IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/iuiwop/0751.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Democracy, Autocracy and the Likelihood of International Conflict

Author

Listed:

Abstract

This is a game-theoretic analysis of the link between regime type and international conflict. The democratic electorate can credibly punish the leader for bad conflict outcomes, whereas the autocratic selectorate cannot. For the fear of being thrown out of office, democratic leaders are (i) more selective about the wars they initiate and (ii) on average win more of the wars they start. Foreign policy behaviour is found to display strategic complementarities. The likelihood of interstate war, therefore, is lowest in the democratic dyad (pair), highest in the autocratic dyad with the mixed dyad in between. The results are consistent with empirical findings.

Suggested Citation

  • Tangerås, Thomas, 2008. "Democracy, Autocracy and the Likelihood of International Conflict," Working Paper Series 751, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0751
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ifn.se/Wfiles/wp/wp751.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John C. Harsanyi & Reinhard Selten, 1988. "A General Theory of Equilibrium Selection in Games," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262582384, December.
    2. Wintrobe,Ronald, 2000. "The Political Economy of Dictatorship," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521794497.
    3. Reiter, Dan & Stam, Allan C., 1998. "Democracy, War Initiation, and Victory," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 92(2), pages 377-389, June.
    4. Huth, Paul & Russett, Bruce, 1993. "General Deterrence between Enduring Rivals: Testing Three Competing Models," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 87(1), pages 61-73, March.
    5. Michael D. Ward & Randolph M. Siverson & Xun Cao, 2007. "Disputes, Democracies, and Dependencies: A Reexamination of the Kantian Peace," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 51(3), pages 583-601, July.
    6. Garfinkel, Michelle R, 1994. "Domestic Politics and International Conflict," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(5), pages 1294-1309, December.
    7. de Mesquita, Bruce Bueno & Morrow, James D. & Siverson, Randolph M. & Smith, Alastair, 1999. "An Institutional Explanation of the Democratic Peace," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 93(4), pages 791-807, December.
    8. Matthew O. Jackson & Massimo Morelli, 2007. "Political Bias and War," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(4), pages 1353-1373, September.
      • Jackson, Matthew O. & Morelli, Massimo, "undated". "Political bias and war," Working Papers 1247, California Institute of Technology, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences.
    9. Gilat Levy & Ronny Razin, 2004. "It Takes Two: An Explanation for the Democratic Peace," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 2(1), pages 1-29, March.
    10. Gregory D. Hess & Athanasios Orphanides, 2001. "War and Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(4), pages 776-810, August.
    11. de Mesquita, Bruce Bueno & Siverson, Randolph M. & Woller, Gary, 1992. "War and the Fate of Regimes: A Comparative Analysis," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 86(3), pages 638-646, September.
    12. Giacomo Chiozza & H. E. Goemans, 2004. "International Conflict and the Tenure of Leaders: Is War Still Ex Post Inefficient?," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 48(3), pages 604-619, July.
    13. Hess, Gregory D & Orphanides, Athanasios, 1995. "War Politics: An Economic, Rational-Voter Framework," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(4), pages 828-846, September.
    14. Helmut Bester & Karl Wärneryd, 2006. "Conflict and the Social Contract," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 108(2), pages 231-249, July.
    15. Peceny, Mark & Beer, Caroline C. & Sanchez-Terry, Shannon, 2002. "Dictatorial Peace?," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 96(1), pages 15-26, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michelle R. Garfinkel, 2010. "Political Institutions and War Initiation: The Democratic Peace Hypothesis Revisited," Working Papers 101107, University of California-Irvine, Department of Economics.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Michelle R. Garfinkel, 2010. "Political Institutions and War Initiation: The Democratic Peace Hypothesis Revisited," Working Papers 101107, University of California-Irvine, Department of Economics.
    2. Enrico Spolaore & Romain Wacziarg, 2016. "War and Relatedness," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 98(5), pages 925-939, December.
    3. H.E. Goemans, 2008. "Which Way Out?," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 52(6), pages 771-794, December.
    4. Libman, Alexander Mikhailovich, 2009. "Эндогенные Границы И Распределение Власти В Федерациях И Международных Сообществах [ENDOGENOUS BOUNDARIES AND DISTRIBUTION OF POWER In the Federation]," MPRA Paper 16473, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Philippe Martin & Thierry Mayer & Mathias Thoenig, 2008. "Make Trade Not War?," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 75(3), pages 865-900.
    6. Sandeep Baliga & David O. Lucca & Tomas Sjöström, 2011. "Domestic Political Survival and International Conflict: Is Democracy Good for Peace?," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 78(2), pages 458-486.
    7. Garfinkel, Michelle R. & Skaperdas, Stergios, 2007. "Economics of Conflict: An Overview," Handbook of Defense Economics, in: Keith Hartley & Todd Sandler (ed.), Handbook of Defense Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 22, pages 649-709, Elsevier.
    8. Matthew DiLorenzo & Becca McBride & James Lee Ray, 2019. "Presidential political ambition and US foreign conflict behavior, 1816–2010," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 36(2), pages 111-130, March.
    9. Alesina, Alberto & Spolaore, Enrico, 2005. "War, peace, and the size of countries," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(7), pages 1333-1354, July.
    10. Sahuguet, Nicolas & Zanardi, Maurizio & Conconi, Paola, 2008. "Democratic Peace and Electoral Accountability¤," CEPR Discussion Papers 6908, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. Conconi, Paola & Sahuguet, Nicolas & Zanardi, Maurizio, 2018. "Electoral incentives, term limits, and the sustainability of peace," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 15-26.
    12. Vincenzo Bove & Jennifer Brauner, 2016. "The demand for military expenditure in authoritarian regimes," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(5), pages 609-625, September.
    13. Stergios Skaperdas, 2006. "Bargaining Versus Fighting," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(6), pages 657-676.
    14. Thomas P. Tangerås & Nils‐Petter Lagerlöf, 2009. "Ethnic Diversity, Civil War and Redistribution," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 111(1), pages 1-27, March.
    15. Nakao, Keisuke, 2022. "Democratic Victory and War Duration: Why Are Democracies Less Likely to Win Long Wars?," MPRA Paper 112849, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Stergios Skaperdas, 2003. "Restraining the Genuine Homo Economicus: Why the Economy Cannot Be Divorced from Its Governance," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(2), pages 135-162, July.
    17. Michael Mandler and Michael Spagat, 2003. "Foreign Aid Designed to Diminish Terrorist Atrocities can Increase Them," Royal Holloway, University of London: Discussion Papers in Economics 03/10, Department of Economics, Royal Holloway University of London, revised Dec 2003.
    18. Herschel Grossman, 2003. "Fifty-four Forty or Fight," Working Papers 2003-10, Brown University, Department of Economics.
    19. Herschel I. Grossman, 2013. "Choosing Between Peace and War," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 14(2), pages 765-783, November.
    20. Levy, Amnon, 2004. "Trucefully Yours: Hatred and the Prospects of Genuine and Stable Peace," Economics Working Papers wp04-06, School of Economics, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Democracy; Autocracy; War; Maximal Equilibrium;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0751. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Elisabeth Gustafsson (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iuiiise.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.