Collaborative Research on Interdependence, Democracy, and Peace

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9507975 Oneal Nineteenth century liberals advocated policies to expand liberty and increase prosperity. Politically, they sought to shift control of the government from aristocrats to commoners, especially the commercial class. In the realm of economics, they repudiated the protectionist policies of mercantilism. They believed that free trade and democratization,l beneficial in their own right, would also reduce the incidence of war. Their views continue to inform theoretical and policy debates. The relationship between democracy and international conflict has received careful attention in recent scholarship on international relations; a wide range of formal and empirical studies have established that democracies rarely fight each other, even at relatively low levels of violence. The relationship between economic interdependence and international conflict, however, has received less systematic attention. During the past year the investigators have conducted new analyses on the period 1950-1986 that incorporate a measure of economic interdependence derived from bilateral trade flows. Following closely earlier analyses of the effect of democracy on conflict, the researchers found that economic interdependence also has important effects in reducing conflict. In this project the investigators extend this line of research by estimating a model to clarity the reciprocal influence between trade and international conflict. They also evaluate the pacifying influence of democracy and economic interdependence while controlling for the expected utility of the use of force. In the process the researchers explore whether democratic countries are more likely to trade with each other than with non- democracies, check the implications of new measures for joint democracy and economic interdependence., apply new sensitivity checks on the findings, and extend the dataset into the 1990s to assess the impact of the recent dramatic spread of democracy in the post-cold wa r world. ***