Bruce Russett on escaping the war trap - follow-up on Chase Dunn/Boswell

Thuis is what one of our most distinguished colleagues in the quantitative
studies profession, Bruce Russett, has to say in our context:

http://www.library.yale.edu/un/brussett/bruss.htm



Escaping the War Trap: Evaluating the Liberal Peace Controlling for the
Expected Utility of Conflict (Abstract) 
Our pooled analyses of the politically relevant dyads, 1950-85, indicate
that democracy, interdependence, and economic growth have important pacific
benefits, even controlling for the expected utility of conflict. Democracies
have enjoyed a separate peace that has allowed them to avoid not only war
with one another but less violent militarized disputes as well. Autocracies
and democracies, on the other hand, are particularly prone to conflict.
Because autocracies fight one another with greater frequency than do
democracies, it follows necessarily that democracies at the national level
of analysis are more peaceful, ceteris paribus. Economically important trade
and growth in per capita incomes are also substantial forces for peace. Our
analyses also provide support for Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman's (1992)
international interaction game, but militarized disputes do not seem a
function of expected utility naively considered. The likelihood of a dispute
is a positive function of utility, as expected; but it is inversely related
to the probability that a state will win a conflict. Moreover, Bueno de
Mesquita's (1981) measure of the utility of conflict, based on the
similarity of states' alliance portfolios, provides only a partial
explanation of the incentives for conflict in the post-World War II era.
Differences in domestic policies, as indicated by the political distance
separating states along the democracy-autocracy continuum, are as important.
High levels of trade and a growing economy represent significant costs of
resorting to force. 

Kind regards. Arno Tausch