Sources of Leader Support and Interstate Rivalry

A certain gamble: Institutional change, leader turnover, and their effect on rivalry termination

“…In contrast, Rooney (2018), Dreyer (2012) and Cox (2010) emphasize changes in leadership and in ruling coalitions to account for variation in the end of rivalry. Dreyer notes that irregular leadership turnover brings new political preferences and ideologies into power (p. 475) that will end ideological riavlries but should have no effect on spatial or positional rivalries (pp.…”

“…482-484). Drawing on Bennett (1997b) and Cox (2010), Bryan Rooney (2018) examines the effects of changes in the societal groups that a leader draws support from, arguing that when new leaders come to power who rely on a different coalition of supporters to maintain power, new political preferences are brought into power that precede changes in foreign and domestic policy. This change in governing coalitions will bring actors into power who derive no benefits from the rivalry, but who support compromise and reconciliation instead of continued competition (pp.…”

“…The extreme suspicion and animosity that exists between geopolitical rivals makes for great difficulty in resolving their outstanding disputes. This is the case even when resolving these disputes would be beneficial to both parties (Bennett, 1997a;Bennett, 1997b;Colaresi, 2004;Cornwell and Colaresi, 2002;Dreyer, 2012;Goertz and Diehl, 1995;Haas, 2007;Morey, 2011;Owsiak and Rider, 2013;Prins and Daxecker, 2008;Rooney, 2018). Maintaining a rivalry is costly for both states (Colaresi, 2005) and ending a rivalry and the significant defense spending that goes with it provides domestic benefits (Mintz and Stevenson, 1995;Ward and Davis, 1992).…”

“…Recent research on rivalry termination has largely turned toward an examination of the domestic politics of rivalry in an attempt to account for variation in peacemaking activities between rivals. Much of this scholarship centers around a nascent debate as to whether changing domestic institutions (Haas, 2007;Prins and Daxecker, 2008) or changing domestic political preferences and actors (Cox 2010;Dreyer, 2012;Rooney, 2018) best explains the end of rivalry. Both positions note that ending the rivalry by resolving the underlying disputes can provide significant benefits to a state and its leader, but attempts at dispute resolution also require the leader to accept significant political risk.…”

Peace data: Concept, measurement, patterns, and research agenda

“…There is also a literature on the effect of rivalries on domestic politics, notably leader support (e.g. Rooney, 2018) and state capacity (Lee, 2018). The peace scale data encourage scholars to move beyond rivalry to the impact of more peaceful relationships on domestic processes such as those listed above.…”