Replication Data for: Democratizing the Dispute: Democratization and the History of Conflict Management

What explains the complex processes of democratization and conflict management? Are new democracies more likely to use peaceful means or engage in militarized means when presented with opportunities to resolve their territorial disputes? In this paper, we hypothesize that democratizing states still engaged in territorial disputes are more likely to attempt conflict management following the transition to democracy to remove flashpoints that the military and other former autocratic regime elements can use to discredit democracy and prevent consolidation of democracy. Depending on the history of past conflict management attempts, newly democratic leaders either continue or break with the past policies of non-democratic leaders, indicating a degree of interdependence in the conflict management process. Using multinomial logistic regression on claim-year dyad data from the Issues Correlates of War project, we find that previous management attempts and democratization interact to make peaceful conflict management more likely when past leaders have been successful in peaceful conflict management, but not with failed peaceful attempts or militarized attempts. Our results indicate that previous arguments overstate the propensity for democratization to spark armed conflict, attempted conflict management is more often peaceful, and current attempts are highly influenced by the history of attempts pursued by past leaders.

哪些因素可以解释民主化与冲突治理的复杂进程？当面临解决领土争端的契机时，新生民主国家更倾向于采用和平手段，还是诉诸军事化手段？本文提出如下假说：仍深陷领土争端的民主化国家，在完成向民主制度的转型后，更有可能主动开展冲突治理，以消除那些可被军方及其他前专制政权势力利用，用以抹黑民主、阻碍民主巩固的冲突导火索。基于过往冲突治理尝试的历史记录，新生民主国家的领导者要么延续非民主时期领导者的政策，要么与之决裂，这表明冲突治理进程存在一定的相互依存性。本文采用战争议题关联项目（Issues Correlates of War）提供的争端年度对偶数据，运用多项逻辑回归（multinomial logistic regression）模型展开分析，结果发现：过往冲突治理尝试与民主化进程存在交互效应——当过往领导者在和平冲突治理中取得成功时，二者的交互作用会提升和平冲突治理的发生概率；而若过往尝试为和平失败或军事化冲突治理，则无此效应。本研究结果表明，过往研究夸大了民主化引发武装冲突的可能性；实际情况中，冲突治理尝试往往以和平方式开展，且当前的治理尝试高度受过往领导者所推行的治理尝试历史轨迹的影响。