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When States Die: geographic and territorial pathways to state death

2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 33; Issue: 7 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01436597.2012.691826

1360-2241

Brandon Valeriano, John Van Benthuysen,

Peacebuilding and International Security

Abstract Abstract State death, understood as the formal loss of control over foreign policy, is an important but neglected issue in the international relations literature. When do states die and why? How do states exit the system? The consequences of state death can be wide-ranging, from forced migration movements, regional instability, to general famine. Despite these severe consequences, political scientists have yet to adequately study the causes of state death. Fazal finds that states are prone to death when they are located as a buffer between two rivals; this suggests that being a buffer state is a cause of state death. Our expansion of current research seeks to add the concept of territorial disputes to the state death literature. We suggest that states are at greater risk of death when they become involved in territorial disputes that raise the stakes of conflict. The resulting research demonstrates that a reliable predictor of state death is engagement in a territorial dispute. Territorial disputes are the most prevalent issue that leads to war and can also be a leading cause of state death. Notes We thank Matt Powers, Amy Beth Schoenecker, Victor Marin and Gene Mueller for their research assistance and comments. Tanisha Fazal graciously provided her data for replication and extension. 1 TM Fazal, State Death: The Politics and Geography of Conquest, Occupation, and Annexation, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007. 2 N Machiavelli, The Prince, and Other Pieces, London: Routledge, 1886. See also B Bueno de Mesquita, A Smith, RM Siverson & JD Morrow, The Logic of Political Survival, Cambridge, MA: mit Press, 2003. 3 R Rotberg, 'Failed states in a world of terror', Foreign Affairs, July/August, 2002. 4 TM Fazal, 'State death in the international system', International Organization, 58, 2004, pp 311–344. 5 PF Diehl & G Goertz, War and Peace in International Rivalry, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2000. 6 J Vasquez, 'Why do neighbors fight? Proximity, interaction, or territoriality?', Journal of Peace Research, 32(3), 1995, pp 277–293. 7 PD Senese, 'Geographical proximity and issue salience: their effects on the escalation of militarized interstate conflict', Conflict Management and Peace Science, 15(2), 1996, pp 133–161. 8 SM Saideman, The Ties That Divide: Ethnic Politics, Foreign Policy, and International Conflict, New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. 9 J Vasquez, The War Puzzle, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. 10 I Lakatos, 'Falsification and the methodology of scientific research programmes', in I Lakatos & A Musgrave (ed), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970, pp 91–196. 11 J Vasquez & B Valeriano, 'Classification of interstate wars', Journal of Politics, 72(2), 2010, pp 292–309. 12 TF Homer-Dixon, Environment, Scarcity, and Violence, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999. 13 K Waltz, Theory of International Politics, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979, p 61. 14 Waltz, Theory of International Politics. See also J Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, New York: WW Norton, 2001. 15 Fazal, State Death. 16 B Buzan & O Waever, Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 17 Fazal, 'State death in the international system'. See also Fazal, State Death. 18 D Acemoglu & JA Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, New York: Crown Business, 2012. 19 P Kelly, Checkerboards and Shatterbelts: The Geopolitics of South America, Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1997. 20 Rotberg, 'Failed states in a world of terror'. 21 Fazal, State Death. 22 J Vasquez & B Valeriano, 'Territory as a source of conflict and a road to peace', in J Bercovitch, V Kremenyuk & IW Zartman (ed), Sage Handbook on Conflict Resolution 2009, pp 193–209. 23 K Holsti, Peace and War: Armed Conflict and International Order 1648–1989, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. 24 JZ Muller, 'Us and them: the enduring power of ethnic nationalism', Foreign Affairs, March/April, 2008, pp 18–35. 25 MW Zacher, 'The territorial integrity norm: international boundaries and the use of force', International Organization, 55(1), 2001, pp 215–250. 26 Fazal, 'State death in the international system', p 312. While we are not completely satisfied with this definition, this research is aimed at the accumulation of knowledge. We first seek to confirm Fazal's results and expand on them. To do this, we must use her definition of state death and seek to explain this in our analysis. 27 Fazal, State Death, p 1. 28 Fazal, 'State death in the international system', p 313. 29 Fazal, 'State death in the international system'. 30 B Valeriano, 'The tragedy of offensive realism: testing aggressive power politics models', International Interactions, 35(2), 2009, pp 179–206. 31 Whether or not policy relevance is a useful way to judge the adequacy of theoretical propositions is an open debate in the field. We follow Vasquez and believe that policy relevance is a useful criterion to evaluate a theory but empirical accuracy, research fertility and explanatory power are more important factors. See J Vasquez, The Power of Power Politics: From Classical Realism to Neotraditionalism, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 32 In general our theory is multicausual but here we only focus on the newly suggested factors of territoriality and buffer state status. 33 RW Mansbach & JA Vasquez, In Search of Theory: A New Paradigm for Global Politics, New York: Columbia University Press, 1981. See also PR Hensel, 'Contentious issues and world politics: the management of territorial claims in the Americas, 1816–1992', International Studies Quarterly, 45(1), 2001, pp 81–109. 34 Vasquez & Valeriano, 'Territory as a source of conflict and a road to peace'. 35 P Huth, Standing Your Ground: Territorial Disputes and International Conflict, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1996; PD Senese & J Vasquez, The Steps to War: An Empirical Analysis, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008; J Vasquez & M Henehan, Territory, War, and Peace, New York: Routledge, 2010; M Toft, 'Indivisible territory, geographic concentration, and ethnic war', Security Studies, 12(2), 2002, pp 82–119; and BF Walter, 'Explaining the intractability of territorial conflict', International Studies Review, 5(4), 2003, pp 137–153. 36 D Gibler, 'Control the issues, control the conflict: the effects of alliances that settle territorial issues on interstate rivalries', International Interactions, 22(4), 1997, pp 341–368; and Gibler, 'Bordering on peace: democracy, territorial issues, and conflict', International Studies Quarterly, 51(3), 2007, pp 509–532. 37 Huth, Standing Your Ground. 38 PK Huth & TL Allee, The Democratic Peace and Territorial Conflict in the Twentieth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 39 HJ Morgenthau, 'Another great debate: the national interest of the United States', American Political Science Review, 46, 1952, pp 961–978. 40 M Weber, 'Politics as a vocation', lecture given to the Free Students Society of the University of Munich, 1918. 41 PF Diehl, 'What are they fighting for? The importance of issues in international conflict research', Journal of Peace Research, 29(3), 1992, pp 333–344; PR Hensel, 'Territory: theory and evidence on geography and conflict', in J Vasquez (ed), What Do We Know About War?, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000; and Vasquez & Henehan, Territory, War, and Peace. 42 J Vasquez & CS Leskiw, 'The origins and war-proneness of international rivalries', Annual Review of Political Science, 4, 2001, pp 295–316. See also M Colaresi, K Rasler & WR Thompson, Strategic Rivalries in World Politics: Position, Space, and Conflict Escalation, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 43 PF Diehl & G Goertz, War and Peace in International Rivalry, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2000. 44 Fazal, 'State death in the international system', p 314. 45 It should be mentioned that Huth and Allee are really measuring territorial issues between states and not formal disputes that have led to militarised conflict. Here, we use the term 'territorial dispute' to refer to a territorial issue as disagreement between two states to remain consistent with the literature. See Huth & Allee, The Democratic Peace and Territorial Conflict in the Twentieth Century. 46 M Small & JD Singer, Resort to Arms: International and Civil Wars, 1816–1980, Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1982. 47 Fazal, 'State death in the international system', p 319. 48 Violent state death is also the dependent variable in Fazal's analysis. 49 Fazal, 'State death in the international system', p 321. 50 For a complete list of Fazal's buffer see appendixes A and B. 51 DM Stinnett, J Tir, P Schafer, PF Diehl & C Gochman, 'The Correlates of War Project direct contiguity data, Version 3', Conflict Management and Peace Science, 19(2), 2002, pp 58–66. These contiguity relationships are: separated by a land or river border; separated by 12 miles of water or less; separated by 24 miles of water or less (but more than 12 miles); separated by 150 miles of water or less (but more than 24 miles); separated by 400 miles of water or less (but more than 150 miles). 52 Appendix C lists those buffer states dropped from this analysis. 53 The Huth and Allee (Democratic Peace and Territorial Conflict in the Twentieth Century) dataset covers territorial claims and issues, while the mid dataset (Goshen et al 2004) only captures explicit government-sanctioned threats, displays or uses of force intended to revise the territorial status quo. The two variables are not equal; one measures territorial claims and the other measures revisionist attempts to change the status quo over territorial issues, yet each variable does measure for the presence of a territorial issue or dispute that can alter relations between and within states. Expanding our data back to 1816 only adds one positive case of a territorial state death, so we do not believe our data is biased in favor of the mid observations. If anything, the expansion of our analysis back to 1816 biases the results against our hypothesis and adds more time series to our investigation. F Ghosn, GPalmer & SA Bremer, 'The MID3 Data Set, 1993–2001: Procedures, Coding Rules, and Description', Conflict Management and Peace Science, 21(2), 2004, pp 133–154. 54 While it might be interesting and important to examine whom a state has a territorial dispute with in order to examine the relevance for the case, this is virtually impossible with monadic analysis. We could control for neighbourhoods but think this is unnecessary, since the great majority of territorial disputes are between neighbours. Therefore we simply ask if a state has an ongoing territorial dispute before its exit from the system. 55 Huth & Allee, The Democratic Peace and Territorial Conflict in the Twentieth Century. The mid territorial disputes are those that have a score of 2 for the 'revtype' variable. Data can be found at http://www.correlatesofwar.org/. 56 It might be useful to look at territorial exchanges (Tir, Schafer et al 1998) to measure the amount of territory lost during these disputes, but as the dataset is currently composed we can only know that territory was lost and not how much of a state was lost (entire state, half, small part). J Tir, P Schafer, PF Diehl & G Goertz, 'Territorial Changes, 1816–1996: procedures and data', Conflict Management and Peace Science, 16(1), p 89. 57 D Gibler & M Sarkees, 'Measuring alliances: the Correlates of War formal interstate alliance data set, 1816–2000', Journal of Peace Research, 41(2), 2004, pp 211–222. 58 HJ Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, New York: Knopf, 1948. 59 SA Bremer, 'Dangerous dyads: conditions affecting the likelihood of interstate war', Journal of Conflict Resolution, 36, 1992, pp 178–197. 60 A Simmons, 'The death of conquest', The National Interest, 3, 2003, pp 41–49; and B Atzili, 'When good fences make bad neighbors: fixed borders, state weakness, and international conflict', International Security, 3(31), 2006–07, pp 139–173. Of course, other control variables could have been used. We prefer to follow Ray's advice and constrict our analysis to theoretically interesting variables as they affect it. To add other controls such as democracy would lead to a whole new set of research questions and theories as to the efficacy of democratic states as system members. Rivalry was not used as a control because our cases of buffer states are partially chosen on the basis of ongoing rivalries. See JL Ray, 'Explaining interstate conflict and war: what should be controlled for?', Conflict Management and Peace Science, 20(1), 2003, pp 1–32. 61 There is always some debate as to the utility of bivariate statistics. Here we use these numbers to provide a context and also as a simple method of evaluating the direction of further investigations. Obviously the best test is a full statistical analysis and we provide this later, but some prefer the simpler method utilised here. 62 AL George & A Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences, Cambridge, MA: mit Press, 2005. 63 Fazal, State Death. 64 Vasquez, The Power of Power Politics. 65 JFC Fuller, A Military History of the Western World: From the Defeat the Spanish Armada to the Battle of Waterloo, Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 1987. 66 Ibid. 67 N Davies, White Eagle, Red Star: The Polish–Soviet War 1919–1920 and 'The Miracle on the Vistula', New York: Random House, 2003. 68 Vasquez & Leskiw, 'The origins and war-proneness of international rivalries'; and M Colaresi, 'When doves cry: international rivalry, unreciprocated cooperation, and leadership turnover', American Journal of Political Science, 48(3), 2004, pp 555–570.