Selection effects and dispute escalation: Democracy and status quo evaluations

Robert A. Hart and William Reed

International Interactions, 1999, vol. 25, issue 3, 243-263

Abstract: Recent research offers inconsistent evidence on the relationship between regime type and the escalation of disputes that do not go to war. We add to this ongoing discussion by evaluating the effect of regime type and status quo evaluations on state decisions to escalate international disputes. We analyze 1,530 bilateral Militarized Interstate Disputes (MIDs) between 1816--1985 using ordered probit models to estimate the effects of regime type and status quo satisfaction on ordinal levels of escalation. Our Findings suggest that democratic initiators and targets are pacific in their escalatory behavior. This finding persists even when we control for the fact that targets are selected into militarized disputes and once we control for the ratio of capabilities between the two disputants. Satisfaction with the status quo also has a significant pacifying influence on escalation. The lack of a pacifying relationship between joint democracy and dispute escalation is suggested to be the product of a dyadic selection effect since pairs of democracies are less likely to experience militarized disputes.

Date: 1999
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DOI: 10.1080/03050629908434951

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