision to resort to arms. Some work also claims the diversity in the family of democracies produces different types of behaviors across democratic systems. While much theoretical and empirical rigor has been brought to bear on these issues, little attention is paid to how democratic processes shape the variance in foreign policy behavior both across different democratic systems and within systems across time. This article explores variants of democratic systems and variance in democratic systems with respect to interstate conflict.

ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE AND SURVIVAL IN NEW DEMOCRACIES Is There a Honeymoon Effect

In the literature on democratic survival, theories of democratic consolidation assume that new democracies are more vulnerable to breakdown. Theories of democratic honeymoons, however, claim that new democracies are less vulnerable to breakdown. This article addresses this seeming contradiction. Using an original data set that includes all democracies from the period 1951 to 1995, the authors use discrete-time duration analysis to determine if there is evidence for a period of enhanced survivability in new democracies. Using both continuous and discrete specifications of a honeymoon period, they test whether new democracies experience an absolute honeymoon (whether newness in itself makes them less prone to breakdown) or a relative honeymoon (where newness insulates them from the effect of poor economic performance). The results suggest that there is a short-lived absolute honeymoon, but that new democracies are actually more vulnerable to effects of poor economic performance prior to their third legislative election.

War, Power, and Bargaining

Existing research on power and war contends that the distribution of power exerts an independent effect on the chances of armed conflict. However, theories of bargaining indicate that powers influence on war depends on the ex ante distribution of benefits and has a specific functional form. We test that claim, showing that the effect of power on war rests heavily on the distribution of benefits. Our findings strongly suggest bargaining explanations may subsume other arguments about power and war both theoretically and empirically.

Allying for Peace: Treaty Obligations and Conflict between Allies

We argue that certain provisions of alliance treaties can signal credible commitments to a peaceful relationship among members and establish institutional mechanisms that promote the settlement of disagreements through peaceful negotiation. Nonaggression, peaceful dispute settlement, military institutionalization, and permanent organization provisions should increase the duration of peace between alliance members; we test our hypotheses with a duration model. The analysis generally supports our expectations except that alliances that create permanent organizations, even those specifically established to arbitrate disagreements, are associated with shorter durations of peace. We conclude with some implications of our argument for the study of military alliances and international institutions more broadly.

Preying on the Misfortune of Others: When Do States Exploit Their Opponents’ Domestic Troubles?

Scholarly work on diversionary war is ubiquitous as is the observation that findings in the literature are mixed. One reason for these mixed results may be that potential targets strategically avoid conflict. Another theoretical possibility is that some types of domestic trouble restrain state leaders’ foreign policy behavior rather than giving them an incentive to use force. These domestic conditions could provide their international opponents with an opportunity to exploit the state’s weakness. If a state interprets its opponent’s domestic context as an opportunity to take advantage of a weakness, then we should anticipate greater aggressiveness rather than the passive avoidance behavior much work on strategic interaction and the use of force suggests. Our heteroskedastic model provides evidence that where some domestic conditions create threats for foreign opponents, others provide opportunities.

Risky Inference: Unobserved Treatment Effects in Conflict Studies

This article illustrates the importance of testing empirical models in samples appropriate to the theories the models are intended to test. While social science appears to mandate that we prefer general theories to limited ones, the generality of a theory rests in its logical application to a set of observations, not solely to its statistical survival in a large data set. Theories in international relations, especially those linking domestic turmoil and international conflict, are advancing, but are sometimes applied to samples larger than the related theories indicate. This paper examines the statistical consequences of estimation in overexpansive samples with unmodeled treatment effects; we argue that samples containing cases that cannot experience the causal phenomenon in question produce unmodeled treatment effects, and we reexamine three published articles whose samples are perhaps broader than their theories suggest they should be. The empirical analyses demonstrate that overexpansive samples can produce somewhat misleading results: the new models produce interesting findings that emerge as treatment effects are identified.

Intergovernmental Organization Memberships: Examining Political Community and the Attributes of International Organizations

Why are states jointly members in certain intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) but not others? Despite the proliferation of IGOs and renewed interest in this topic, we lack systematic research to answer this question. Our theory of political community explains why dyads of states are likely to be common members in particular types of IGOs. We analyze and compare functionalist and Deutschian communitarian perspectives about IGO memberships. We test our theory using newly available data on IGO mandates and institutional structure, which allows us to make specific predictions about the types of IGO to which dyads become members. We show that dyads that are economically dependent, and/or democratic and enjoying enduring peace, are more likely to join those IGOs that possess high levels of institutional structure. Militarized interstate conflicts reduce the likelihood of states sharing membership in common IGO, but not substantially, whereas development and alliances also increase IGO memberships between states. Trade ties, however, are the most important determinant of joint membership between states in the most institutionalized IGOs, which is congruent with security communities.