Accountable to Whom? Electoral Systems and Conflict Initiation.

IR scholars have recently begun to examine how political institutions impact a state's decision to initiate interstate conflict. One school of thought, led by Leblang and Chan (2003), has found that certain electoral system characteristics (i.e., proportional representation systems[PR]) are associated with more pacifist behavior because PR systems often produce a greater number of actors that are involved in the policymaking process which leads to consensus-building and more risk averse foreign policies. Specifically, we argue that candidate-centered electoral systems lead elected leaders to develop more pacific foreign policies. In this study we contend that politicians are more accountable individually in candidate-centered electoral system which impacts a state's decision to initiate interstate conflict. We test our argument using a time-series cross-sectional analysis on 50 democracies from 1975-2001. The results provide strong support for the hypothesis that candidate-centered electoral systems result in less conflict initiation than party-centric systems due to higher levels of individual accountability for democratic leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]