Do intergovernmental organizations promote peace?

World Politics

Volumn 57, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 1-38

  Boehmer, Charles ^a   Gartzke, Erik ^b   Nordstrom, Timothy ^c  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT EL PASO   (United States)

^b Och Spine at New York Presbyterian Hospitals   (United States)

^c UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CONFLICT MANAGEMENT; ORGANIZATIONAL FRAMEWORK; PEACE PROCESS;

EID: 24144481279     PISSN: 00438871     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/wp.2005.0008     Document Type: Article

References (124)

1. See, for example, Bruce Russett, John R. Oneal, and David Davis, "The Third Leg of the Kantian Tripod for Peace: International Organizations and Militarized Disputes, 1950-1985," International Organization 52, no. 3 (1998);
2. Bruce Russett and John R. Oneal, Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001).
3. See John R. Oneal and Bruce Russett, "The Kantian Peace: The Pacific Benefits of Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations 1885-1992," World Politics 52 (October 1999);
4. Erik Gartzke, Quan Li, and Charles Boehmer, "Investing in the Peace: Economic Interdependence and International Conflict," International Organization 55, no. 2 (2001).
5. John Mearsheimer, "The False Promise of International Institutions," International Security 19, no. 3 (1995);
6. Randall L. Schweller and David Preiss, "A Tale of Two Realisms: Expanding the Institutions Debate," Mershon International Studies Review 41, no. 1 (1997).
7. And for reviews of and perspectives on the literature, see Lisa L. Martin and Beth A. Simmons, "Theories and Empirical Studies of International Organizations," International Organization 52, no. 4 (1998).
8. See, for example, Ernst B. Haas, Beyond the Nation-State: Functionalism and International Organization (Palo Alto, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1964);
9. Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence (New York: Harper Collins, 1989);
10. Oran R. Young, "International Regimes: Toward a New Theory of Institutions," World Politics 39 (October 1986);
11. idem, "The Effectiveness of International Institutions: Hard Cases and Critical Variables," in James M. Rosenau and Ernst-Otto Czempiel, eds., Governance without Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992);
12. John Gerard Ruggie, "Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity: Toward a Neorealist Synthesis," World Politics 35 (January 1983);
13. idem, "The False Promise of Realism," International Security 20, no. 1 (1995);
14. James M. Rosenau, "Citizenship in a Changing Global Order," in Rosenau and Czempiel, Governance without Government;
15. and Alexander Wendt, "Constructing International Politics," International Security 20, no. 1 (1995).
16. Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984);
17. Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984);
18. Robert Axelrod and Robert O. Keohane, "Achieving Cooperation under Anarchy: Strategies and Institutions," World Politics 38 (October 1985);
19. Robert Powell, "Absolute and Relative Gains in International Relations Theory," American Political Science Review 85, no. 4 (1991);
20. Duncan Snidal, "Relative Gains and the Pattern of International Cooperation," American Political Science Review 85, no. 3 (1991);
21. Robert O. Keohane and Lisa Martin, "The Promise of Institutionalist Theory," International Security 20, no. 1 (1995);
22. Charles A. Kupchan and Clifford A. Kupchan, "The Promise of Collective Security," International Security 20, no. 1 (1995);
23. Duncan Snidal and Kenneth Abbott, "Why States Act through Formal International Organizations," Journal of Conflict Resolution 42, no. 1 (1998);
24. Martin and Simmons (fn. 3).
25. Snidal (fn. 5) points out that contrasting predictions of absolute and relative gains depend on the number of actors involved.
26. For an informative debate, see comments by Joseph M. Grieco, Robert Powell, and Duncan Snidal, "The Relative-Gains Problem for International Cooperation," American Political Science Review 87, no. 3 (1993).
27. See also James S. Mosher, "Relative Gains Concerns When the Number of States in the International System Increases," Journal of Conflict Resolution 47, no. 5 (2003);
28. and David L. Rousseau, "Motivations for Choice: The Salience of Relative Gains in International Relations," Journal of Conflict Resolution 46, no. 3 (2002).
29. Subsequent research suggests that the shadow of the future can actually inhibit cooperation. See Curtis S. Signorino, "Simulating International Cooperation under Anarchy: The Effects of Symmetric and Asymmetric Noise," Journal of Conflict Resolution 40, no. 1 (1996);
30. James D. Fearon, "Bargaining, Enforcement, and International Cooperation," International Organization 52, no. 2 (1998);
31. J. Samuel Barkin, "Time Horizons and Multilateral Enforcement in International Cooperation," International Studies Quarterly 48, no. 2 (2004).
32. J. David Singer and Michael Wallace, "Intergovernmental Organization and the Preservation of Peace, 1816-1964: Some Bivariate Relationships," International Organization 24, no. 3 (1970);
33. Michael Wallace and J. David Singer, "Intergovernmental Organization in the Global System, 1815-1964: A Quantitative Description," International Organization 24, no. 2 (1970);
34. William Domke, War and the Changing Global System (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988);
35. Young (fn. 4, 1992);
36. Martin and Simmons (fn. 3).
37. Martin and Simmons (fa. 3) provide a review of the extensive case study literature.
38. John R. Oneal, Bruce Russett, and Michael L. Berbaum, "Causes of Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations," International Studies Quarterly 47, no. 3 (2003);
39. Oneal and Russett (fn. 2);
40. Russett, Oneal, and Davis (fn. 1).
41. Harold Jacobson and Domke (fn. 8) provide typologies of igos;
42. Jacobson, Networks of Interdependence: International Organizations and the Global Political System (New York: Knopf, 1984).
43. However, Harold Jacobson, William M. Reisinger, and Todd Mathers use an inappropriate dependent variable, whereas Domke relies on disaggregated probit estimates for each year; see Jacobson, Reisinger, and Mathers, "National Entanglements in Governmental Organizations," American Political Science Review 80, no. 1 (1986).
44. Oneal and Russett (fh. 2);
45. and Gartzke, Li, and Boehmer (fn. 2).
46. "Singer and Wallace (fn. 8).
47. Mearsheimer (fn. 3).
48. Ibid., 13.
49. Schweller and Preiss (fn. 3).
50. James D. Fearon, "Rationalist Explanations for War," International Organization 49, no. 3 (1995).
51. See also James D. Morrow, "Capabilities, Uncertainty, and Resolve: A Limited Information Model of Crisis Bargaining," American Journal of Political Science 33, no. 2 (1989).
52. "For reviews of the rationalist literature on bargaining and war, see Dan Reiter, "Exploring the Bargaining Model of War," Perspectives on Politics 1, no. 1 (2003);
53. and Robert Powell, "Bargaining Theory and International Conflict," AnnualReview of Political Science 5 (2002).
54. For a critique, see Jonathan Kirshner, "Rationalist Explanations for War?" Security Studies 10, no. 1 (2000).
55. The notion that igos are selective in their mediation efforts is contrasted by normative and institutional incentives to intervene. Unlike peacekeeping, say, where the investment is high, organizing talks, pressuring delegates, brokering deals, informing parties, and promoting sanctions are all relatively low-cost actions. These activities are often explicitly encouraged by IGO charters, members, and interested publics. Indeed, the proliferation of security IGOs, the bulk of which are unequipped to impose peace, would appear peculiar if they were not meant to conduct such activities.
56. Formal models serve, among other things, to tie tests of implications of an argument to untested elements of a theory. See Rebecca B. Morton, Methods and Models: A Guide to the Empirical Analysis of Formal Models in Political Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
57. States can have no incentive to dispute benefits that cannot be denied to the loser or third parties. If players value relative gains, however, war can result from nonrivalrous goods.
58. Fearon's list is not exhaustive. Risk acceptance can motivate contests, as can a consumtion value for war. There is also a broader set of commitment problems that is assumed away by Fearon's modeling framework. See, for example, Michelle R. Garfinkel and Stergios Skaperdas, "Conflict without Misperception or Incomplete Information: How the Future Matters," Journal of Conflict Resolution 44, no. 6 (2000);
59. Branislav Slantchev, "The Power to Hurt: Costly Conflict with Completely Informed States," American Political Science Review 97, no. 1 (2003).
60. David F. Trask, The War with Spain in 1898 (New York: Macmillan, 1981), 445-66.
61. Joseph Smith, The Spanish-American War: Conflict in the Caribbean (London: Longman, 1994), 199-200.
62. States often have incentives to seek to generate indivisibilities. Commitment increased bargaining power by making it harder to compromise. Third parties could allow states to extract themlseves from commitments. Blaming an IGO for having to renege on a promise may free a leader from domestic audience costs, for exxample. It is also possible, however, that IGOs increase oppourtunites for generating indivisilities. IGOs allow leaders to formalize agreements that are later binding (or at least impinging) on domestic politics. We do not explore these issues here.
63. Commitment problems and indivisibilities may be more prevalent in intrastate conflict, where settlements often include a loss of autonomy for one of the competing parties or where any settlement implies recognition, which is part of the stakes in the contest. See Barbara F. Walter, "Explaining the Intractability of Territorial Conflict," International Studies Review 5, no. 4 (2003);
64. Monica Duffy Toft, The Geography of Ethnic Violence: Identity, Interests, and the Indivisihility of Territory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003);
65. James D. Fearon and David Laitin, "Explaining Interethinic Cooperation," American Political Science Review 90, no. 4 (1996);
66. idem, "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War," American Political Science Review 97, no. 1 (2003).
67. For a succinct and highly intuitive account of the bargaining argument, see also James D. Morrow, "How Could Trade Affect Conflict?" Journal of Peace Research 36, no. 4 (1999).
68. Erik Gartzke, "War Is in the Error Term," International Organization 53, no. 3 (1999). The asymmetric information argument is not theoretically sufficient to explain war. A sufficient account of the causes of war requires that researchers access the private information of competing states.
69. Fearon (fn. 17) provides a formal proof We use Fearon as the basis for our theory. Robert Powell, In the Shadow of Power: States and Strategies in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999);
70. Robert Powell, In the Shadow of Power: States and Strategies in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999);
71. idem, "The Inefficient Use of Power: Costly Conflict with Complete Information" American Political Science Review 98, no. 2 (2004).
72. Garfinkel and Skaperdas (fn. 22);
73. and Slantchev (fn. 22) offer alternative bargaining framworks in which commitment problems are a more important cause of war and contests can occur under full information. Which charaterization of bargaining is most general empirically remains a subject of debate. Note, however, that alternative conceptions hinge on assumptions about the sequence of offers in bargaining. Since states often negotiate about how they will negotiaye (structure is endogenous), and since a satisfactory theory of this aspect of bargaining has yet to be introduced to international relations, we adopt the simplest model of bargaining as a place of departutre. The theory we supply is shown here to better explain observed behavior than conventional liberal or realist alternatives.
74. The security dilemma makes clear the zero-sum nature of dynamics in the balance of power. However, realists have failed to extend the insight to diplomatic bargaining. Factors that alter the likely outcomes of contests should alter the demands of diplomats in roughly the same fashion.
75. Changing the payoffs in the chicken game alters play only if changes are ordinal. The effect is stronger in a bargaining game, where competitors set payoffs endogenously through their offers.
76. "A review of the traditional literature on the effects of third-party mediation can be found in Lilach Gilady and Bruce Russett, "Peace-Making and Conflict Resolution," in Walter Carlesnaes, Thomas Risse, and Beth Simmons, eds., Handbook of International Relations (London: Sage, 2002).
77. For a discussion of credible diplomacy, see Anne Sartori, "The Might of the Pen: A Reputational Theory of Communication in International Disputes," International Organization 55, no. 3 (2002).
78. IGOs must also convince states of the veracity of information. Paradoxically, a third-party intent only on averting a contest may be less effective than a biased actor with preferences over the outcome of bargaining. Randall Calvert demonstrates that information from biased political sources can be informative; Calvert, "The Value of Biased Information: A Rational Choice Model of Political Advice," Journal of Politics 47, no. 2 (1985).
79. Andrew Kydd extends this logic to the context of third-party mediation of interstate conflicts; Kydd, "Which Side Are You On? Bias, Credibility, and Mediation," American Journal of Political Science 47, no. 4 (2003). In a subsequent paper, Kydd points out that reputation can be used to make unbiased mediators more credible, though the balance between costs and credibility is critical.
80. See Andrew Kydd, "The Honest Broker: Mediation and Mistrust" (Manuscript, Harvard University, Cambridge, July 2004).
81. Similarly, Robert W. Rauchhaus relaxes the assumption that mediators prefer peace; Rauchhaus, "Asymmetric Information, Mediation and Conflict Management" (Manuscript, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2003).
82. Secret threats lack the consequences often viewed as critical to successful deterrence. See Robert Powell, Nuclear Deterrence Theory: The Search for Credibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Uncertainty about third-party actions could increase the onset of disputes.
83. Neutral third parties, while arguably less effective at information arbitrage, are likely to be more effective at intervention and constraint. Biased IGOs may fail to constrain their favored faction, leading to more extractive demands and a higher risk of war.
84. Actors can autonomously reveal resolve through costly actions, but "burning money" also weakens bargaining power. We should see such actions only when the reduction in uncertainty leads to payoffs exceeding the cost in resources and the loss of leverage. See David Austen-Smith and Jeffrey S. Banks, "Cheap Talk and Burning Money" (Manuscript, Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill., and the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif, 1998).
85. Gartzke, Li, and Boehmer (fn. 2).
86. "All results mentioned but not published in the study are available from the authors.
87. "Oneal and Russett (fn. 2). We collected data on institutionalization for 297 IGOS, coding 198 as "minimal," 52 as "structured," and 47 as "interventionist." Details for defunct IGOs are often unavailable.
88. Nathaniel Beck, Jonathan N. Katz, and Richard Tucker, "Taking Time Seriously: Time-Series-Cross-Section Analysis with a Binary Dependent Variable," American Journal of Political Science 42, no. 4 (1998).
89. "Daniel Jones, Stuart Bremer, and J. David Singer, "Militarized Interstate Disputes, 1816-1992: Rationale, Coding Rules, and Empirical Patterns," Conflict Management and Peace Science 15, no. 2 (1996);
90. Charles S. Gochman and Zeev Maoz, "Militarized Interstate Disputes, 18 16-1976: Procedure, Patterns, and Insights," Journal of Conflict Resolution 28, no. 4 (1984).
91. Zeev Maoz, "Dyadic Militarized Interstate Disputes (DYMID 1. 1) Dataset, Version 1.1" (Code-book, Department of Political Science, Tel Aviv University, 1999).
92. "For a usefill discussion of the debate over onset and ongoing MIDs, see D. Scott Bennett and Allan Stam, "Research Design and Estimator Choices in the Analysis of Interstate Dyads: When Decisions Matter," Journal of Conflict Resolution 44, no. 5 (2000).
93. Oneal and Russett (fn. 2). Replication is approximate given idiosyncrasies in data and coding.
94. "Wallace and Singer (fn. 8). cow data are reported in five-year intervals. We interpolate missing values, as do Oneal and Russett (fn. 2).
95. We interpolate missing values, as do Oneal and Russett (fn. 2).
96. "Union of International Associations, Yearbook of International Organizations (Munich: K.G. Saur, various years).
97. Arthur Banks and Thomas C. Muller, Political Handbook of the World (Binghamton, N.Y.: CSA Publications, various years).
98. Affinity provides annual measures of the similarity of dyadic voting positions in the General Assembly (1946-96). Data construction is discussed elsewhere. See Erik Gartzke, "Kant We All Just Get Along? Motive, Opportunity, and the Origins of the Democratic Peace," American Journal of Political Science 42, no. 1 (1998);
99. idem, "Preferences and the Democratic Peace," International Studies Quarterly 44, no. 2 (2000).
100. We use the United States as the reference country to convert dyadic values to monadic values. We also examined a variable based on nominate coding of state ideal points used in Erik Vocten, "Clashes in the Assembly," International Organization 54, no. 2 (2000). Designation of ideal points involves additional assumptions about state utilities that are not immune to controversy and that yield nonintuitive results in our analysis.
101. We also created an alternative measure of IGO member contentiousness by inverting and summing qualities. The resulting variables correlate highly with the IGO institutionalization variables.
102. In future research we plan to explore selection effects in IGOS using a different unit of analysis.
103. Oneal and Russett (fn. 2).
104. Keith Jaggers and Ted R. Gurr, "Transitions to Democracy: Tracking Democracy's 'Third Wave' with the Polity III Data," Journal of Peace Research 32, no. 4 (1995).
105. Russett, Oneal, and Davis (fn. 1).
106. I b i d.
107. Gartzke, Li, and Boehmer (fn. 2).
108. Oneal and Russett (fn. 2). We use Oneal and Russett's data and statistical model to establish a baseline for comparison. The changes in data and variable construction mentioned previously are reported in subsequent tables. We also replicated all regressions using the ReLogit procedure, but found no substantive differences in results.
109. See Gary King and Langche Zcng, "Explaining Rare Events in International Relations," International Organization 55, no. 3 (2001);
110. idem, "Logistic Regression in Rare Events Data," Political Analysis 98 (2001).
111. Beck, Katz, and Tucker (fn. 40).
112. Oneal and Russett (fn. 2);
113. Gartzke, Li, and Boehmer (fn. 2).
114. Aggregating memberships at the level of the dyad is far from ideal. We use the dyad as the unit of analysis to facilitate comparison of our results with other quantitative studies of IGOs.
115. Powell (fn. 28,2004);
116. idem, "Bargaining and Learning while Fighting," American Journal of Political Science 48, no. 2 (2004);
117. Slantchev (fn. 22).
118. R. Harrison Wagner, "Bargaining and War," American Journal of Political Science 44, no. 3 (2000).
119. Richard Holbrooke, To End a War (New York: Random House, 1998).
120. Game-theoretic models often include the status quo as an outcome. We treat the status quo as a special case of the equilibrium in which the bargain in the game equals the bargain ex ante.
121. Having A sweeten its offer by making an arbitrarily small concession ε leads B to strictly prefer d to fighting. However, this clutters the model while yielding no new substantive conclusions.
122. Actors may be limited in their ability to optimize by the bounded nature of parameter values or by constraints imposed by third parties (assuming opponents are restrained from altering demands).
123. This result depends on the inability of B to make a counteroffer. In an iterated game, B could use the vulnerability of A to extract additional concessions, much as A does to B in proposition 1.
124. Using 1 as the upper bound would both allow that the third party is more eager for a contest than A (not likely) and eliminate the possibility that I values the stakes more than A.