Reputation, History, and War

This article investigates the role of direct and reputational information in the onset of interstate war. Scholars have recently identified the importance of separating the phenomenon of conflict from the rare event of war. Building on earlier work concerning the role of reputation and history in the onset of militarized interstate disputes, this article argues that states in crises face competing pressures brought on by their history of interactions with their opponents and their opponents' reputations generated through interactions with other states. While historical conflict reveals private information regarding the credibility of state demands, this history also generates constraints upon the ability of governments to seek peaceful resolutions to the current crisis. An empirical analysis supports the hypothesis that both a direct history of conflict within the dyad and reputational histories for conflict increase the likelihood of war onset. These results hold for a sample including all dyads 1817—2000 and a sample including politically relevant dyads in the same period. The results also suggest that contiguous states are more likely to go to war with each other, as are pairs of major powers, while democracies and pairs of minor powers are less likely to go to war with each other. These results support previous findings on the influence of these factors on the likelihood of war onset.