Kantian Dynamics Revisited: Time-Varying Analyses of Dyadic IGO-Conflict Relationships

ABSTRACT

The literature on international organizations (IGOs) and interstate conflict in world politics produces a series of contradictory theoretical arguments and empirical findings about how IGOs help to prevent conflict and promote peace between member states. Empirical studies find a range of inconsistent results, ranging from pacifying effects of shared IGO memberships on dyadic militarized disputes to conflict-inducing effects of shared IGO memberships to null relationships. Theoretically, we consider how IGOs promote the rule of peace preservation through the mechanisms of coercion, self-interest, and legitimacy, and we describe how these mechanisms help explain the time-varying relationships between shared IGOs memberships and militarized conflict since WWII. Analyses of time-varying parameter models of dyad-year data from 1948 to 2000 suggest that shared IGO memberships reduce the likelihood of militarized conflict in some historical periods (Cold War) but increase the chances for dyadic conflict in other periods (post-Cold War). The design of IGOs is relevant as well, with security-based, highly institutionalized IGOs best suited to prevent militarized conflict between member states. The results suggest that evolutionary dynamics in the Kantian peace vary across legs of the Kantian tripod and that we cannot understand the Kantian peace without considering dynamic relationships over time.

KEYWORDS:

• Compliance
• conflict
• disputes
• international organizations
• time

Notes

¹ These correspond to Immanuel Kant’s (1795/1991:99–115) three conditions for perpetual peace: (1) republican forms of government domestically, (2) an international federation of free states, and (3) a principle of cosmopolitanism, or universal hospitality, as well as the supplements of perpetual peace including a “spirit of commerce.”

² For reviews of this literature, see Chan (1997), Ray (2000), Rosato (2003), Russett (1993), and Russett and Oneal (2001).

³ “An IGO can be defined as a formal, continuous institution established by treaty or other agreement between governments, long-range in nature, multilateral … (three or more member states), with a secretariat and more-or-less regular meetings, and an ‘international legal personality’ with legal standing” (Russett et al. 1998:443). Pevehouse, Nordstrom, and Warnke (2004) code data for 495 IGOs from 1816–2000.

⁴ There is a large literature relating international organizations, regimes, and cooperation broadly speaking; see Simmons and Martin (2002) for a review. Our literature review is more focused on studies that examine the linkages between states’ shared membership in international organizations and dyadic militarized conflict.

⁵ Analyses of the reverse correlations show that major powers also tend to withdraw from IGOs in times of war.

⁶ The authors define these types of IGOs as follows (Boehmer et al. 2004:18):1. Minimal organizations contain plenary meetings, committees, and possibly a secretariat without an extensive bureaucracy beyond research, planning, and information gathering. 2. Structured organizations contain structures of assembly, executive (non-ceremonial), and/or bureaucracy to implement policy, as well as formal procedures and rules. 3. Interventionist organizations contain mechanisms for mediation, arbitration and adjudication, and/or other means to coerce state decisions (such as withholding loans or aid), as well as means to enforce organizational decisions and norms.

⁷ For example, the League of Nations, the International Criminal Court, and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

⁸ All of the time-varying effects models were estimated with a SAS macro developed by the methodology center at Penn State University. The SAS macro allows for the estimating and graphing of time-varying effects of covariates in longitudinal models. https://methodology.psu.edu/downloads/tvem

⁹ Dorussen and Ward (2008) use a lead for this measure, keeping all other independent variables measured at time t. They also employ a version of the MID data constructed by Zeev Maoz, which retains only dyadic MIDs where the two countries’ troops faced each other on the battle field.

¹⁰ We drop the years 1948–1949 and 2001–2002 from our analyses because the error bands are extremely large around the estimates near the end points of the sample.

¹¹ Dorussen and Ward adopt the approach of Beck, Katz, and Tucker (1998) to control for temporal dependence in the data by including a variable for dyadic peace years as well as three cubic splines. For a critique of this approach, see Carter and Signorino (2010).

¹² The pattern of our coefficients is similar to Ward, Siverson, and Cao (2007)’s analysis of dyad-year data from 1950–2000 using a Bayesian, Hierarchical, Bilinear, Mixed Effects model, although they find mostly null results for the effect of IGOs on MIDs in the 1950–1980 period.

¹³ For more information, see the Union of International Associations website: http://www.uia.org.