Media Openness, Democracy and Militarized Interstate Disputes

Seung-Whan Choi and Patrick James

British Journal of Political Science, 2007, vol. 37, issue 1, 23-46

Abstract: Mass media play a central role in political life. Media not only transfer information; they also facilitate communication. These functions may ameliorate conflict, crisis and war in world politics. Accordingly, this study looks into the impact of media openness on international conflict. Based on a cross-sectional, time-series dataset for interstate dyads from 1950 to 1992, logistic regression analysis shows that an indicator of media openness has a strong dampening effect on Militarized Interstate Disputes (MIDs) and fatal MIDs. Moreover, this connection is significant even in the presence of a composite indicator of democracy (that measures its institutional attributes using the Polity data), economic interdependence and joint membership in international organizations. The results suggest that the successful neo-Kantian triad is complemented effectively by the presence of media openness.

Date: 2007
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