Development and the Liberal Peace

According to the liberal peace proposition, pairs of democratic states and pairs of states with extensive trade ties are more peaceful than other pairs of states, and democratic states are also more peaceful internally than other regime types. This article reviews the recent literature on the liberal peace, and proceeds to review the literature on how factors assoiciated with socio-economic development are related to democratization, democratic stability, and to the risk of war. Based on this review and a set of recent empirical studies, it argues that development is a precondition for the liberal peace.

How Opportunity Costs Decrease the Probability of War in an Incomplete Information Game

This paper shows that the opportunity costs resulting from economic interdependence decrease the equilibrium probability of war in an incomplete information game. This result is strongly consistent with existing empirical analyses of the inverse trade-conflict relationship, but is the opposite of the conclusion reached by Gartzke et al. (2001), who reject the opportunity cost argument in a game-theoretic framework. As a result of this paper's findings, one cannot dismiss the opportunity cost argument as the explanation why trading nations fight less. Instead this study reaffirms the central position of opportunity costs as the basis for the inverse trade-conflict relationship, thus implying that one need not rely on signaling.war, conflict, trade, trade-conflict relationship, interdependence, incomplete information game, signaling

Emergence and Collapse of Peace with Friend Selection Strategies

A society consisting of agents who can freely choose to attack or not to attack others inevitably evolves into a battling society (a \'war of all against all\'). We investigated whether strategies based on C. Schmitt\'s concept of the political, the distinction of a friend and an enemy, lead to the emergence and collapse of social order. Especially, we propose \'friend selection strategies\' (FSSs), one of which we called the \'us-TFT\' (tit for tat) strategy, which requires an agent to regard one who did not attack him or his \'friends\' as a \'friend\'. We carried out evolutionary simulations on an artificial society consisting of FSS agents. As a result, we found that the us-TFT results in a peaceful society with the emergence of an us-TFT community. In addition, we found that the collapse of a peaceful society is triggered by another FSS strategy called a \'coward\'.Community, Carl Schmitt, a Friend and an Enemy, Tit for Tat, Coward, Evolutionary Simulation

Bargaining and Conflict with Incomplete Information

This paper studies bargaining and conflict under incomplete information, provides an overview and a critical account of the literature on the topic and contributes with original research. We first revise models of mechanism design and sequential bargaining that take confrontation as final. Conflict and inefficiencies are to be expected in these models whenever parties have optimistic prospects on the outcome of the all-out conflict. After examining the causes and reasons for this optimism, we move to the analysis of the recent literature that considers the existence of limited confrontations that allow bargaining to resume. In the presence of private information, these limited conflicts convey information and thus become a bargaining instrument. The paper closes with a discussion on the related empirical literature, the challenges that it faces and some potential avenues for further research.Bargaining, Conflict, Incomplete information, Power, Optimism, Hicks paradox, Uneven contenders paradox.

Referendum, response, and consequences for Sudan : the game between juba and khartoum

This paper presents a game theory model of the strategic interaction between Khartoum and Juba leading up to the referendum on Sudan's partition in 2011. The findings show that excessive militarization and brinksmanship is a rational response for both actors, neither of which can credibly commit to lower levels of military spending under the current status quo. This militarization is often at the expense of health and education expenditures, suggesting that the opportunity cost of militarization is foregone economic development. These credibility issues might be resolved by democratization, increased transparency, reduction of information asymmetries, and efforts to promote economic and political cooperation. The paper explores these devices, demonstrating how they can contribute to Pareto preferred outcomes in equilibrium. The authors characterize the military expenditure associated with the commitment problem experienced by both sides, estimate its costs from data for Sudan, and identify the opportunity cost of foregone development implied by continued, excessive, and unsustainable militarization.Post Conflict Reconstruction,Peace&Peacekeeping,Population Policies,Public Sector Expenditure Analysis&Management,Debt Markets

H-Diplo ISSF round table: Steven Ward. status and the challenge of rising powers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

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The structure of global economic integration and conflict

Empirical examinations have reached a number of conclusions regarding the relationship between global economic integration and interstate conflict. Most studies find that increased economic relations dampen the likelihood of interstate violence. Yet these studies have focused largely on bilateral trade measures and domestic-level causal mechanisms. In this paper I take the discussion to the structural level and construct systemic variables for global economic openness and concentration. I then test the relationships among these variables and international conflict using an autoregressive model and event count regression methods. The outcomes suggest that high levels of hegemonic protection and global economic concentration are associated with low levels of systemic violence, a finding that runs counter to much of the existing empirical and theoretical literature surrounding the international market and conflict.Governmen

Secessionism and Minority Protection in an Uncertain World

With the changing economic circumstances confronting their countries, regionally concentrated minorities have been facing a strategic problem, important aspects of which can be stylized as a situation in which a minority leader is uncertain about the costs of secession for her community. This paper shows that this uncertainty is a central cause of secession, using a model which incorporates both policies to appease secessionist aspirations and informational asymmetries. In a situation of asymmetric information, in which the policy-maker is better informed about the consequences of separation than the minority leader, signaling incentives make secession the unique equilibrium outcome, whether mutually advantageous compromises exist or not. We also show that the ruling majority may seek to maintain political unity by pre-committing to minority protection rules which prevent bluffing by the informed policy-maker. Additionally, the model generates comparative statics results on the question of which states are most likely to adopt constitutional rules protecting the minorities living within their borders.Constitutional commitment, secession, signaling, regional redistribution

Perilous Polities? Regime Transition and Conflict 1950-2000

While evidence continues to mount that democracies resort to military force reluctantly, the transition to democracy may in fact be a dangerous and conflictual one. With the eyes of the world now focused squarely on democratization, a reassessment of the relationship between regime change and inter-state conflict seems fitting. To date, the evidence remains mixed. No clear consensus has emerged on whether regime transition either increases or decreases conflict propensities. The research here builds on models of democratization and conflict by including a more fully specified vector of conflict variables and by using an updated set of cases. Further, interaction effects are explored to assess whether factors such as power or contiguity differentially impact the conflict propensity of transitioning states. Employing a generalized estimating equation with logit and poisson specifications, the results show that change towards democracy decreases the probability of involvement in militarized inter-state disputes and wars. However, uneven or rocky transitions are found to increase conflict likelihood