IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zur/iewwpx/511.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

To conquer or compel: war, peace, and economic development

Author

Listed:
  • Erik Gartzke
  • Dominic Rohner

Abstract

Theories of economic development suggest variously that national income increases or decreases the propensity for states to fight, while systematic evidence of the impact of development on warfare is ambiguous or non-existent. The lack of empirical support for nominally opposing claims can be reconciled if elements of both perspectives are partially correct. We use a formal model to construct an explanation linking economic development with interstate conflict that resolves contradictory theories and a relative paucity of evidence. Development increases the ability of states to project power while decreasing the willingness of states to engage in conflict over certain issues. High income states fight less often to conquer tangible assets or territory, but fight more often to compel adherence to preferred policies and to police the global commons.

Suggested Citation

  • Erik Gartzke & Dominic Rohner, 2010. "To conquer or compel: war, peace, and economic development," IEW - Working Papers 511, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    • Handle: RePEc:zur:iewwpx:511
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econ.uzh.ch/apps/workingpapers/wp/iewwp511.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hegre, Håvard, 2001. "Toward a Democratic Civil Peace? Democracy, Political Change, and Civil War, 1816–1992," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 95(1), pages 33-48, March.
    2. Paul D. Senese, 2005. "Territory, Contiguity, and International Conflict: Assessing a New Joint Explanation," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 49(4), pages 769-779, October.
    3. Bergstrand, Jeffrey H, 1985. "The Gravity Equation in International Trade: Some Microeconomic Foundations and Empirical Evidence," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 67(3), pages 474-481, August.
    4. Fearon, James D. & Laitin, David D., 2003. "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 97(1), pages 75-90, February.
    5. Fearon, James D., 1995. "Rationalist explanations for war," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 49(3), pages 379-414, July.
    6. Alesina, Alberto & Dollar, David, 2000. "Who Gives Foreign Aid to Whom and Why?," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 33-63, March.
    7. Braumoeller, Bear F., 2004. "Hypothesis Testing and Multiplicative Interaction Terms," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 58(4), pages 807-820, October.
    8. Polachek, Solomon W, 1997. "Why Democracies Cooperate More and Fight Less: The Relationship between International Trade and Cooperation," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 5(3), pages 295-309, August.
    9. Daniel M. Jones & Stuart A. Bremer & J. David Singer, 1996. "Militarized Interstate Disputes, 1816–1992: Rationale, Coding Rules, and Empirical Patterns," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 15(2), pages 163-213, September.
    10. Solomon William Polachek, 1980. "Conflict and Trade," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 24(1), pages 55-78, March.
    11. Tomz, Michael & Wittenberg, Jason & King, Gary, 2003. "Clarify: Software for Interpreting and Presenting Statistical Results," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 8(i01).
    12. Stergios Skaperdas, 1996. "Contest success functions (*)," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 7(2), pages 283-290.
    13. Fearon, James D., 1998. "Bargaining, Enforcement, and International Cooperation," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(2), pages 269-305, April.
    14. Gartzke, Erik, 1999. "War Is in the Error Term," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 53(3), pages 567-587, July.
    15. Hirshleifer,Jack, 2001. "The Dark Side of the Force," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521804127, January.
    16. 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.
    17. Lipset, Seymour Martin, 1959. "Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy1," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 53(1), pages 69-105, March.
    18. Paul Collier & Anke Hoeffler, 2004. "Greed and grievance in civil war," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 56(4), pages 563-595, October.
    19. King, Gary & Zeng, Langche, 2001. "Explaining Rare Events in International Relations," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 55(3), pages 693-715, July.
    20. Solomon W. Polachek & John Robst & Yuan-Ching Chang, 1999. "Liberalism and Interdependence: Extending the Trade-Conflict Model," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 36(4), pages 405-422, July.
    21. Reed, William, 2003. "Information, Power, and War," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 97(4), pages 633-641, November.
    22. Bunce, Valerie, 1985. "The empire strikes back: the evolution of the Eastern bloc from a Soviet asset to a Soviet liability," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 39(1), pages 1-46, January.
    23. Stuart A. Bremer, 1992. "Dangerous Dyads," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 36(2), pages 309-341, June.
    24. Ibrahim Elbadawi & Håvard Hegre, 2008. "Globalization, Economic Shocks, And Internal Armed Conflict," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(1), pages 37-60.
    25. Gartzke, Erik & Li, Quan & Boehmer, Charles, 2001. "Investing in the Peace: Economic Interdependence and International Conflict," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 55(2), pages 391-438, April.
    26. Zacher, Mark W., 2001. "The Territorial Integrity Norm: International Boundaries and the Use of Force," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 55(2), pages 215-250, April.
    27. Burkhart, Ross E. & Lewis-Beck, Michael S., 1994. "Comparative Democracy: The Economic Development Thesis," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 88(4), pages 903-910, December.
    28. Walter Isard, 1954. "Location Theory and Trade Theory: Short-Run Analysis," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 68(2), pages 305-320.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Erik Gartzke & Dominic Rohner, 2010. "Prosperous pacifists: The effects of development on initiators and targets of territorial conflict," IEW - Working Papers 500, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    2. Anderton,Charles H. & Carter,John R., 2009. "Principles of Conflict Economics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521875578, December.
    3. Håvard Hegre, 2005. "Development and the Liberal Peace," Nordic Journal of Political Economy, Nordic Journal of Political Economy, vol. 31, pages 17-46.
    4. Timothy M Peterson, 2011. "Third-party trade, political similarity, and dyadic conflict," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 48(2), pages 185-200, March.
    5. Enrico Spolaore & Romain Wacziarg, 2016. "War and Relatedness," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 98(5), pages 925-939, December.
    6. Rohner, Dominic, 2011. "Reputation, group structure and social tensions," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(2), pages 188-199, November.
    7. HÃ¥vard Hegre, 2009. "Trade Dependence or Size Dependence?," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 26(1), pages 26-45, February.
    8. Idean Salehyan, 2010. "The Delegation of War to Rebel Organizations," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 54(3), pages 493-515, June.
    9. Gries, Thomas & Haake, Claus-Jochen, 2016. "An Economic Theory of 'Destabilization War' '- Compromise for Peace versus Conventional, Guerilla, or Terrorist Warfare," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145617, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    10. Thomas Gries & Claus-Jochen Haake, 2016. "An Economic Theory of 'Destabilization War'," Working Papers CIE 95, Paderborn University, CIE Center for International Economics.
    11. Dominic Rohner & Mathias Thoenig & Fabrizio Zilibotti, 2013. "War Signals: A Theory of Trade, Trust, and Conflict," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 80(3), pages 1114-1147.
    12. Jong-Wha Lee & Ju Hyun Pyun, 2016. "Does Trade Integration Contribute to Peace?," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(1), pages 327-344, February.
    13. Rohner, D., 2006. "Information, Reputation and Ethnic Conflict," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 0658, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    14. Raul Caruso, 2006. "A Trade Institution as a Peaceful Institution? A Contribution to Integrative Theory," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 23(1), pages 53-72, February.
    15. Coyne,Christopher J., 2020. "Defense, Peace, and War Economics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781108724036.
    16. Robert MacCulloch & Silvia Pezzini, 2010. "The Roles of Freedom, Growth, and Religion in the Taste for Revolution," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 53(2), pages 329-358, May.
    17. Clayton L. Thyne, 2006. "Cheap Signals with Costly Consequences," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 50(6), pages 937-961, December.
    18. Yuleng Zeng, 2020. "Bluff to peace: How economic dependence promotes peace despite increasing deception and uncertainty," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 37(6), pages 633-654, November.
    19. Chang, Yuan-Ching & Polachek, Solomon W. & Robst, John, 2004. "Conflict and trade: the relationship between geographic distance and international interactions," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 491-509, September.
    20. Mehlum, Halvor & Ove Moene, Karl, 2011. "Aggressive elites and vulnerable entrepreneurs - trust and cooperation in the shadow of conflict," Memorandum 16/2010, Oslo University, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    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:zur:iewwpx:511. 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: Severin Oswald (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.