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This article expands upon the traditional interstate rivalry concept by focusing on two conceptual dimensions of interstate rivalry: issues and militarization. The first dimension captures the number of distinct issues that characterize a dyadic interstate relationship, such as repeated clashes between states over border disputes, maritime zones, or cross-border rivers. The second dimension is very similar to the dispute density approach to rivalry, and captures the number of militarized incidents over specific contentious issues. The first dimension of issue rivalry is coded by identifying pairs of states with two or more (simultaneous) contentious issues. The second dimension of militarized rivalry is coded for single issues (such as a border dispute), capturing the presence of two or more militarized incidents over that issue in the past. Empirical analyses of these two new rivalry measures in the Western Hemisphere and Western Europe show some important variation in these rivalry dimensions. Issue rivals and militarized rivals are significantly more likely to employ militarized force and peaceful negotiation techniques to resolve geopolitical issues in comparison with dyads that experience contentious issues in non-rivalry settings. On the other hand, dyads characterized by issue rivalry do not experience disputes that escalate to high levels of violence, such as fatalities or wars. It is only prior militarization of a specific contentious issue that leads states down the path to war.

Scholars have long been fascinated by the potential for leaders to engage in diversionary behavior, where leaders use militarized force abroad to distract their publics from various forms of domestic economic and political turmoil. While there is some evidence that diversionary behavior depends on contextual factors such as regime type, opportunities to use force, and interstate rivalry, we do not know whether and how diversionary strategies are used by states to resolve contentious issues. In fact, most diversionary studies compare the initiation of militarized disputes or crises to non-initiation cases, without considering the slew of interstate interactions in between these extremes, where states have an ongoing contested issue that gets managed with both peaceful and militarized conflict management tools. In this article, we extend theories of diversionary behavior to the context of issue claims, including competing claims to territory, maritime areas, and cross-border rivers as coded by the Issue Correlates of War (ICOW) project. Thinking about an ongoing issue claim as a potential diversionary opportunity, we examine the empirical effect of domestic turmoil on the militarization of issue claims. We consider whether issue diversionary behavior is conditioned by the salience level of the issue, previous wars over the issue in question, and whether the disputing states are involved in a broader rivalry. In a broad sample of directed dyad-years, we find that states are more likely to initiate militarized disputes if they are involved in contentious issues claims. We also find that states involved in issue claims are more likely to initiate a militarized dispute if they have high levels of inflation and if they are contesting over highly salient and previously militarized issues.

This paper explores the relationship between domestic legal systems and the design of commitments to the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Empirical analyses demonstrate that civil law states are more willing to recognize the compulsory and compromissory jurisdiction of the World Court than common law or Islamic law states. Common law states place the highest number of reservations on their optional clause declarations, with the majority of those restrictions relating to specific areas of international law. Civil law states typically embed compromissory clauses in multilateral treaties, while common and Islamic law states prefer recognition of the ICJ's jurisdiction through bilateral treaties.

We submit our recent systemic democratic peace research to the control variable doctrine of James Lee Ray, as codified in his 2003 treatise. In particular, we seek to determine whether international institutions intervene in the relationship between the democratic community's strength and the use and effectiveness of third party conflict management, whether hegemony is a competing explanation of third party settlement, and whether our extant model is robust when several control variables are specified. Two important conclusions are reached: (1) the democratic community's strength and institutional vitality promote third party mediation and its success, regardless of hegemonic might and other controls; and 2) Ray's teaching is properly understood as an exhortation for scholars to more carefully consider the theoretical role of each control variable and its proper treatment in statistical models, not as an edict banning the use of control variables.