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ABSTRACT
Many dyads develop peaceful relationships, avoiding war for long, historical periods. Are such dyads common? How many exist, and why have they never fought? This study provides a territorial perspective on peaceful dyads, defined as those that never fight a war over a given historical period. It compares two explanations for why peaceful dyads exist: the territorial peace and the democratic peace. A series of hypotheses test the relative ability of these two theories to account for peaceful dyads. The tests employ three samples – all dyads, politically relevant dyads, and grievance dyads – from 1816–2001, with an emphasis on the Cold War and post-Cold War periods. Through our analyses, we produce three major findings. First, the absence of territorial conflict – but not democracy – predicts peaceful dyads. Second, the absence of territorial disagreements appears in the vast majority (i.e., 85–96%) of peaceful dyads. Finally, approximately, 93–98% of democratic dyads lack any territorial disagreements. This implies that democratic dyads are peaceful because they face different issues than non-democratic dyads – ones less likely to undermine the development of peaceful, dyadic relationships.
Muchas díadas entablan relaciones pacíficas y evitan las guerras durante largos períodos históricos. ¿Tales díadas son comunes? ¿Cuántas existen ypor qué nunca se han enfrentado? Este estudio proporciona una perspectiva territorial sobre las díadas pacíficas, definidas como aquellas que nunca se enfrentaron en guerra durante un período histórico determinado. El estudio compara dos explicaciones de por qué existen las díadas pacíficas: la paz territorial y la paz democrática. Una serie de hipótesis prueba la capacidad relativa de estas dos teorías para explicar las díadas pacíficas. Las pruebas emplean tres muestras: todas las díadas, las relevantes desde el punto de vista político y aquellas involucradas en quejas, desde 1816 hasta 2001, con énfasis en la Guerra Fría y en los períodos posteriores aesta. Através de nuestro análisis, arribamos atres conclusiones principales. En primer lugar, la ausencia del conflicto territorial, pero no de la democracia, predice las díadas pacíficas. Segundo, la ausencia de los altercados territoriales se encuentra en la gran mayoría (es decir, del 85% al 96%) de las díadas pacíficas. Por último, aproximadamente entre el 93% y el 98% de las díadas democráticas carecen de algún altercado territorial. Esto implica que las díadas democráticas son pacíficas porque enfrentan problemas diferentes de los de las díadas no democráticas, los cuales tienen menos probabilidades de debilitar el desarrollo de relaciones diádicas pacíficas.
De nombreuses dyades développent des relations pacifiques évitant des guerres sur de longues périodes historiques. Mais, de telles dyades sont-elles corantos ? Combien en existe-il et pourquoi ne se sont-elles jamais livrées bataille ? Cette étude propose une perspective territoriale sur les dyades pacifiques, qui sont définies comme étant celles qui ne se sont jamais faites la guerre sur une période historique donnée. Elle compare deux explications des raisons pour lesquelles des dyades pacifiques existent: la paix territoriale et la paix démocratique. Une série d’hypothèses permet d’analyzer la capacité relative de ces deux théories à tenir compte des dyades pacifiques. Ces analyses reposent sur trois échantillons - toutes les dyades, les dyades politiquement pertinentes et les dyades liées à des griefs - de 1816 à 2001, en mettant l’accent sur les périodes de la guerre froide et de l’après-guerre froide. Ces analyses nous ont permis de produire trois conclusions majeures. D’abord, l’absence de conflit territorial - mais pas de démocratie - laisse présager des dyades pacifiques. Ensuite, l’absence de désaccords territoriaux apparaît dans la grande majorité (c-à-d, 85 à 96%) des dyades pacifiques. Enfin, environ 93 à 98% des dyades démocratiques sont exemptes de désaccords territoriaux. Cela implique que les dyades démocratiques sont pacifiques car elles sont confrontées à des problèmes différents de ceux des dyades non démocratiques, des problèmes moins susceptibles de miner le développement de relations dyadiques pacifiques.
Acknowledgments
We thank Marie T. Henehan for suggestions. Andrew Owsiak thanks the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame for its support. John Vasquez thanks the European University Institute in Florence for a visiting fellowship, where he worked on this study while on sabbatical from the University of Illinois. Replication files for the empirical analysis appear online at: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/internationalinteractions. For questions about replication, please contact the authors.
Notes
1 The Correlates of War Project classifies the Allied Intervention not as an interstate war, but as an expedition to occupy Murmansk in support of White Russians in the Russian Civil War (see Sarkees and Wayman Citation2010, 395).
2 The finding on neighbors hints that an absence of border disagreements may contribute to a state’s pacifism, though Maoz does not pick up on this.
3 Our definition of peace masks lower-level hostilities. The United States and Russia, for example, are ‘peaceful’ in our study because they never fought a war against one another, even during their hostile rivalry relationship. We do not deny that lower-level hostilities existed, but simply focus on the fact that these two states never fought a war – even during the Cold War, which Gaddis (Citation1986) describes as the “long peace” – and investigate why. Future research could expand our analysis to deeper forms of peace.
4 As indicates, the two explanations sometimes make identical predictions. Only the bolded contradictory predictions, however, provide testable differences between the two.
5 Gibler (Citation2012) goes beyond Vasquez (Citation1993) and invents the idea of a “territorial peace”, linking the settling of borders with both state de-centralization and an increased likelihood of democratization.
6 Numerous sub-arguments exist within these two camps. For example, signaling through domestic opposition groups (Schultz Citation1998) is an institutional contraint. Due to space constraints, we simplify the summary presented here. For a more detailed review, see Chan (Citation2010), Reiter (Citation2018), and Mousseau (Citation2021).
7 Our causal identification strategy most closely matches Keele’s (Citation2015) “selection on observables”. As noted earlier, we do not intend to test the stage-by-stage working of the territorial peace’s causal mechanism.
8 We check the robustness of the results with, inter alia, a more traditional, dyadic dispute-level analysis (i.e., MIDs) and reach the same conclusions (see Appendix B(2), online).
9 We do not account for temporal interdependence, as we do not use time varying covariates.
10 For numerous reasons – including, inter alia, a lack of territorial claims data – we do not analyze the post-2001 period.
11 Results for the 1816–1945 period, as well as a larger 1816–2001 period, appear in Appendix A (online). Our main conclusions do not change.
12 Appendix A(2) (online) evaluates the all-dyad sample. Our main conclusions do not change.
13 Using a count of the number of territorial MIDs does not change the results.
14 Additional analyses lower this threshold to whether a dyad ever achieved joint democracy in a given period (see Appendix B(1), online). This alternate measure necessarily overstates the democratic peace’s merits; nevertheless, it does not change our main conclusions.
15 Achen (Citation2002) and Ray (Citation2005) suggest that, without an overriding theoretical need, empirical models should include no more than three control variables, since it becomes difficult to make statistical inferences as the number of control variables increases. We respect their guideline. Nevertheless, alternative models also controlled for the closest level of contiguity between dyad members during a given period, as well as their dispute history. Those models yield the same conclusions.
16 Although some studies examine cross-tabulations of territorial MIDs and war (see Senese Citation1996), researchers have not yet looked at our question: whether peaceful dyads never had a territorial dispute. Thus, both the unit of analysis in this study (the dyadic relationship) and its dependent variable are unique.
17 Due to space constraints, we report only the peaceful dyads here, which is our primary interest.
18 We implicitly assume causality here based on other research. Each argument, however, can explain – at most – the number of peaceful dyads that contain its associated characteristic.
19 We note, though, that the post-Cold War period consists of only twelve years, while the Cold War period contains forty-five years.
20 Frost, Robert. (1914) “Mending Wall.” Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3026.