The Path(s) to Rivalry: Behavioral and Structural Explanations of Rivalry Development

Abstract

Despite the importance of enduring rivalries, to date little attention has been placed on understanding how they develop. This article presents one of the first attempts to understand rivalry development. Two broad approaches to protracted rivalry development, behavioral and structural, are contrasted. The behavioral approach focuses on the actions of the potential rivals during their early confrontations, and argues that initial behavior will establish the direction of future interactions. The structural approach proposes that rivalries are caused by environmental factors largely out of the immediate control of the participants. When tested, we find that the development of proto and enduring rivalries can be explained best by a combination of both approaches. We also find that longer term rivalries do not appear to have one single cause. They may instead be produced by the confluence of many small factors.

Alliance Formation and Conflict Initiation: The Missing Link

“…Most of the independent variables were generated using EUGene (v.3.04) (Bennett & Stam, 2000). Variables generated from EUGene include capabilities, distance, democracy, autocracy, major-power status, alliance indicators, and conflict initiation, while the shared-rivalry data are computed from data provided by Stinnett & Diehl (2001). Relative capabilities are based on COW CINC scores (Singer, Bremer & Stuckey, 1972) and represent the ratio of the stronger state in the dyad to the combined capabilities of the two; the variable ranges from .5 (parity) to 1 (preponderance).…”

“…Moreover, this variable accounts for any type of new alliance -here, I do not differentiate between alliance types, though that is an interesting project for the future. 16 Conflict initiation is scored 1 when both states in the dyad engage in a militarized interstate dispute where the hostility levels for both states are greater than 3. data were computed from rivalry data provided by Stinnett & Diehl (2001), and this variable is the sum of the number of shared rivals for a dyad in a given year. This variable ranges from 0 to 9, with a mean equal to .03 and a standard deviation of .26.…”

Disaggregating Peace: Domestic Politics and Dispute Outcomes

“…Recent research has moved beyond tests of the proposition that democracies do not fight wars against one another to explore other ways in which democratic political institutions affect the escalation, de-escalation, and resolution of international conflicts (Bennett and Stam, 1998;Bueno de Mesquita et al, 1999;Fortna, 2003;Gelpi and Griesdorf, 2001;Irelund and Garther, 2001;Partell and Palmer, 1999;Reed, 2000;Reiter and Stam, 2002;Schultz, 1999Schultz, , 2001bStam, 1996;Stinnett and Diehl, 2001). Together, these studies are important both because they expand the breadth of international behavior under investigation and because they offer new insights into the causal mechanism underlying previous empirical findings.…”

Softening Up: Making Conflicts More Amenable to Diplomacy

“…This is part of the logic underlying the 'hurting stalemate" model. Nevertheless, this runs contrary to the findings that stalemates are the engines of rivalry maintenance (Goertz, Jones, and Diehl, 2005) and that stalemated outcomes actually increase the likelihood of future military confrontations between the same disputants (Hensel, 1994;Grieco, 2001;Stinnett and Diehl, 2001;Fortna, 2004). Empirically, there is some evidence that stalemate outcomes have dampening effects on the initiation of diplomatic negotiations (Greig, 2005).…”