Explaining the Maintenance Process of International Rivalries

Abstract

The paper begins with a simple question of "why do international rivalries persist over time?" To explain the causes of rivalry persistence, the paper develops "a modified two-level game approach" and tests the hypotheses drawn from the approach for the case of the 2 nd Greco-Turkish rivalry, 1958. The approach postulates that the rivalry maintenance is the result of rival leaders' efforts to maximize their interest -i.e., staying in power-subject to external constraint-i.e., great power interventions-and internal constraint -i.e., the challenges from hard-line veto groups. By applying this approach to the 2nd Greco-Turkish rivalry, the paper finds that the leaders of the rivalry maintained their hostile relations partly because the U.S. prevented the leaders from resolving the issues under contention on the battlefields by intervening in the two rivals' military conflict with a threat to stop providing both military and political support and partly because the hard-line veto players within the rivals prevented the leaders from resolving the issues at the negotiation table by hinting of electoral punishment. Under these circumstances, the leaders of the Greco-Turkish rivalry found that maintaining the rivalry would best serve their interest. The findings offer a contribution toward an enhanced understanding of the maintenance process in international rivalries.

Diversionary Politics and Territorial Disputes: Evidence from Turkish Airspace Incursions

“…The dispute remains a salient issue for both countries Ifantis 2018) and, by continuation, in their domestic public opinion and the news media. The media has played a particularly active role in the escalation of the 1996 Imia/Kardak crisis (Bayar and Kotelis 2014) while domestic electoral pressures have pushed leaders on both sides to adopt an aggressive foreign policy (Güner 2004;You 2016;Karakasis 2019). Turkish citizens also generally place an emphasis on their country's foreign policy and regional standing while many of them view Greece as a threat and oppose a rapprochement (Aydın 2018:368;Aydın, Çelikpala, Guvenc, Hawks, Zaim, and Tigli 2020:66, 69).…”

The Greek-Turkish Rivalry: A Bayesian VAR Approach

“…Greece and Turkey, two NATO allies, have been maintaining an antagonistic relationship that can be attributed to historical territorial disputes resulting from their intertwined geography, and despite Western-led diplomatic efforts, the rivalry remains unresolved (You 2016;Ifantis 2018).…”

Essays on defense economics

“…This study produced an explosion in the number of investigations of arms races and numerous surveys followed up by revisiting this nexus and examining different measures of interdependency among neighboring countries, such as Greece and Turkey. These two NATO allies, have been maintaining an antagonistic relationship that can be attributed to historical territorial disputes resulting from their intertwined geography, and despite Westernled diplomatic efforts the rivalry remains unresolved (You 2016;Ifantis 2018). The ongoing hostility has led many to believe that the countries have been engaged in an arms race, particularly due to the Cyprus conflict in 1974, followed by numerous narrowly avoiding war situations, during which the respective forces were placed on full alert (Matthews 1999;Athanassiou and Kollias 2000).…”