"Leaders, Military Mobilization, and Interstate Conflict in Democracies and Dictatorships."
I argue differences in the political cost of military mobilization in democracies and dictatorships underlie variation in international crisis bargaining and conflict behavior across regime type. I develop a model in which leaders influence war outcomes through mobilization efforts and the political costs associated with increasing military spending are higher in democracies than in dictatorships. The model provides an explanation for known empirical regularities and implies previously unidentified relationships between regime type and interstate conflict. Consistent with one of the model's novel predictions, empirical analyses indicate democracies are less likely to initiate interstate crises than are non-democracies when the distribution of capabilities is roughly equal, but not when one state is substantially stronger than the other state. My findings have implications for our understanding of when and why crisis bargaining and interstate conflict processes differ across regime type.
I argue differences in the political cost of military mobilization in democracies and dictatorships underlie variation in international crisis bargaining and conflict behavior across regime type. I develop a model in which leaders influence war outcomes through mobilization efforts and the political costs associated with increasing military spending are higher in democracies than in dictatorships. The model provides an explanation for known empirical regularities and implies previously unidentified relationships between regime type and interstate conflict. Consistent with one of the model's novel predictions, empirical analyses indicate democracies are less likely to initiate interstate crises than are non-democracies when the distribution of capabilities is roughly equal, but not when one state is substantially stronger than the other state. My findings have implications for our understanding of when and why crisis bargaining and interstate conflict processes differ across regime type.
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