Cui Bono? Business Elites and Interstate Conflict

We address how regime support groups affect war-making by re-opening a classic debate on business elites and their influence on states' conflict behavior. Imperialist theories contend that business elites encourage executives to undertake military expeditions to ``open up" foreign markets, while ``capitalist peace" arguments emphasize that business elites have economic incentives to work for peace. We unite these notions by proposing that countries become more belligerent, in general, when business elites enter regime support coalitions, but not towards other business-supported regimes. To test our argument, we draw on novel data on the composition of regime support coalitions, covering 200 polities across two centuries. We find that business-elite supported regimes are more likely to initiate armed conflict, but not against other countries with business-elite supported regimes. We also find support for additional implications, for instance pertaining to how the belligerence of business-supported regimes depends on existing trade relationships.