At least since 1750 when Baron de Montesquieu declared peace is the natural effect of trade, a number of economists and political scientists espoused the notion that trade among nations leads to peace. Employing resources wisely to produce one commodity rather than employing them inefficiently to produce another is the foundation for comparative advantage. Specialization based on comparative advantage leads to gains from trade. If political conflict leads to a diminution of trade, then at least a portion of the costs of conflict can be measured by a nation's lost gains from trade. The greater two nations' gain from trade the more costly is bilateral (dyadic) conflict. This notion forms the basis of Baron de Montesquieu's assertion regarding dyadic dispute. This paper develops an analytical framework showing that higher gains from trade between two trading partners (dyads) lowers the level of conflict between them. It describes data necessary to test this hypothesis, and it outlines current developments and extensions taking place in the resulting trade-conflict literature. Crosssectional evidence using various data on political interactions confirms that trading nations cooperate more and fight less. A doubling of trade leads to a 20% diminution of belligerence. This result is robust under various specifications, and it is upheld when adjusting for causality using cross-section and time-series techniques. Further, the impact of trade is strengthened when bilateral import demand elasticities are incorporated to better measure gains from trade. Because democratic dyads trade more than non-democratic dyads, democracies cooperate with each other relatively more, thereby explaining the democratic peace that democracies rarely fight each other. The paper then goes on to examine further extensions of the trade-conflict model regarding specific commodity trade, foreign direct investment, tariffs, foreign aid, country contiguity, and multilateral interactions.

/pdf/trade-peace-and-democracy-an-analysis-of-dyadic-dispute-5frrc5495z.pdf

Trade, peace and democracy: an analysis of dyadic dispute

Contemporary International Relations (IR) typically treats anarchy as a fundamental, defining, and analytically central feature of international relations. Furthermore, it is usually held that IR since its inception has been structured around a discourse of anarchy. In fact, however, until the 1980s anarchy was rarely employed as a central analytical concept, as I show by examining 145 books published between 1895 and 1978. The conceptual and analytic centrality of anarchy is not imposed on us by international reality. Rather, it is a recent and contingent construction. Given the shortcomings of standard uses of ‘anarchy’ – especially the facts that there is no clear, generally agreed upon definition, that ‘the effects of anarchy’ are not effects of anarchy (alone), and that anarchy is not the structural ordering principle of international systems – I argue for returning to earlier practice and putting anarchy back in the background of IR.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S1752971915000111

The discourse of anarchy in IR

Quantitative studies in the history of international relations have become increasingly prominent in recent years, yet have been largely ignored by diplomatic historians. The author, a diplomatic historian, examines a recent, promising effort to test balance of power theory through a quantitative analysis of the events of European diplomatic history, 1870–1881, as recorded by historians. He concludes that though the research involved is impressive and the conclusions reached both sensible and provocative, the project appears to ignore certain inherent limitations in its historical materials and certain complexities of international relations in its efforts to achieve objective ratings of cooperation vs. conflict, activity vs. passivity, and alignment vs. opposition. In addition, the objective indices for power and status seem inadequate and misleading in important respects.

Quantitative Studies in the Balance of Power An Historians Reaction

Nuclear psychology, a preliminary bibliography

Domestic interest groups and foreign policy : a case study analysis of the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea /

Quantitative International Politics: Insights and Evidence

Book Review: International Politics and Economics: Quantitative International Politics: Insights and EvidenceQuantitative International Politics: Insights and Evidence. Edited by SingerJ. David. 1968. (New York: The Free Press. Toronto: Collier-Macmillan. xiv, 394 pp. $12.10)

Thomas A. Hockin

Papers

Quantitative International Politics: Insights and Evidence

Book Review: International Politics and Economics: Quantitative International Politics: Insights and EvidenceQuantitative International Politics: Insights and Evidence. Edited by SingerJ. David. 1968. (New York: The Free Press. Toronto: Collier-Macmillan. xiv, 394 pp. $12.10)