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Approximately one third of all interstate conflicts are multilateral, with the majority of these having a coalition of states fighting on at least one side. Despite the frequency of coalition wars, coalitions have not received a great deal of attention within the conflict literature. This paper presents the first general study on the effectiveness of coalitions during interstate wars. While there are many drawbacks to fighting as part of coalition, the benefits of cooperation outweigh the cost, making coalitions more likely to win wars. Empirical examination of war outcomes between 1816 and 1997 confirms this hypothesis; coalitions are over twice as likely to win the wars they fight when compared to states fighting outside of a coalition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One quarter of all interstate conflicts are multilateral, with the majority of these having a coalition of states fighting on at least one side. However, current theories of war outcome are dominated by dyadic explanations which ignore the contribution of coalitions. While popular opinion views coalitions as ineffective in waging war, these criticisms overlook many advantages to fighting as part of a coalition. While coalitions often do have problems, the strengths of fighting together outweigh the cost, making coalitions more likely to win wars. Empirical examination of war outcomes between 1816 and 1997 confirms this hypothesis; coalitions are almost three times more likely to win the wars they fight when compared to states fighting outside of a coalition. Further, as command and control becomes more centralized, allowing greater coordination between coalition members, the odds of victory greatly increase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past few years the literature on international conflict and foreign policy has seen a renewed interest in systematically examining the role of domestic institutions. Yet, the revived interest has excluded the influence of national courts on the pol ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the constitutional role of the president in the process of selecting Supreme Court justices is limited to the initial selection of nominees, he does not simply select a nominee and then throw the candidate to the wolves of the Senate to be nurtured or devoured at their whim. Existing research looks at the impact of the ideological distance between a president (or his nominee) and the Senate on the president's strategic selection of whom to nominate, as well as on his decision to "go public" to defend his nominees. However this research fails to capture the nuances of the process. We argue that both the president and the Senate consider a legal and an ideological dimension when evaluating Supreme Court nominees, and that strategic presidents utilize rhetoric to shift Senate consideration of their nominee away from the more controversial dimension and toward the less controversial dimension. To analyze presidential rhetoric during the confirmation process we utilize an original dataset coding seven types of presidential statements about Supreme Court nominees between 1965 and 2005. We find strong evidence that presidents behave in strategic fashion determining both when and how they should "go public" in defense of their nominee based upon the political climate in the Senate. Additionally, we find that presidential rhetoric can impact the outcome of the final Senate confirmation vote, but that this impact is conditional upon both the political climate in the Senate and the types of statements that the president makes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to explain why states withdraw their troops from the coalition effort to stabilize Iraq. Among other variables we explore the effect of casualties, the enemy's willingness to suffer, and regime type on the decision to withdraw. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the role of conflict in determining the characteristics of the peace? This question has evolved into a puzzle for scholars studying civil conflict. Theoretical arguments and empirical evidence exist to support the conclusion that more violent conflicts lead to longer or to shorter peace durations. Applying a formal model of rivalry, this paper derives a new hypothesis regarding how conflict effects the duration of peace; specifically focusing on the level of shock produced from the fighting. The greater the shock from fighting between internal rivals, the longer the peace between them will last. This hypothesis receives support from test on the duration of peace between Enduring Internal Rivalries. The implications from this finding provide new advice for policy makers seeking to invest scare resources into civil conflict management efforts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines major power interactions in the late nineteenth century. It cites that traditional power transition (PT) theory predicts that a sudden increase in numbers of war are linked with scenarios in which a challenging state's power overtakes that of a dominant state. Also summarized are the features of a model that builds on the logic of PT theory and on that of its central rival, balance of power (BOP) theory, created to capture the relationship between power and conflict in interstate rivalries.

The article discusses several ways to further broaden the scope of generalizing power transition (PT) theory. It considers an expanded universe of cases, namely power dyads. It then tests for a non-monotonic relationship between a dyad's power relationship and its conflict level. It summarizes theoretical expectations for a curvilinear relationship between a dyadic power distribution and two states' conflictual interactions. It introduces an event data set designed to provide information as well as lower levels of interstate conflict.

This paper uses voting practices in the United Nations to test theories of interstate cooperation. While some of the cooperation literature focuses on shared preferences as the source of international cooperation, another focuses on specific policies that states can take to induce higher levels of cooperation. This research derives and tests hypotheses from both views. The empirical findings support both perspectives as democratic, wealthier, more powerful states, and US allies are more likely to have higher vote agreement with the US, demonstrating that shared preferences matter. The results also indicate that states can employ foreign aid policies, economic and military, to induce higher agreement among non-democratic states. Our results provide a broad test of theories of cooperation and shed light on the ability of states to develop cooperation even in the absences of shared preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we explore the consequences of non-random sample selection for continuous time duration analysis. While the consequences of selectivity are reasonably well-understood in linear regression and common discrete choice models, we have little or no understanding of how selectivity affects duration models. We study this issue by conducting a series of Monte Carlo analyses that estimate common duration models on data that suffer from selectivity. Our findings indicate that the consequences are severe: both coefficients and standard errors may be biased in an unknown direction. In addition, we find that selection bias may create the appearance of (non-existent) duration dependence. Given these difficulties, we develop a solution for self-selectivity bias in duration models and apply this solution to a prominent study of war participation and political leadership tenure. Based on empirical analysis and Monte Carlo simulations, our solution for selectivity bias in duration models is superior to models that ignore the problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how the US can influence votes in the United Nations. It presents a realist hypothesis on the use of aid to buy votes. A modified hypothesis based on realism that also incorporates domestic politics is presented. Additionally, a liberal argument focusing on common regime type and trade dependence is put forward. Finally, appropriate control variables are discussed. These hypotheses are tested on the similarity of voting with the United States for all states in the United Nations from 1950-1992 using a GEE model. Additional tests are also run that exclude developed states and European states. Across all these models, the liberal hypotheses receive the strongest support. Trade dependent states and democracies are more likely to vote with the US in the UN. Allies are also more likely to vote with the US in the UN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the end of World War II, the number of civil conflicts has expanded, with many conflicts experiencing third party interventions. We propose that the decision to intervene depends upon domestic structures, specifically ethnic composition and executive constraint (Carment et al 2006). We extend the current debate by arguing that the decision to intervene is a product of two-level bargaining and any consideration of a structural approach to interventions must consider both states in a dyad, instead of only focusing on the characteristics of the intervener. We also argue that the impact of these characteristics extends beyond the decision to intervene into ethnic civil wars; instead, we generalize our argument to include all types of civil conflicts. Preliminary data analysis on civil conflicts in Africa provides mixed support for our theory. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kadera and Morey report the first findings from their early major power events data project. The new dataset uses the New York Times news stories as its main source, and covers all major power events from the first daily paper until 1936. Each event was ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exporting democracy has been a frequent goal of American foreign policy, despite Washington’s warning in his farewell address. A question that has gained renewed salience is if military forces can be used to successfully export democracy; or stated differently, can democracy be imposed by force of arms? Current findings have been contradictory, with studies finding support for the use of the military (Meernik 1996; Hermann and Kegley 1996; Peceny 2001) while others have found no connection between military interventions and democratization (Muravchik 1991; Bueno de Mesquita and Downs 2004). The weakness of these past studies is they have not differentiated between military interventions designed primarily to spread democracy and interventions with other goals. We hypothesize that only interventions with the clear goal of spreading democracy will lead to a more liberal state post-intervention. Preliminary results show that overall military interventions have no impact on democracy, but military interventions with the goal of liberalizing target states have greater success exporting democracy. We also seek to increase the validity of these findings by expanding the temporal domain of intervention studies. Instead of only using interventions from the Cold War and post-Cold War era our data include all U.S. military interventions from 1800 to 2004. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To explain varied tradeoffs of fighting and investing-short term versus long term gains, military spending versus economic investment, and counterforce versus industrial warfare-we offer a set of three formal models. Each model represents the dynamic interplay among two opposing states' aggregate resources and military expenditures under particular circumstances. In the baseline model, the two states experience a peaceful rivalry. In the second model, they undertake a traditional war, with each military used to destroy the other. And in the third, the opponents fight an industrial war, targeting each others' underlying economic resources. These models allow us to better understand the circumstances preceding, during, and resulting from wars and peacetime contestations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawn from a model of domestic politics and rivalries, the central hypothesis of this paper is that only very costly wars will lead to rivalry termination. The cost from war must be extreme to displace domestic factions favoring rivalry continuation. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While international rivalries have received a great deal of attention recently, there have been few general theories of rivalries developed. Starting from the assumption that rivalry creation and termination are political decisions, instead of military decisions, this paper builds a model of international rivalry that links domestic politics and conflict between rivals. The relationship between the domestic political environment and conflict is multidirectional, with conflict altering domestic political calculations and domestic politics altering the conflictual tendencies of each state. This new understanding of rivalries provides novel hypotheses regarding rivalry creation and termination, along with predictions regarding the varying level of hostility between states over the course of the rivalry. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Systemic patterns of cooperation and conflict have long been of interest to international relations scholars. Three primary schools of thought, structural-realist, world-economy, and long cycle of world leadership, provide distinctive and often contradictory explanations and predictions regarding patterns of systemic cooperation and conflict. Tests between these different schools of thought have been hampered by definitional disagreements and an almost exclusive focus on great power wars. This study tests different predictions from these schools of thought using major power events data that incorporates conflict that does not rise to the level of a militarized interstate dispute (MID) and measures of cooperation between the major powers. The data provides a clearer understanding of interstate relations and a more accurate test of the explanations from the three dominate schools of thought. Overall the study points to the strengths and weaknesses of current systemic theories and offers directions for improving systemic theorizing. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Duration of interstate conflict has long been a topic of interest for students of international relations. Various scholars empirically test different theories regarding war duration (examples include Bueno de Mesquita 1978; Bennett and Stam 1996; and Goemans 2000). However, to date, research has ignored the role international governmental organizations have played in the duration of inter-state war. Drawing from neo-liberal theory we hypothesis that IGOs not only matter for selection into war (Oneal, Russett, and Davis 1998) but also for the duration of conflict. Since our hypotheses deal with both the selection and duration of international conflict, we employ a full information maximum likelihood technique that joins a discrete model of war selection with a hazard model of war duration (see Boehmke, Morey, and Shannon 2004). This procedure brings our empirical tests into alignment with theory and avoids the possibility of biased estimates from ignoring selection. Our findings indicate that joint membership in important IGOs, instead of all IGOs, decreases the probability of war and decreases the duration of conflicts that do start. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]