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The article reviews the literature on the relationship between democracy and armed conflict, internal as well as interstate. The review points to several similarities between how democratic institutions affect both conflict types. It summarizes the main empirical findings and discusses the most prominent explanations as well as the most important objections raised to the finding, empirically and theoretically. To a large degree, the empirical finding that pairs of democratic states have a lower risk of interstate conflict than other pairs holds up, as does the conclusion that consolidated democracies have less conflict than semi-democracies. The most critical challenge to both conclusions is the position that both democracy and peace are due to pre-existing socio-economic conditions. I conclude that this objection has considerable leverage, but it also seems clear that economic development is unlikely to bring about lasting peace alone, without the formalization embedded in democratic institutions.

The gravity model of trade states that the volume of trade between two countries is proportional to the product of the sizes of the two countries and the inverse of the distance between them. The gravity model, however, was initially suggested for other types of social interactions, and it also predicts well the probability of militarized disputes. This raises a concern about omitted-variable bias in the literature on trade and conflict: if the gravity model is correlated with both trade and conflict, it is necessary to control for the size of both countries in the dyad. In this article, I analyze the nature of this bias both empirically and theoretically. I find that a correct model specification leads to a stronger relationship between trade and conflict than in the traditional models. However, the empirical finding must be reinterpreted: what is crucial is not the relationship between the value of the bilateral trade and the size of the larger economy in the dyad (`trade dependence'), but rather `trade efficiency'—the extent to which the two countries trade more than expected from the gravity model.

Esteban & Ray formalize the argument that conflict is likely to be more intense when individuals in a society are divided into two clearly identifiable groups where differences within groups are considerably smaller than differences between groups. They show that such polarization increases conflict, and they introduce a theoretical basis for its quantitative measurement. This article applies Esteban & Ray's (ER) measure of polarization to two international distributions: the world income distribution and the distribution of political systems. The article discusses extensions of the ER measure that render it independent of the number of groups in the system, and investigates empirically whether any of the three types of polarization are associated with conflict in the form of militarized interstate disputes. The results are rather inconclusive, despite the fact that some of the micro-level regularities consistent with the polarization and conflict argument have solid support in previous studies.

Countries have better abilities and stronger incentives to engage in militarized conflicts the larger and more powerful they are. The article applies Zipf's notion of a ``gravity model'' to the risk of interstate conflict and argues that the empirical relationship between size and distance and conflict is stronger than any other identified in dyadic statistical studies of interstate conflict. Most empirical studies of interstate conflict fail to take size properly into account. The article shows that controlling for size variables improves the estimation of other variables of interest, and it explores the impact of omitting size variables for the investigation of the power preponderance versus power parity debate. The results indicate that even though a power capability ratio variable suggests asymmetric dyads are less conflict-prone, the risk-increasing effect of power itself means that a unilateral increase of power in one country increases the risk of conflict.

Gartzke and Li (2003b) formulate a mathematical relationship between "trade share," "trade dependence," and "trade openness," and use this to argue that the disparity between the findings in studies by Barbieri and those of Oneal and Russett and others can partly be explained by features of variable construction. This article argues that although Gartzke and Li's formulation is very useful, the authors draw some conclusions from their analysis that only hold under very restrictive assumptions. "Trade share" does not in general measure a state's disconnectedness from the world trading system, and "trade share" is not associated with a high risk of interstate dispute if "trade dependence" is associated with a low risk. What Gartzke and Li attribute to "trade share" is rather an effect of trade substition from one partner to another. Finally, the trade openness variable may be a proxy for country size. The discussion also illustrates some problems involved in controlling for variables that are related by definition to a key explanatory variable.

An important key to reducing the suffering due to civil war is to shorten conflicts. The marked decrease in the incidence of conflicts in the 1990s was mostly due to a high number of conflict terminations, not to a decrease in the number of new wars. The articles in this special issue treat theoretically and empirically the determinants of civil war onset, duration, and termination, with particular emphasis on duration and termination. This introduction gives an overview of the articles in the special issue and discusses a few central topics covered by the different contributions: rebel group motivations, the importance of financing, military factors, misperception, and commitment problems. Finally, the article sums up some policy recommendations that may be derived from the articles in the issue.

A measure— trade efficiency—that models the extent to which individual economic entities within two countries trade with each other is used to investigate the claim that symmetrical dependence on trade between two states is required for the trade bond to reduce the probability of interstate conflict. This measure is better suited to study this question than existing measures since it is by definition uncorrelated with asymmetries in country size. The relationship between the different conceptions of interdependence and militarized conflict is explored in an expected utility model of trade, distribution of resources, and conflict. For the particular pacifying mechanisms of trade studied here, the model supports the view that trade reduces the incentives for conflict but that this effect is most clearly seen in relatively symmetric dyads.

Dorussen (1999) concludes that trade between states reduces the incentives for conflict, but that the effect of trade diminishes with a larger number of countries. I demonstrate that the indicator Dorussen uses to gauge the impact of trade is dependent on the size of the system itself, & therefore may be an inappropriate means by which to evaluate the relationship between the impact of trade & system size. Two alternative indicators to analyze the impact of trade on conflict in Dorussen's model are suggested: the ratio of the minimum winning probabilities required for war to pay with trade & without, & the threshold for war costs under which war will pay for one of the states. Using the alternative indicators, I corroborate his conclusion that trade does reduce the incentives for conflict in this model. The alternative indicators, however, indicate that trade reduces an actor's incentives for conflict more the more states there are in the system. 1 Figure, 9 References. [Copyright 2002 Sage Publications Ltd.]

This article investigates the liberal idea that trade between two states reduces the likelihood of militarized conflict between them. Richard Rosecrance's argument that industrial-technological developments have made peaceful trading strategies more efficient today is examined in connection with the empirical literature on trade and conflict. Development affects the utility calculations of states: since the costs of seizing and holding a territory increase with increased development, and the relative utility of occupying the territory decreases, the chance that the expected utility of occupation will exceed the expected costs decreases with increased development. Likewise, since the utility of trade increases with increased development, then increased development also makes it more likely that the expected costs of breaking the trade bonds will exceed the gains to be expected from occupation. Consequently, the relationship between trade and conflict is contingent on the level of development. Using Cox regression, and introducing a new measure of interdependence based on a gravity model of trade, I demonstrate that there is a clear negative relationship between trade and conflict. However, this relationship is basically restricted to dyads consisting of two developed dyads. Development itself is strongly associated with peaceful behavior. The results also suggest that the democratic peace requires a minimum level of development to be efficient.