Theory of International Politics
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...Neorealists also predict a central role for external balancing+ The formation of alliances is considered to be in states’ interests whenever they perceive a major threat,17 and critical to success in deterrence and war whenever internal resources are insufficient to the task+ Allying with other states when alliances are required 12+ For discussions of the difficulty of applying selection arguments to international relations, see Kahler 1999 and McKeown 1986+ 13+ Waltz 1979, 91+ 14+ See Mearsheimer 1994; Krasner 1991; and Mearsheimer 2001+ 15+ See Bean 1973; and Tilly 1990+ 16+ Waltz 1979, 194+ 17+ Walt 1987+ for successful balancing is a fundamental principle of neorealism+ Certainly, if a state faces threats to its survival, neorealists would expect that it would find and form an alliance to counter those threats and, further, that states that failed to form alliances in similar situations would face a much higher risk of extinction+ Thus, an initial hypothesis regarding the effects of alliance on state death would be: H3a: Unallied states are more likely to die than allied states....
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...Although scholars such as Waltz and Alexander Wendt have often used the terms “state death” and “state selection,” they have never defined them clearly+22 Because previous discussions of state death have focused on states as actors in the international system, I selected a definition that referred specifically to the foreign policy capabilities of states+ I define state death as the formal loss of control over foreign policy to another state+ One could also conceive of state death in terms of a regime change~ s in Cuba in 1959! or state collapse~as in Somalia in 1992!+ In these cases, though, the state is still present in the international system but has undergone serious internal changes+ While students of comparative politics frequently label these cases of state death, because I am interested in the international pressures that may lead to state death, I exclude these categories from my definition of state death+ This exclusion hinges on the notion that foreign policy capabilities must be lost to another state for a state death to have occurred+ Using Stephen Krasner’s typology, regime change or state collapse may well compromise interdependence, domestic, or Westphalian sovereignty+ They do not, however, necessarily compromise international legal sovereignty+23 Although some states may revoke recognition based on these changes 21+ See, for example, Bennett and Zitomersky 1982; Gleditsch and Ward 1999; and Bremer and Ghosn 2003+ 22+ See Waltz 1979; and Wendt 1999+ 23+ “International legal sovereignty refers to the practices associated with mutual recognition, usu- ally between territorial entities that have formal juridical independence+ Westphalian sovereignty refers to political organizations based on the exclusion of external actors from authority structures within a given territory+ Domestic sovereignty refers to the formal organization of political authority within the state and the ability of public authorities to exercise effective control within the borders of their own polity+ Finally, interdependence sovereignty refers to the ability of public authorities to regulate the flow of information, ideas, goods, people, pollutants, or capital across the borders of their state+” Krasner 1999, 3–4+ in domestic politics, it is difficult to conceive of Cuba as having left the international system after 1959, or Somalia after 1992+ Another issue that must be considered is how one should treat cases of states that die and then reenter the system+ In many if not most such cases, resurrection is by no means certain at the time of state death+ The benefit of hindsight informs one that many state deaths were later reversed+ Without the benefit of foresight, however, one cannot know that states such as Hanover, Austria-Hungary, and Zanzibar might not also return to the international system+24 To avoid a selection bias, then, it makes sense to include states that were later resurrected in the list of state deaths+ State death can occur in a number of ways+ First, states may die through conquest+ They may be colonized, as were the Indian princely states; or they may be taken over, and sometimes parceled out, as was Poland in World War II+ Prolonged military occupation is another form of state death+ States can die through federation or confederation~or reunification! with other states, as did East Germany in 1990 and Zanzibar in 1964+ Finally, state death may occur through dissolution+ Cases in point are Czechoslovakia in 1992–93 and Germany in 1945+ Note that while cases of conquest and occupation are always violent, unification and dissolution can also occur violently, as in the Two Sicilies’ annexation to Sardinia0 Piedmont in 1861+ Fifty of 202 states have died since 1816+ They are listed in Table 1+ With three exceptions, this list of state deaths is consistent with the COW list of changes in membership in the interstate system+25 Of the fifty states that have died, thirty-five—the clear majority—have died violently+ In part because violent state deaths constitute the bulk of state deaths, and in part because some of the hypotheses presented above should work best in cases of violent state death, I distinguish analyses on those states that were “killed” from those on all state deaths+ One could argue that the causes of violent and nonviolent state death might be different+ A number of states, however, “commit suicide” rather than fighting their would-be conquerors+ For example, Bavaria and Württemberg joined the Prussian federation in 1870 having seen what happened to states ~such as Hanover and Saxony! that resisted Prussian expansion+ Limiting the initial analysis to violent state death allows a “cleaner” test of both the buffer state and balancing hypotheses; extending the analysis to all state deaths provides a further test of these claims+ 24+ Indeed, at the end of World War II, one of the proposed solutions to the “German Question” was to resurrect the small German states, such as Hanover+ Further, Zanzibar has recently considered secession from Tanzania+ New York Times, 28 October 2000, A7+ 25+ Using the above criteria, I added three state deaths to the COW list: Kuwait, USSR, and Yugoslavia+ The Soviet and Yugoslav cases are considered nonviolent state deaths because in neither case was the original state conquered or occupied by an external actor+ The Kuwaiti case is coded as a violent state death; although the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait was short-lived, Iraq clearly intended a permanent annexation of Kuwait+...
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...Note that while neorealism is often taken to be a theory of great power behavior, in explicating his selection argument, Waltz specifically makes the point that, despite many differences, weak and powerful states are functionally similar+ Fol- lowing this point, he argues that “international politics consists of like units duplicating one another’s activities+” 18 Thus, neorealist claims about rational behavior should apply to all states+ At the same time, weak, unallied states should face dim prospects for survival+ The discussion below provides a rare, if preliminary, test of the selection argument that at least one scholar has referred to as the central prediction of neorealism+19...
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...…or above from any two major powers, and a population of 500,000 or more, or; 2+ Membership in the League of Nations or the United Nations+20 18+ Waltz 1979, 94–96+ 19+ Feaver 2000+ 20+ Small and Singer 1982, 41–43+ The missions and organizational membership criteria are meant to determine…...
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...For their valuable comments and suggestions, I thank James Fearon, Page Fortna, Erik Gartzke, Hein Goemans, Simon Jackman, Stephen Krasner, David Lewis, Scott Sagan, Erik Voeten, the editor of IO, two anonymous reviewers, as well as seminar participants at Stanford University, Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Virginia Law School+ Earlier versions of this article were presented at the 2000 Annual Meetings of the International Studies Association and the American Political Science Association+ Jessica Stanton provided valuable research assistance+ I gratefully acknowledge the support of the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the John M+ Olin Institute for Strategic Studies+ Any errors are my own+ 1+ For a discussion of the survival assumption in international relations, see Howes 2003+ 2+ For a recent exception, see Adams 2000+ International Organization58, Spring 2004, pp+ 311–344 © 2004 by The IO Foundation+ DOI: 10+10170S0020818304582048 states caught between two rivals—are particularly vulnerable to conquest, annexation, and occupation+ State death is defined here as the formal loss of foreign policymaking power to another state+ Contrary to conventional wisdom, state death has occurred quite frequently over the past two centuries; fifty of 202 ~about 25 percent! states have died, and most have died violently+3 The violence commonly associated with state death in itself makes this an important topic for study+ For example, thirteen states were conquered or occupied in the course of World War II+ A generation later, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait prompted the formation of a broad international coalition in response+ State death has been an important feature of the international landscape since the rise of the sovereign state+ Likewise, state death plays a fundamental, lthough underappreciated, role in major international relations theories such as neorealism+ Kenneth Waltz avoids a strict rationality assumption by making a state selection argument+ “Since making foreign policy is such a complicated business, one cannot expect of political leaders the nicely calculated decisions that the word ‘rationality’ suggests+ I accord @greater significance# to the process of selection that takes place in competitive systems+ + + + Behaviors are selected for their consequences+” 4 This claim is followed by another: that the death rate of states is low+5 If neorealists are correct, then state survival is in large part a matter of behavior and choice on the part of states seeking to preserve their sovereignty+ I make the somewhat counterintuitive argument that states that great powers have an interest in preserving—buffer states—are in fact in a high-risk group for death+ Regional or great powers surrounding buffer states face a strategic imperative to take over buffer states: if these powers fail to act against the buffer, they fear that their opponent will take it over in their stead+ By contrast, these concerns do not apply to nonbuffer states, where powers face no competition for influence or control+ The remainder of this article proceeds as follows+ The next section more fully elaborates the argument discussed briefly above+ Second, a brief analysis of an alternative argument—the neorealist claim that states that balance are more likely to survive than states that fail to balance—follows+ Third, definitions of the variables and a brief description of the data used are presented+ An event history model testing five hypotheses constitutes the fourth part of this article+ Th empirical section of this article continues with brief presentations of two cases of state death: the eighteenth-century partitions of Poland and the early-twentieth-century occu- 3+ See Table 1, below+ I use the phrase “violent state death” to refer to cases in which one state uses military force to conquer or occupy another+ Note that this definition does not include cases such as the dissolution of the Yugoslav Federation in 1992, as the change in the status of Yugoslavia was the result of a civil, not an international, war+ 4+ Waltz 1986, 330+ 5+ Waltz 1979, 95+ pation of the Dominican Republic+ The article concludes with a discussion of findings and their implications+...
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