Threat Perception and Audience Costs: Differences in International Conflict Behavior among Authoritarian Regimes

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erica Frantz
Keyword(s):  
International Conflict ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Conflict Behavior ◽  
Threat Perception ◽  
Audience Costs

Ties that Bind?

1998 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
WILL H. MOORE ◽  
DAVID R. DAVIS
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
General Model ◽  
International Conflict ◽  
Conflict Behavior ◽  
Structural Constraints ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
International Interactions ◽  
The Impact

In this article, the authors develop and empirically evaluate a general model of the linkages between domestic and international conflict behavior. Much of the literature on domestic international interactions has focused on the structural constraints of the international and domestic systems on leaders' foreign policy decisions. Rather than focusing on structural constraints, the present authors model the influence of the behavior of domestic and international rivals on leader decision making. The impact of rivals' behavior on conflict across the domestic-international nexus has been neglected relative to the role of structural factors. This study helps redress that imbalance. The authors test their model with a statistical analysis of Zaire during the period 1975 to 1992 and find substantial support for the model.

War, Trade, and Distrust: Why Trade Agreements Don’t Always Keep the Peace

2012 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 257-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emilie M. Hafner-Burton ◽  
Alexander H. Montgomery
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Social Network Analysis ◽  
Network Analysis ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
International Conflict ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
Preferential Trade Agreements ◽  
Conflict Behavior ◽  
Preferential Trade ◽  
Hierarchical Relations

There is growing evidence that preferential trade agreements (PTAs) provide strong institutional incentives to prevent international conflict among member states, often creating the conditions of trust that can help prevent militarized aggression. We provide an approach to the study of how international institutions influence conflict behavior that considers how PTAs exclude as well as include members and create asymmetrical relationships among members that could exacerbate conflict. PTAs do more than create expectations of economic gains and reduce opportunism; they also create hierarchical relations between states, which can encourage conflict under different conditions due to distrust. We theorize these conditions for militarized international disputes, develop appropriate measures using social network analysis, and test our expectations on new PTA data during the period 1950 to 2000.

Public opinion, international reputation, and audience costs in an authoritarian regime

2020 ◽  
pp. 073889422090637
Author(s):  
Xiaojun Li ◽  
Dingding Chen
Keyword(s):  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Chinese Adults ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Audience Costs ◽  
The Public ◽  
Authoritarian State ◽  
Qualitative Evidence ◽  
International Reputation ◽  
Potential Damage

Does the public in authoritarian regimes disapprove of their leaders’ backing down from public threats and commitments? Answers to this question provide a critical micro-foundation for the emerging scholarship on authoritarian audience costs. We investigate this question by implementing a series of survey experiments in China, a single-party authoritarian state. Findings based on responses from 5375 Chinese adults show that empty threats and commitments expose the Chinese government to substantial disapproval from citizens concerned about potential damage to China’s international reputation. Additional qualitative evidence reveals that Chinese citizens are willing to express their discontent of leaders’ foreign policy blunders through various channels. These findings contribute to the ongoing debate over whether and how domestic audiences can make commitments credible in authoritarian states.

Strongmen and Straw Men: Authoritarian Regimes and the Initiation of International Conflict

2012 ◽  
Vol 106 (2) ◽  
pp. 326-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
JESSICA L. WEEKS
Keyword(s):  
Personal Characteristics ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Conflict Behavior ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Military Officers ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Civilian Regimes ◽  
Military Conflicts ◽  
Conflict Initiation ◽  
The Military

How do domestic institutions affect autocratic leaders’ decisions to initiate military conflicts? Contrary to the conventional wisdom, I argue that institutions in some kinds of dictatorships allow regime insiders to hold leaders accountable for their foreign policy decisions. However, the preferences and perceptions of these autocratic domestic audiences vary, with domestic audiences in civilian regimes being more skeptical of using military force than the military officers who form the core constituency in military juntas. In personalist regimes in which there is no effective domestic audience, no predictable mechanism exists for restraining or removing overly belligerent leaders, and leaders tend to be selected for personal characteristics that make them more likely to use military force. I combine these arguments to generate a series of hypotheses about the conflict behavior of autocracies and test the hypotheses using new measures of authoritarian regime type. The findings indicate that, despite the conventional focus on differences between democracies and nondemocracies, substantial variation in conflict initiation occurs among authoritarian regimes. Moreover, civilian regimes with powerful elite audiences are no more belligerent overall than democracies. The result is a deeper understanding of the conflict behavior of autocracies, with important implications for scholars as well as policy makers.

Dictatorial Peace?

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARK PECENY ◽  
CAROLINE C. BEER ◽  
SHANNON SANCHEZ-TERRY
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Conflict Behavior ◽  
Democratic Peace ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Military Regimes ◽  
Interstate Disputes ◽  
Interesting Variation ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Militarized Interstate Disputes

Is there a dictatorial peace that resembles the democratic peace? This paper uses a new data set compiled by Barbara Geddes to examine the conflict behavior of three types of autocratic regimes—personalist, military, and single-party dictatorships—in the post-World War II era. We find some evidence that specific types of authoritarian regimes are peaceful toward one another. No two personalist dictators or two military regimes have gone to war with each other since 1945. These dyads were not less likely to engage in militarized interstate disputes than were mixed dyads, however. Although single-party regimes were the only homogeneous dyad in this study to have experienced war, multivariate analyses of participation in militarized interstate disputes suggest that single-party states are more peaceful toward one another than are mixed dyads. Thus, while we have found no unambiguous evidence of a dictatorial peace to match the robustness of the democratic peace, there is substantial interesting variation in the conflict behavior of specific types of authoritarian regimes. The analysis presented here demonstrates that studies of the impact of regime type on conflict behavior must work from a more sophisticated conception of authoritarianism.

Leader Survival, Sources of Political Insecurity, and International Conflict

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 596-609
Author(s):  
Matthew DiLorenzo
Keyword(s):  
Natural Disasters ◽  
International Conflict ◽  
Conflict Behavior ◽  
International Conflicts ◽  
Conflict Initiation ◽  
Institutional Contexts ◽  
Leader Survival ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Do So

Recent research identifies the risk and consequences of losing office as important factors in leaders’ decisions to initiate international conflicts. This paper argues that the institutional source of a domestic threat to a leader should condition the relationship between political insecurity and international conflict. Specifically, existing theoretical mechanisms linking international conflict to security in office should not apply to threats that come from outside a leader’s selectorate. Natural disasters provide a convenient opportunity to test this argument since others have argued that disasters not only affect the risk that all types of leaders lose office but that they do so by creating threats that operate through different mechanisms in different domestic institutional contexts. I find that deaths from disasters are positively associated with conflict initiation among large-coalition leaders throughout the period of 1950 to 2007. I also find that neither disaster deaths nor events are related to conflict behavior for small-coalition leaders. In arguing that not all threats to leader survival matter for international conflict, the paper offers an important qualification to theories of leader survival and international conflict.

A Foreign Conflict Behavior Code Sheet

1966 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. J. Rummel
Keyword(s):  
International Conflict ◽  
Violent Behavior ◽  
Scientific Investigation ◽  
Conflict Behavior ◽  
Aggregate Form ◽  
Behavior Code

Foreign conflict behavior data covering long periods of time are urgently needed for the scientific investigation of international conflict. Except in the case of the most violent behavior, war, such data in aggregate form generally are not available to researchers.

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