Zeev Maoz

Normative and Structural Causes of Democratic Peace, 1946–1986.

Democratic states are in general about as conflict- and war-prone as nondemocracies, but democracies have rarely clashed with one another in violent conflict. We first show that democracy, as well as other factors, accounts for the relative lack of conflict. Then we examine two explanatory models. The normative model suggests that democracies do not fight each other because norms of compromise and cooperation prevent their conflicts of interest from escalating into violent clashes. The structural model asserts that complex political mobilization processes impose institutional constraints on the leaders of two democracies confronting each other to make violent conflict unfeasible. Using different data sets of international conflict and a multiplicity of indicators, we find that (1) democracy, in and of itself, has a consistent and robust negative effect on the likelihood of conflict or escalation in a dyad; (2) both the normative and structural models are supported by the data; and (3) support for the normative model is more robust and consistent.

Militarized Interstate Disputes, 1816-1976

This article offers an empirical description and discussion of interstate conflict behavior. The basis is a recently completed data set consisting of all recorded instances of threats, displays, and uses of military force among states since 1816. We detail historical trends in the data and describe major dimensions of dispute behavior, including patterns of participation, duration, severity and escalation, regional distribution, and national dispute proneness. The following conclusions are suggested: First, patterns of dispute behavior have been more persistent over time than we often assume. Second, when these patterns have changed, the changes have been evolutionary in nature and have paralleled changes in the size and composition of the interstate system. Third, despite the diversity of the political units that constitute the interstate system, patterns of dispute behavior are generalizable across geographic boundaries.

Regime Types and International Conflict, 1816-1976

This study replicates and extends previous inquiries on the relations between regime type and conflict involvement of states. It examines the robustness of previous findings with respect to various regime attributes, various conflict involvement measures, and units of analysis. Using two comprehensive datasets on polity characteristics and militarized interstate disputes, the empirical analyses reveal: (1) There are no relations between regime type and conflict involvement measures when the unit of analysis is the individual polity (i.e., a state characterized by a certain regime type over a given time span); this finding is robust in that it holds over most regime characteristics and conflict involvement measures. (2) There is a significant relationship between the regime characteristics of a dyad and the probability of conflict involvement of that dyad: Democracies rarely clash with one another, and never fight one another in war. (3) Both the proportion of democratic dyads and the proportion of autocratic dyads in the international system significantly affect the number of disputes begun and underway. But the proportion of democratic dyads in the system has a negative effect on the number of wars begun and on the proportion of disputes that escalate to war.

Alliance, contiguity, wealth, and political stability: Is the lack of conflict among democracies a statistical artifact? 1

Scholars increasingly are accepting the empirical generalization that democracies almost never go to war with each other, and infrequently even engage in militarized disputes with each other. It has not been clear, however, whether the rarity of conflict between democracies is caused by some aspect of being democratic, or whether it is caused by some other variable or variables that may be correlated with democracy. Using data on all independent states for the period 1946–1986, we examine the effects of political system type, distance, wealth, economic growth, alliances, and political stability. The results suggest that, although most of the other variables do have an effect, as hypothesized, there still seems to be an independent effect of political system type: democracies engage in militarized disputes with each other less than would be expected by chance. The effect may be enhanced by political stability; that is, states which can be perceived as stable democracies are less likely to be involved in di...

FRAMING THE NATIONAL INTEREST: THE MANIPULATION OF FOREIGN POLICY DECISIONS IN GROUP SETTINGS

Social psychologists have long attempted to explain the group-induced shift phenomenon: that it is impossible to predict group choices from knowledge of individual preferences prior to group discussion, and that individuals change their choices during group deliberations. Most explanations of group-induced shifts have focused on substantive changes in individual preferences induced by group dynamics. This study explores the possibility that individual preferences do not necessarily change in the course of group discussions. Rather, decision makers may switch their choice in part because one or more individuals manipulate the decision-making process in a manner that helps them achieve their desired outcome. The study distinguishes between rational and nonrational variations of decisional manipulation and considers examples of U.S. and Israeli foreign policy choices under crisis conditions to illustrate such processes. The implications of these ideas for the study of foreign policy decisions are discussed.

Joining the Club of Nations: Political Development and International Conflict, 1816–1976

This study examines the relationships between regime formation, regime change, and international conflict. A distinction is made between evolutionary and revolutionary state formation processes as well as between revolutionary and evolutionary changes within existing states. It is hypothesized that revolutionary state formations and regime changes result in high levels of post-independence or post-regime change involvement in interstate disputes. On the other hand, evolutionary political development and regime change results in low levels of conflict involvement. These patterns of individual state involvement in international conflict provide new insights into the high correlations between the size of the international system and a variety of interstate conflict attributes. The political development model suggests that the number of interstate conflicts in the system will increase when a large number of states are undergoing revolutionary regime changes, even when there is no change in the number of states in the system. These propositions are tested on data covering nearly all interstate system members in the 1816–1976 period. In addition, the extent to which the political development model accounts for patterns of contagious spread of international conflict is examined. The implications of the relations between internal processes of political development and change and interstate disputes for the study of international politics are examined.

The World Religion Dataset, 1945–2010: Logic, Estimates, and Trends

This study introduces a new dataset on world religions. The World Religion Project consists of (a) a systematically developed classification of major world religions and religious families within major world religions, which enabled (b) the collection of data on the distribution of the population of all states in the international system across these religious categories, over the period of 1945–2010, and (c) a set of methods to reconcile among conflicting data from multiple sources, to deal with missing data, and to integrate multiple figures for a given observation. In the present study we discuss the significance of the World Religion Project, its internal logic and the development of the religion tree system of classification, and the data collection and data management process. We then provide a number of descriptive statistics about national, dyadic, regional, and global distributions of world religions, as well as some preliminary relationships between the religious similarity of states and their regime type, alliance patterns, and propensity to conflict. We discuss the potential contribution of this dataset to the study of the relationship between religion and international conflict and cooperation.

Structural Equivalence and International Conflict

The concept of international affinity—albeit under different names—captures a central place in international relations research. This study examines how different types of affinity affect the likelihood of conflict between states. The authors discuss different types of affinities as these appear in the realist and liberal paradigms. They offer a social networks conception of structural affinity—the concept of structural equivalence—which reflects the similarity of international ties across a set of different networks. They test the hypotheses derived from these paradigms, using both existing measures of affinity and their own structural equivalence measures. Their findings suggest that (1) strategic affinity has a consistent dampening effect on the probability of dyadic conflict, (2) trade-related affinity does consistently affect the probability of dyadic conflict, and (3) intergovernmental organization-related affinity has a negative impact on conflict, mostly in the twentieth century.

Resolve, Capabilities, and the Outcomes of Interstate Disputes, 1816-1976

This study attempts to explain the recurring empirical observation that initiators of interstate disputes, both those that escalated into wars and those that ended otherwise, are disproportionately likely to win. Two competing models are developed: (1) The capability model argues that the outcome of the dispute is a function of the balance of capabilities among the protagonists and that the strongest prevails. (2) The resolve model argues that dispute outcomes are determined by the balance of motivation and resolve among the protagonists; that is, the actor with the highest level of resolve is likely to win. A random sample of 164 disputes is used to test these two models. The findings suggest that capabilities are unrelated to dispute outcomes, whereas resolve variables are consistently related to dispute outcomes. The implications for conflict management and conflict escalation are discussed.

What is the Enemy of My Enemy? Causes and Consequences of Imbalanced International Relations, 1816-2001

This study explores logical and empirical implications of friendship and enmity in world politics by linking indirect international relations (e.g., “the enemy of my enemy,” “the enemy of my friend”) to direct relations (“my friend,” “my enemy”). The realist paradigm suggests that states ally against common enemies and thus states sharing common enemies should not fight each other. Nor are states expected to ally with enemies of their allies or with allies of their enemies. Employing social network methodology to measure direct and indirect relations, we find that international interactions over the last 186 years exhibit significant relational imbalances: states that share the same enemies and allies are disproportionately likely to be both allies and enemies at the same time. Our explanation of the causes and consequences of relational imbalances for international conflict/cooperation combines ideas from the realist and the liberal paradigms. “Realist” factors such as the presence of strategic rivalry, opportunism and exploitative tendencies, capability parity, and contiguity increase the likelihood of relational imbalances. On the other hand, factors consistent with the liberal paradigm (e.g., joint democracy, economic interdependence, shared IGO membership) tend to reduce relational imbalances. Finally, we find that the likelihood of conflict increases with the presence of relational imbalances. We explore the theoretical and practical implications of these issues.