Alliances, Conflict Escalation and the Outbreak of Interstate War, 1816 – 2000
Alliances, Conflict Escalation and the Outbreak of Interstate War, 1816 – 2000

Summary/Abstract: In international relations theory alliances are often regarded as factors influencing the incidence of interstate war. This study statistically examines this claim on a population of cases taken from the Correlates of War project data sets, consisting of 3216 instances of militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) that occurred in the period 1816 – 2000, 307 of which were wars. In the test, this initial data set has been divided into three sub-sets comprising: (1) originator dyads, (2) originators-as-initiators-and-joiners-astargets dyads, and (3) joiners-as-initiators-andoriginators- as-targets dyads; and ten variables were used to determine the impact of alliances on whether MIDs will become wars. These variables included unit-, dyad-, and system-level indicators of the presence of alliances, their capabilities and tightness. Combined, this enabled the analysis to test hypotheses related to the capability-aggregation and war-diffusion functions of alliances as well as arguments on the relationship between polarity and war.

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