Suchergebnisse

The Invisible Hand of Peace shows that the domestic institutions associated with capitalism, namely private property and competitive market structures, have promoted peace between states over the past two centuries. It employs a wide range of historical and statistical evidence to illustrate both the broad applicability of these claims and their capacity to generate new explanations of critical historical events, such as the emergence of the Anglo-American friendship at the end of the nineteenth century, the outbreak of World War I, and the evolution of the recent conflict across the Taiwan Strait. By showing that this capitalist peace has historically been stronger than the peace among democratic states, these findings also suggest that contemporary American foreign policy should be geared toward promoting economic liberalization rather than democracy in the post-9/11 world

AbstractThis paper blends recent research on hierarchy and democratization to examine the theoretical and empirical costs of treating regime type exogenously in the literature most identified with studying its impact on international politics. It argues that the apparent peace among democratic states that emerges in the aftermath of World War I is not caused by domestic institutional attributes normally associated with democracy. Instead, this peace is an artifact of historically specific great power settlements. These settlements shape subsequent aggregate patterns of military conflict by altering the organizational configuration of the system in three critical ways—by creating new states, by altering hierarchical orders, and by influencing regime type in states. These claims are defended with a series of tests that show first how the statistical relationship between democracy and peace has exhibited substantial variation across great power orders; second, that this statistical relationship breaks down with theoretically motivated research design changes; and third, that great powers foster peace and similar regime types within their hierarchical orders. In short, the relationship between democracy and peace is spurious. The international political order is still built and managed by great powers.

This article examines how commerce promotes peace between states. It diverges from the commercial peace literature and its predominant focus on international trade by looking inside the domestic economy to see how its structure influences conflict. Drawing on selectorate theory, I argue that substantial quantities of public property generate fiscal autonomy for governments, strengthen their hold on the domestic reigns of power, and create opportunities to pursue more aggressive foreign policies. A series of statistical tests shows that greater quantities of publicly held assets increase the likelihood that a state will participate in military conflict. Given that the predominance of privately held property is one of the defining institutions of capitalism, these results support the claim that capitalism promotes peace.

This study argues that a subtle shift in the primary independent variable of the commercial peace literature—from trade to free trade—provides an opportunity to respond to the some of the strongest criticisms of this research program. Free trade, and not just trade, promotes peace by removing an important foundation of domestic privilege—protective barriers to international commerce—that enhances the domestic power of societal groups likely to support war, reduces the capacity of free-trading interests to limit aggression in foreign policy, and simultaneously generates political support for the state often used to build its war machine. A series of statistical tests demonstrates that higher levels of free trade, rather than trade alone, reduce military conflict between states. Moreover, contrary to conventional wisdom, these arguments suggest how the puzzling case of World War I may confirm, rather than contradict, the central claims of commercial liberalism.

Abstract
This paper presents a set of theoretical models that links a two-phase sequence of cooperative political integration and conflict to explore the reciprocal relationship between war and state formation. It compares equilibria rates of state formation and conflict using a Monte Carlo that generates comparative statics by altering the systemic distribution of ideology, population, tax rates, and war costs across polities. This approach supports three core findings. First, war-induced political integration is at least 2.5 times as likely to occur as integration to realize economic gains. Second, we identify mechanisms linking endogenous organizations to the likelihood of conflict in the system. For example, a greater domestic willingness to support public goods production facilitates the creation of buffer states that reduce the likelihood of a unique class of trilateral wars. These results suggest that the development of the modern administrative state has helped to foster peace. Third, we explore how modelling assumptions setting the number of actors in a strategic context can shape conclusions about war and state formation. We find that dyadic modelling restrictions tend to underestimate the likelihood of cooperative political integration and overestimate the likelihood of war relative to a triadic modelling context.

Despite substantial evidence that international trade has promoted peace in the post—World War II era, the commercial peace research program still faces an important historical challenge. Dramatic economic integration in the nineteenth century failed to prevent the increasing interstate hostilities that culminated in the outbreak of war in 1914. This article uses a theoretical revision grounded in standard trade theory to reexamine the relationship between commerce and peace in the fifty years before World War I, a period often referred to as the first era of globalization. The article focuses on domestic conflict over commercial policy rather than on interdependence to understand the conditions under which globalization promotes peace. In a sample dating from 1865 to 1914, the authors find that lower regulatory barriers to commerce reduce participation in militarized interstate disputes. Contradicting conventional wisdom, this evidence affirms a basic premise of commercial liberalism during the first era of globalization—free trade promotes peace.