The politics of peace : the end of interstate rivalries

Abstract

Why do states that consider one another enemies opt to pursue cooperation instead of continue conflict? When do states replace military competition with normal interstate politics? This dissertation proposes and tests a new theory to explain the emergence of peace between rivals. It finds that economic crises create incentives for national leaders to pursue conciliatory behavior toward strategic rivals, but these incentives are disrupted when leaders face veto players within their government. Economic urgency motivates leaders to consider new policies, compelling them to focus their attention on revising rather than merely sustaining core elements of their state's grand strategy. Economic necessity is insufficient, however, since the presence of competing power centers within a government raises the political cost of pursuing new policies. Even when leaders perceive peace to be in the national interest, they are unlikely to be able to transform relations with a rival so long as internal veto players exist. Only when both economic need and political capability are present is rivalry termination possible. To test this theory, this dissertation utilizes a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods. It employs process tracing and congruence procedure in detailed studies of the history of four cases: the U.S.-Soviet rivalry from 1964 to 1989, the Sino-Soviet rivalry from 1958 to 1989, the Sino-U.S. rivalry from 1958 to 1972, and the Indo-Pakistani rivalry from 1947-1999. These cases provide substantial within- and across-case variation in the variables important for domestic primacy theory, as well as variation associated with potential alternative explanations that might confound hypothesis testing if excluded from the analysis. These historical accounts are supplemented with quantitative data on the universe of over 100 strategic rivalries since World War II, 67 of which have terminated. Using this data, I demonstrate that rivalries are more than three times as likely to end when conditions are favorable according to domestic primacy theory than they are when conditions are unfavorable.