Collaborative Research: Beyond the Water's Edge: Individual Preferences, Domestic Institutions, System Structure and Foreign Policy

[507909]帕尔默最近在国际关系方面的大量研究集中在民主与外交政策之间的关系上。这类文献的一个分支，起源于处理战争与和平问题的作品，讨论了民主国家是否比非民主国家更不容易发生战争的问题。第二种，也是更古老的一种，其中一些源于比较外交政策的研究，它把我们的视野扩展到了其他领域，包括联盟行为、国防支出和政策，以及对国际组织的依赖。这两种方法产生了许多经验规律，表明民主国家的行为确实与非民主国家有所不同，其中最广为人知的是，尽管民主国家倾向于与其他国家一样频繁地战斗，甚至发动战争，但它们很少，如果有的话，彼此作战。对这些观察结果的解释主要围绕两种方法——规范方法，认为民主领导人的行为受到他们社会化接受的冲突行为规范的指导，以及结构方法，认为民主制度使领导人的反对者更容易阻止他们不赞成的政策（如战争）。为确定更好的方法而构建关键测试的尝试已被证明是没有结果的，主要是因为这两种论点之间有太多重叠，而且因为民主规范和民主体制往往并存。由此可见，需要对研究进行重新评价，建立新的理论体系。这项调查阐明并检验了外交政策的一般理论。该理论阐述了个人偏好、国内政治结构和国际环境如何相互作用，从而产生外交政策。该理论还将冲突行为与其他类型的外交政策（如联盟形成、国防开支和事件整合反应）相结合。该理论是形式化的，并用于系统地推导假设。适当采用的方法使用各种现有数据集来检验相关假设。这项研究调查将大大增进我们对这一主题的理解。＊＊＊

9507909 Palmer A great deal of recent research in international relations has focused on the relationship between democracy and foreign policy. One strain on this literature, originating from works dealing with issues of war and peace, has addressed the question of whether democracies are less war prone than non-democracies. A second and older strain, some of it originating from the study of comparative foreign policy has expanded our horizons into other areas, including alliance behavior, defense expenditures and policy, and reliance on international organizations. These two approaches have produced a number of empirical regularities indicating that democracies do behave somewhat differently than do non-democracies with the best know being that although democracies tend to fight, and even initiate, wars as often as other states do, they rarely, if ever, fight one another. Explanations for these observations have centered around two main approaches--the norms approach, holding that democratic leaders' behaviors are guided by the norms regarding conflict behavior that they are socialized to accept, and the structural approach, holding that democratic institutions make it easier for a leader's opponents to block policies (such as war) they disapprove. Attempts to construct critical tests for determining the better approach have proven inconclusive, largely because there is so much overlap between the two arguments and because democratic norms and democratic institutions often coexist. The above suggests that a reevaluation of the research is in order and a new theory is needed. This investigation articulates and tests a general theory of foreign policy. The theory specifies how individual preferences, domestic political structures, and the international environment interact to produce foreign policies. The theory also integrates the work on conflict behavior with other types of foreign policy such as alliance formation, defense spending, and events inte raction. The theory is formalized and is used to deduce hypotheses systematically. The methods appropriately employed use a variety of extant data sets to test relevant hypotheses. This research investigation should substantially enhance our understanding of the topic. ***