Democracies, Disputes, and Third-Party Intermediaries

Democracies, Disputes, and Third-Party IntermediariesAuthor(s): Gregory A. RaymondSource: The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 38, No. 1 (Mar., 1994), pp. 24-42Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/174399 .

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Democracies, Disputes, and Third-Party Intermediaries

GREGORY A. RAYMOND Boise State University

The proposition that democracies rarely fight one another has been well-substantiated by empirical research. A prominent explanation for this finding is that shared norms fostered by a democratic political culture promote peaceful conflict resolution. Joint democratic dyads allegedly have a greater propensity than other types of dyads to entrust third parties with judicial competence to settle their disputes. The results from a study of 206 dyadic disputes involving third-party intermediaries support this claim. The presence of joint democracy in dangerous, war-prone dyads has a strong positive effect on the probability of referring interstate disputes to binding third-party settlement, even when controlling for alliance bonds and geographic proximity. In addition, the more a joint democratic dyad is marked by coherent regimes or a rough parity in the distribution of military capabilities, the greater the propensity to refer disputes to binding third-party settlement.

Whatever faults modem democracies may have committed . . . the faults

chargeable on monarchs and oligarchies have been less pardonable and more harmful to the peace and progress of mankind.

-James Bryce

Speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee shortly after the Berlin Wall had been breached, U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker

(1990b) proclaimed: "When the barriers to democratic values come down- as we have seen in Eastern Europe-prospects open wide for legitimate government, revitalized societies, improved relations, and lasting security" (p. 2). A few months later, in an address to the World Affairs Council in

Dallas, Texas, he returned to the theme of building security on a foundation

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Support for this research was provided by grants from the United States Institute of Peace and the Idaho Higher Education Research Council. I am grateful to Ted Robert Gurr and Will Moore for making the POLITY II data available, and to Randolph Siverson and Harvey Starr for sharing their national border data set. I would like to thank Lon Burke for his assistance in database management, and Nasrin Abdolali and John Oneal for helpful comments on earlier versions of the article.

JOURNAL OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION, Vol. 38 No. 1, March 1994 24-42 ? 1994 Sage Publications, Inc.

24



Raymond /THIRD-PARTY INTERMEDIARIES 25

of democratic values. "[D]emocracy and the national interests of the democracies," the secretary maintained, "reinforce each other" (Baker 1990a, 1). In his opinion, the best guarantee of a constructive approach to international problems would be the consolidation of democracy within the former Eastern bloc. "Beyond containment," he announced, "lies democracy" (p. 5).

Embedded within Secretary Baker's observations about the future of Eastern Europe was the implicit proposition that democracies resolve disputes among themselves without resorting to war.1 A growing body of scientific research supports this Kantian proposition. Although democratic states have been involved in foreign conflict as frequently as nondemocratic states (Salmore and Hermann 1969; Vincent 1987) and are only slightly less likely than nondemocratic states to initiate wars (Small and Singer 1976; Chan 1984; Weede 1984; Domke 1988), democracies almost never wage war against one another (Rummel 1983; Maoz and Abdolali 1989; Maoz and Russett 1992; Bremer 1992).2 Indeed, the virtual absence of war between democratic states is considered "one of the strongest nontrivial or non- tautological generalizations" (Russett 1989, 245) that can be made about state behavior. It is, in Levy's (1989) words, "as close as anything we have to an empirical law in international relations" (p. 270).

Two explanations have been advanced to account for the lack of war between democracies; one based on political culture, the other on political structure. Whereas the former contends that the shared norms fostered by a democratic culture promote peaceful conflict resolution, the latter asserts that democracies are less likely to go to war due to structural constraints on high-level decision makers (Morgan and Campbell 1991; Morgan and

1. Some statesmen have been more explicit in specifying the causal connection between democracy and war. For example, Sir Michael Alexander (1990), Great Britain's permanent representative to NATO, described democratic nations as "stable, predictable places from which the risk of aggression is vastly reduced" (p. 4). Similarly, George Bush asserted that "[d]emocrats in the Kremlin can assure our security in a way nuclear missiles never could" (cited in Lukin 1992, 66), a sentiment echoed by Bill Clinton during his 1993 summit conference with Boris Yeltsin in Vancouver, Canada.

2. Differences in the way democracy and war are conceptualized lead some researchers to identify cases where democracies fight one another. Based on his examination of the past two centuries, however, Ray (1993) concludes that "none of those cases is accurately categorized as an international war between democratic states" (p. 269). Even if cases from more than two centuries ago are accepted as instances of democracies fighting one another (e.g., Athens vs. Syracuse in antiquity), the conclusions from numerous studies employing a welter of different measurement techniques converge on the finding that a condition of joint democracy dampens the probability of war. What is more, this finding holds up even when controlling for confounding variables like wealth and economic growth (Russett 1990), and it has been replicated by cross-cultural research (Ember, Ember, and Russett 1992). Thus, although it may be an over- statement to claim democracies never fight one another, the results from these studies are robust enough to warrant saying that democracies very rarely fight each other. For a critical analysis of the research designs used in these studies, see Merritt and Zinnes (1991).



26 JOURNAL OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION

Schwebach 1992; Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman 1992). The purpose of this study is to test the first explanation. Although there is some overlap between these two explanations, each stresses a different causal mechanism in accounting for the peaceful proclivities of democratic states. Hence an adequate test would need to examine the implications of the norm-based political culture explanation that are not entailed in political structure.

If the norms of orderly and peaceful conflict resolution account for why disputes between democracies rarely escalate to war, what else should follow from this explanation? One expectation voiced by former U.S. Secretary of State Elihu Root (cited in Wright 1965, 840) is that joint-democracy dyads will show a significantly greater propensity than other types of dyads to entrust third parties with judicial competence to settle their differences. Although the threat of electoral censure and other structural constraints on a democratic leader's decision latitude may be associated with low levels of warfare, they would not account for democratic states acceding to binding third-party judgments on contentious international issues.

Do joint-democracy dyads show such a general tendency? The prelimi- nary evidence indicates that democratically governed countries are more

likely than others to resolve their disputes with the assistance of third parties (Dixon 1993), but thus far it is unclear what form these efforts take and whether the form of third-party action varies among different types of dyads. The focus of my efforts here will be to test a theoretical specification of the cultural/normative explanation of the war-inhibiting properties of democ-

racy, a specification whose primary implication is that pairs of democratic states are more likely than other dyads to refer their disputes to binding forms of third-party settlement. Structural constraint explanations of the virtual absence of war between democracies cannot account for such behavior and, as Dixon (1993) points out, they "would likely be stretched beyond recogni- tion by any attempt to do so" (p. 64).

DEMOCRATIC CULTURE AND CONFLICT RESOLUTION

A political culture grounded in norms of tolerance and compromise has often been cited as a necessary condition for democracy, and at times it has been proposed as a sufficient condition (Pennock 1979, 206-59). Previous research (Moore 1974b) has found that sociocultural attributes are more

potent in accounting for foreign policy outcomes in open, democratic polities than they are in closed polities. National leaders in open polities, "because of the democratic norms they have learned throughout their lives, operate within similar philosophic references" (Moore 1974a, 1196). These norms




discourage the use of lethal force. Politics is seen as a non-zero-sum game, with the result that the policy-making process contains a spirit of give-and- take. Compromise, the use of persuasion rather than coercion, and a reliance on legal procedures to resolve disputes are the primary means for dealing with conflict. Everyone is believed to lose if politics degenerates into violence.

Democracies, writes Joffe (1990), are prone "to view the world as an extension of their domestic polities" (p. 125). The procedural norms that govern conflict resolution in daily life are externalized. What functions at home is assumed to be viable abroad. As Cleon complained to the Athenians during the fifth year of the Peloponnesian War, the everyday experience of those living under democratic rule is thought to be relevant to matters beyond their borders (Thucydides 1951, 164). Democratic foreign policy, in other words, is grounded in an open polity's conception of its essence and distinc- tive nature (Brewin 1988, 331-32). Disputes between democracies rarely escalate to war because each side expects the other to rely on peaceful means of conflict resolution.3 Moreover, they often act on this expectation by allowing third-party intermediaries to play a judicial role in ameliorating festering issues. In contrast, belligerents are less likely to grant third-party intermediaries the authority to render a binding judgment whenever the dispute involves one or more nondemocracies. Lacking shared democratic norms and the trust in law such norms encourage, autocratic leaders would be predisposed to restrict any third party to functioning as a go-between rather than as an umpire. By so doing, they would defend what they believe is their right to be the final judges of whether a wrong has been committed and how it ought to be redressed. Limiting the power of a third-party intermediary eliminates the dilemma of being obliged to adhere to a verdict that might injure perceived national interests. Unfortunately, it also may dampen the

prospects of the dispute being settled. Arbitration and mediation are two intermediary roles for third parties that

highlight the distinction between legal versus political forms of conflict resolution. Both techniques have long, distinguished histories that can be traced back to the efforts by third parties to resolve the boundary clashes that

3. According to some theorists, this expectation is rooted in the concept of legitimacy held by democratic governments. Democracies, argues Fukuyama (1991), "can fight those that they regard as illegitimate [i.e., nondemocracies], but they have a great deal of trouble going to war with states whose legitimacy they respect" (p. 663, emphasis added). In essence, the liberal democratic conception of legitimacy proscribes the use of force against kindred regimes that are thought to represent the wishes of the populace. It supports the use of force against nondemocracies because they are expected to be violence prone and willing to take advantage of the inherent pacific nature of democracies. Mutual respect, writes Doyle (1983), "is the touchstone of international liberal theory" (p. 213). When states respect each other, citizens are free to establish a web of transnational ties that enhances cooperation.




erupted among Summarian city-states on the flood plains of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers during the third millennium B.C. (Raymond 1980). Given that both of these forms of pacific settlement are potent, flexible, and widely used means of conflict resolution, they provide an excellent basis for a comparative study aimed at testing what may be the primary implication that can be derived from the normative explanation of why disputes between democracies rarely, if ever, escalate to war.

Arbitration is a means for settling disputes that allows the contestants to select a third party who, in turn, makes a binding judgment on the case in question. Because the disputants are bound by the arbitrator's decision, legal scholars generally consider arbitration to be a judicial means of third-party settlement (Bowett 1983, 177-78; Eubanks 1971, 132). As the Lord Chief Justice of England, Lord Russell of Killowen, once put it, in international arbitration, decisions are based "on the application of the proper principles of international law" (cited in Wetter 1979, 11). Similarly, Judge John Bassett Moore (cited in Sohn 1983) has written that "arbitration is ajudicial process." International arbitrators "act as judges and not as conciliators or as advocates of the parties" (p. 1125). "I have failed to discover support for the supposition that international arbitrators... have failed to apply legal principles" (Moore 1929, xxxix). "In logic (and largely in history)," adds Stone (1954), "arbitral settlements of disputes presents itself as the main break away from the basic postulate of the diplomatic methods, namely, that each state remains the final judge in its own suit" (p. 73). It is for this reason that the International Law Commission (1952) has asserted that "arbitration is a method of settling disputes between States in accordance with law, as distinguished from the political and diplomatic procedures of mediation and conciliation" (p. 3). Should an arbitration tribunal deviate from the rules of international law, it would become, in Zimmerman's (1939) words, "an array of wigs and gowns vociferating in emptiness" (p. 125).

International mediation differs from arbitration in that it is a political rather than a judicial form of conflict resolution. The third party actively participates in the settlement process, but only offers suggestions for a possible solution. As pointed out by Touval (1982), mediation is a variant of negotiation. Much of what mediators do can be viewed as helping the parties overcome the difficulties of negotiating a voluntary agreement (Princen 1992, 221). Of course, this does not mean that they always function as impartial, disinterested facilitators. Third parties have diverse motives for mediating a dispute. Sometimes they become principals in a triangular bargaining process where they work toward an outcome favorable to their own national objectives, regardless of the merits attendant to the grievances voiced by either state.



Raymond / THIRD-PARTY INTERMEDIARIES 29

To sum up, one implication of a norm-based explanation of the lack of bellicosity between democracies is that their disputes are more likely to be referred to arbitration than are disputes between either democratic and nondemocratic states or disputes between nondemocratic states. As a corol- lary to this joint-democracy hypothesis, one also might predict that dyadic disputes between either democratic and nondemocratic states or disputes between nondemocratic states are more likely to be referred to mediation than are disputes between democratic states. The benefit of nonbinding third-party procedures for those who distrust judicial processes is that a mediator's suggested solution can be rejected without prejudice to one's reputation. Mediation, therefore, presents few risks for those wary of intermediary motives and uncertain about how the rules of international law might be interpreted.

Two qualifications can be added to the joint-democracy hypothesis. First, coherent democracies are more likely to use binding arbitration than are incoherent democracies. Initially suggested by Darby (1899, 7) and more recently intimated in the work of Rothstein (1992, 21-24), this qualification presumes that states with internally consistent authority patterns are less subject to wrenching domestic conflict than are polities that possess a mixture of democratic and authoritarian traits. Steeped in norms supportive of judicial modes of conflict resolution, coherent democracies are durable enough to have accumulated considerable experience in allowing third parties to make binding judgments on controversial issues. Weak, unstable democracies, however, may suffer from a host of residual inequalities and centrifugal political forces that could lead their citizens to distrust the rule of law and question the legitimacy of third-party arbitrators.

The second qualification is that symmetrical disputes characterized by power parity between democracies are more likely to be referred to arbitration than are asymmetrical disputes. The claim that a rough balance of power between disputants makes hostilities more amenable to binding forms of third-party conflict resolution rests on the assumption that power parity fosters the growth of reciprocity (Gebrehana 1984, 142) and provides the conditions under which international law flourishes (Donnadieu 1900, 233; Fiore 1885, 463-66; Pillet 1899, 52-53; Stieglitz 1893, 232-53).4 Whenever disputants possess approximately equivalent power, the high cost of fighting and the uncertainty of the outcome allegedly encourage national leaders to

4. Although the impact of different power distributions on conflict resolution norms and procedures has been addressed by legal theorists since the nineteenth century, the larger question of the likelihood of war in symmetric versus asymmetric dyads has recently drawn considerable attention from data-based researchers outside the field of international law. For a recent summary of this literature, see Kugler (1993, 485-88).




seek alternatives to the use of force (Oppenheim 1905, 30). In situations where power imbalances are overwhelming, the dominant state will not accept the binding judgment of a third party. Instead, it will prefer nonbinding third-party activities that do not eliminate the option of marshaling prepon- derant strength to force the weaker side to capitulate. Simply put, powerful states will tend to bypass judicial methods whenever their perceived interests clash with those of a weaker adversary. As Guertin (1931) put it, strength increases the "feeling of self-sufficiency" and makes nations "less willing to submit to the laws of justice" (p. 120; see, also, Snyder and Diesing 1977, 122).

RESEARCH DESIGN

The population of cases used to test the joint-democracy hypothesis consisted of 206 dyadic disputes from the time span between 1820 and 1965 that met four defining characteristics: (1) both parties were members of the interstate system at the time of the third-party action; (2) at least one party was a major power; (3) they shared a direct or indirect border; and (4) the dispute was referred to either third-party arbitration or mediation. The information sources used to identify which disputes fulfilled these criteria of inclusion were Butterworth with Scranton (1976), Darby (1904), Levine (1971), Ralston (1929), and Stuyt (1972). Following the classification procedures of the Correlates of War project (see Small and Singer 1982), the major powers within the time span consisted of Austria-Hungary (1820- 1918), China (1950-80), France (1820-1940, 1945-80), Germany/Prussia (1820-1918, 1925-45), Great Britain (1820-1980), Italy (1860-1943), Japan (1895-1945), Russia/Soviet Union (1820-1917, 1922-80), and the United States (1898-1980). The data used to categorize states according to types of borders were taken from Siverson and Starr (1991). States sharing a direct border were defined as those having contiguity by land or being divided by no more than 200 miles across a common water border. Sharing an indirect border was defined as having a contiguous land border or no more than a 200-mile water border that derived from the possession of colonies, trust territories, or other foreign dependencies. In the light of evidence that major power involvement and shared frontiers create a high probability of conflict (Bremer 1992; Diehl 1985), the population under investigation represented the most dangerous of what Maoz and Russett (1992, 249) have called

"politically relevant" dyads. By using a dyadic research design to compare these war-prone dyads, a stringent empirical test was created for the joint-




democracy hypothesis. Should the test results sustain the hypothesis, it would provide new support for the cultural/normative explanation of why democracies are less likely to engage in war with one another than other combina- tions of regimes.

Having described the empirical domain of the study, we can turn our attention to operationalizing the conceptual distinctions that were drawn earlier; namely, those between (1) democracies and nondemocracies, (2) coherent and incoherent regimes, and (3) symmetrical versus asymmetrical disputes.

A variety of quantitative measures of democracy have been constructed over the past three decades, each relying on different indicators and data sources. The measure used here was the 10-point additive scale contained in the POLITY II data set (Gurr, Jaggers, and Moore 1989). Based on the competitiveness of political participation, the openness of executive recruit- ment, and constraints on the chief executive, the scale provided a composite measure of institutionalized democracy. Countries with a score greater than 5 were classified as democracies, countries which scored 5 or less as nondemocracies. A democratic dyad was thus defined as any pair of countries with scores above 5 for both members of the dyad. Any dyad without both members scoring above 5 was defined as nondemocratic.5

Moving next to the measure regime coherence, those states with a score of 7 or more on the POLITY II democracy scale were coded as coherent democracies. States possessing scores below the threshold requirement of 7 were coded as incoherent regimes. Following the procedure described above, coherent democratic dyads were defined as any pair of countries where both members of the dyad possessed scores of 7 or more. Dyads with one or more members scoring less than 7 were defined as incoherent.

Finally, the approach to operationalizing the distinction between symmetrical and asymmetrical disputes was based on Weede's (1976, 399) conten- tion that the relationship between different dyadic distributions of power and the risk of war takes the form of a step function. Thus what influences the prospects for using binding methods of dispute settlement to avoid war are not imbalances of power as such, but asymmetries of a different order of

5. Because polities may possess both democratic and autocratic characteristics, using the democracy scale in this way may introduce measurement errors into the data analysis. Sensitivity tests were conducted using the POLITY II institutionalized autocracy scale to determine whether a serious problem existed. The findings appear to be robust. No significant difference was found between the results reported below and those based on measures reflecting the level of autocracy in regime types of dispute dyads. For a multidimensional approach to index construction that takes into account the level of power concentration within a regime as well as any democratic and autocratic characteristics, see Maoz and Russett (1993, 628-29) and Russett (1993).



32 JOURNAL OF CONFLICTRESOLUTION

magnitude-asymmetries characterized by overwhelming preponderance in a dyad. To capture such a step-level distinction, the population of cases was divided into two types: (1) symmetrical disputes, where both parties were major powers; and (2) asymmetrical disputes, where one party was a major power and the other was a minor power.

DATA ANALYSIS

With a presentation of the database and key variables behind us, we can return to the question of whether dyadic disputes between democracies are more likely to be referred to binding arbitration than are disputes that do not involve two democracies. Table 1 displays the cross-classification of dyad type and the form of third-party resolution used in the 206 disputes under study. Among the joint-democracy dyads, 82% of the disputes referred to a third party were arbitrated. For the remaining dyads, only 48% were arbitrated. If joint democracy was unrelated to third-party procedure, the odds of using third-party arbitration would be the same for joint democratic and nonjoint democratic dyads, and the ratio of the odds would be 1.00. The reported odds ratio of 4.98 implies that dyad type and third-party procedure were associated, with a condition of joint democracy being linked to the use of arbitration. Yule's Q, which is a function of the odds ratio, portrays a strong relationship between dyad type and third-party conflict resolution procedure.

Because Q is often thought to overstate the strength of a relationship, an alternative statistical approach was undertaken. The two most common approaches to analyzing nominal-level cross-classifications are by measures based on chi-square and by proportional-reduction-in-error (PRE) measures. Cramer's V, the chi-square measure used here, pointed toward a more modest association. But because chi-square-based measures can be sensitive to

marginal distributions, delk, a PRE statistic that gives a clear indication of

predictive accuracy also was calculated. The results from this analysis revealed that there were 25% fewer errors observed than would have been

expected by chance. Because the set of cases in our empirical domain constituted a population, this finding would lead us to reject the null hypothesis that the method of dispute settlement undertaken by third parties was

independent of dyad type. Strictly speaking, inferential statistics are unnec-

essary for analyzing a population, and they have limited value when applied to data that have not been generated by random sampling, but for those who

rely on significance tests to provide an additional benchmark for the threshold of importance, the results from the chi-square test suggest that conflict resolution procedure was not independent of dyad type.




TABLE 1

The Relationship between Third-Party Conflict Resolution Procedures and Regime Types of Dispute Dyads (in percentages)

Joint Democracy Dyad

No Yes

Mediation 52 18 Arbitration 48 82 Total 100 100 (N) (150) (56)

NOTE: Odds ratio = 4.98; Q = .67; V = .31; x2 = 18.06; delk = .25; p < .001.

Of course, there still remains the possibility that the relationship between dyad type and conflict resolution procedure is spurious. Arbitration tends to be used more often by joint democratic dyads than by other types of dyads, but that does not necessarily mean democracy is responsible. Some other variable may be the causal agent. Alliance bonds are a plausible, rival explanation for the choice of arbitration over mediation. Allies are like- minded, mutually responsive states. Earlier empirical work on conflict resolution has stressed the importance of common membership in intergovern- mental organizations (Harf 1974, 320), and recent research has found that democracies have a greater propensity to ally with each other than would be expected by chance (Siverson and Emmons 1991). Thus it is possible that the lack of bellicosity between democracies may owe less to their means of governance than to the bonds forged by a common external threat. Regardless of the nature of their domestic political systems, allies might accept binding methods of dispute settlement more readily than nonallies to strengthen and preserve the coalitions on which national security may depend.

Geographic separation offers another plausible explanation for the ami- cable relations between democracies. States without direct borders may experience little friction and rivalry and may not present a grave threat to one another. With less to risk from an unfavorable judicial ruling, they might be more willing than physically adjacent states to trust the judgement of third- party arbitrators (see Gladstone 1873, 120). Democracies did not often share direct borders throughout the early portion of the time span under investigation; consequently the underlying cause for what seems to be a relationship between regime-type and the choice of conflict resolution technique may be distance.

To operationalize the concept of alliance bonds, each case was coded according to whether or not the disputants were allies, based on the Correlates



34 JOURNAL OF CONFLICTRESOLUTION

TABLE 2

Logit Regression Estimates for the Relationship between Third-Party Conflict Resolution Procedures and Regime

Types of Dispute Dyads, Alliance Bonds, and Geographic Proximity

Variable Coefficient t ratio Significance

Constant .45 1.94 .054 Joint democracy 1.83 4.48 <.001 Alliance -.77 -1.82 .069 Nonseparation -.84 -2.67 .008

NOTE: Binary assignment rule for dependent variable: 1 if binding third-party action (arbitration), 0 if nonbinding action (mediation); N = 206.

of War formal alliance data set (Small and Singer 1969). Using the Siverson and Starr (1991) borders data set, disputants were further classified as

geographically nonseparated if they possessed a contiguous land frontier, shared a river boundary, or were divided by no more than 200 miles across a common water border. Alternatively, they were considered separated if they shared no more than an indirect border. As a result of these procedures, two

dummy variables were created. When combined with the previous dichoto- mous coding of whether or not both parties in a dispute were democracies, logistical regression analysis could be used to ascertain the impact of joint democracy on the binary choice of third-party arbitration versus mediation, controlling for alliance bonds and geographic proximity.

Table 2 shows the results from the logit analysis. The condition of joint democracy was statistically significant and in the expected direction. During the time span between 1820 and 1965, whenever a dyadic dispute was referred to a third-party intermediary and both disputants were democracies that had the choice of selecting binding arbitration or nonbinding mediation, they tended to choose the former. Conversely, when the same choice faced the members of dyads not composed of two democracies, they generally selected the latter form of conflict resolution. In short, the presence of joint democracy in a dangerous, war-prone dyad had a strong positive effect on the probability of referral to binding arbitration, even when controlling for alliance bonds and geographic proximity.

Whereas the parameter estimate for alliance bonds was not significant, the results from the logit analysis indicate that the presence of nonseparation in a dyad significantly reduced the probability of referral to arbitration. As

expected, disputants that did not share a direct frontier were more likely than

contiguous states to accept arbitration. Adjacent states had a higher proba-




TABLE 3 The Relationship between Third-Party

Conflict Resolution Procedures and Regime Types of Dispute Dyads, by Regime Coherence (in percentages)

Coherent Polities Incoherent Polities

Joint Democracy Dyad Joint Democracy Dyad

No Yes No Yes

Mediation 76 20 43 13 Arbitration 24 80 57 87 Total 100 100 100 100 (N) (41) (41) (109) (15)

Odds ratio = 12.79; Q = .86; V = .56; Odds ratio = 4.93; Q = .66; V = .20; X2 = 23.67; delk = .56; p < .001. X2 = 3.73; delk = .11; p = .053.

bility of using the nonbinding, political method of conflict resolution offered by third-party mediation. Distant states, whose relative capabilities diminish as they are projected across space, apparently are not as threatening to one another as neighbors, particularly if geography reduces their interaction opportunities and intersecting claims.

Looking next to the qualifications of the joint democracy hypothesis, Table 3 shows what happens to the bivariate relationship between dyad type and third-party procedure when controlling for regime coherence. The relationship was weak among the 124 cases where the domestic political struc- tures of the disputants lacked coherence, but strong among the 82 cases where both sides in the dispute possessed coherent regimes. The greater the coherence of the regimes in a joint democracy dyad, the stronger the propensity to refer disputes to third-party arbitration. Stated formally, there were only 11% fewer errors observed than would have been expected by chance among the subset of incoherent regimes, but that figure climbed to 56% among the coherent regimes.

Table 4 displays that a refining effect also occurs when one compares the relationship between dyad type and third-party procedure within each classification of dispute type. Although the joint-democracy hypothesis received only modest support among asymmetrical dyads containing one major and one minor power, it received strong support within the subset of dyads composed of two major powers. Among these symmetrical disputes, there were 43% fewer errors observed than would have been expected by chance. In short, the two qualifications of the joint-democracy hypothesis were upheld. The more a dyadic relationship was marked by either coherence or




TABLE 4

The Relationship between Third-Party Conflict Resolution Procedures and Regime Type of Dispute Dyad, by Power Distribution (in percentages)

Symmetrical Disputes Asymmetrical Disputes

Joint Democracy Dyad Joint Democracy Dyad

No Yes No Yes

Mediation 55 6 51 24 Arbitration 45 94 49 76 Total 100 100 100 100

(N) (31) (18) (119) (38)

Odds ratio = 20.64; Q = .91; V = .49; Odds ratio = 3.39; Q = .54; V = .24; X = 9.88; delk = .43; p < .001. X = 7.78; delk = .19; p < .001.

symmetry, the greater the tendency of democracies to rely on third-party arbitration rather than on mediation to resolve their disputes. When both coherence and symmetry existed (n = 20), 94% of the disputes involving two democracies were referred to third-party arbitration.6

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

In any conflict between states, the disputants have three general options: they may remain at loggerheads until one side forces the other to acquiesce, they may undertake bilateral negotiations with an eye toward reaching a

diplomatic settlement, or they may employ the assistance of some third party to help them resolve their disagreement. Third parties can play a variety of roles in an ongoing dispute (see Mitchell 1988; Young 1967; and Simmel

1955). Intercessory roles are the least intrusive insofar as they simply involve

bringing the two sides together by facilitating communication or investigating the facts surrounding a dispute. Intermediary roles go one step further. Instead of merely providing good offices, the third party proposes a solution to the conflict. On the one hand, this may mean performing the functions of

6. To examine the combined impact of coherence and symmetry, a dummy variable

composed of whether or not a dispute contained two coherent major power democracies was used in a logit analysis along with the previously discussed measures of alliance bonds and

geographic separation. The parameter estimate for the dummy variable was 2.83 (p = .008), indicating that the presence of coherence and symmetry in ajoint democratic dyad had a positive effect on the probability of referral to binding arbitration even when controlling for alliance bonds and geographic proximity.




a go-between who suggests how the dispute might be ended. On the other hand, it may include acting as an umpire who renders a verdict on the issue at hand. Finally, a third party might take on a more partisan, interventionist role that could range from unilateral uses of force to organizing a multilateral coalition to coerce one or both of the parties to accept certain terms.

The finding that democracies do not commonly fight one another has been well-substantiated. Rather than conduct another test of the democracy-war relationship, I have asked what implications follow from this empirical generalization. If we look at the virtual absence of war between democracies as though it was the end result of some process of procedural norm external- ization, we can move the research on regime types forward by deducing other results that would follow from such a process and investigating whether they appear (see Lave and March 1975, 19-20).

One implication of the norm-based explanation of the virtual absence of war between democracies is that they are more amenable than others to allowing a third-party intermediary play the role of an umpire who makes a binding judgement on an issue in dispute. The results from this study indicate that pairs of democratic states have had a greater propensity to refer their disagreements to binding arbitration than dyads that contain one or more nondemocracies. Furthermore, the more a joint-democracy dyad is marked by coherent regimes or rough parity in the distribution of military capabilities, the greater the probability of referral to arbitration. In the light of the historical record, joint democratic dyads would appear to have less need to fight one another and thus may develop tacit, partner-specific norms that reinforce the peaceful expectations held by each side in a dispute.7

The findings presented here uphold Kant's (1957) suggestion that free states would have a greater propensity than autocratic states to abide by legal means of conflict resolution. The latter "do not plead their cause before a tribunal; war alone is their way of bringing suit. But by war and its favorable issue in victory, right is not decided, and though by a treaty of peace this particular war is brought to an end, the state of war, of always finding a new pretext to hostilities, is not terminated." The only way out of this condition, he submitted, was for states to "adjust themselves to the constraints of public law" (pp. 18-19), an adjustment that would be more likely for liberal democracies.

The findings also replicate and extend earlier research on the willingness of different types of regimes to employ alternative third-party mechanisms

7. For a typology of international norms and a discussion of the role of tacit, partner-specific norms in helping states avoid potentially explosive confrontations, see Kegley and Raymond (1990, 21-27).




for the pacific settlement of disputes. In a comparative study of the Permanent Court of International Justice, the International Court of Justice, the League of Nations, and the United Nations, Coplin and Rochester (1972, 534) found that international courts are more likely to be used by open polities than are political institutions such as the League or the UN. Conversely, closed polities generally shy away from international legal institutions in favor of nonjudicial institutions. In a more elaborate study that examined the relationship between democracy and militarized interstate conflict while controlling for alliance membership, geographic proximity, relative power, degree of militarization, and level of economic development, Bremer (1993) con- cluded that the war-reducing character of open, democratic polities is less a function of their propensity to avoid conflict than it is of their ability to manage serious conflicts with each other. Further evidence of the ability of democracies to manage and resolve their conflicts with one another can be found in the tendency of declining democratic regimes to accommodate democratic challengers during periods of power transition without resorting to preventive war (Schweller 1992).

Given that democracies are somewhat less likely than other types of regimes to get into serious disputes with one another, and given that they are much less likely to go to war with each other, it would thus appear that the main war-inhibiting effect of joint democracy exerts itself between the occurrence of a dispute and the onset of war. As argued by Dixon (1993), the expectations of conflict resolution that are integral to democratic political culture lead open polities to rely on third parties for pacific redress once a dispute erupts. What is more, they increase the probability that a certain type of third party will be used, namely, one with the judicial competence to make a ruling that the disputants must carry out in good faith. If both members of a dyad seek a nonviolent resolution of their conflict and believe that a third-party intermediary can advance the prospects for peace, joint democracy dyads will entrust the intermediary with the power to render a binding verdict. On the other hand, members of nondemocratic dyads will prefer to use the third party as a go-between whose suggestions may be rejected should they collide with perceived national interests. Whereas this finding fits a norm- based explanation of democratic peace, it cannot be deduced from explanations grounded in the logic of structural constraints.

Aside from adding a new piece to the intellectual puzzle of why democracies rarely fight each other, research on the usage of different third-party settlement procedures promises an important practical payoff as well: it moves us a step closer to a contingency approach to conflict resolution that would match the characteristics of a dispute and its disputants with specific




forms of third-party action.8 Some disputes are more amenable to certain forms of third-party involvement than others. By knowing what contextual conditions mesh with different forms of intermediary activity, we can help transform political stalemates into peaceful settlements.

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Democracies, Disputes, and Third-Party Intermediaries