For the Midwest Political Science Association annual convention this year, I have only one paper. I will present a paper co-authored with Sam Bell and Chad Clay looking at the impact rivalry has on dispute escalation in asymmetric dyads. Friday (4/13) at 4:35 pm, on the panel 18-22 Rivalry and Conflict, we will present the paper "Deadly Triangles: The Implications of Regional Competition on Demands between Asymmetric States." Our abstract:
Asymmetric war continues to be a puzzling occurrence for international relations scholars across multiple theoretical approaches. According to realists (and other unitary-state rationalists), asymmetric war should not happen as the outcome of war is known in advance and a bargain can be struck instead. However, asymmetric war does happen despite the obvious bargaining alternative. While there have been some recent attempts to recover these problematic cases by looking at issues such as alliances and power (Huth 1998), demand types (Allen and Fordham 2011), and war aims (Sullivan 2007), we argue that previous research has missed a vital piece of bargaining dynamics in dyadic research: third party influence. We posit that weak states with rivals and neighboring rivals are conditioned in their likelihood of resist the demands of powerful states. Utilizing spatial modeling techniques for the Correlates of War data, we determine that characteristics of rivals and neighboring rivals do decrease the likelihood that demands by powerful states are resisted by weak states.
