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You Can Count on Me? Democracy and Alliance Reliability
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Paper prepared for the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association,
August 28-31, 2003, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Comments on this preliminary draft areencouraged, but please do not cite or quote without authors’ permission. This research wassupported by the National Science Foundation (SES-0095983).
YOU CAN COUNT ON ME?
DEMOCRACY AND ALLIANCE RELIABILITY
1
Brett Ashley Leeds
and
Jennifer Gigliotti-Labay
Department of Political Science
Rice University
P.O. Box 1892--MS 24
Houston, TX 77251-1892
Phone: 713-348-3037
Fax: 713-348-5273
Email: ## email not listed ##
ABSTRACT
Are democracies more or less reliable alliance partners? While many scholars have argued thatleaders of democracies have strong incentives to keep their promises and thus are advantaged atmaking credible commitments, theorists have also claimed that democracies are particularlysensitive to the costs of war and should choose to avoid military conflict. This may lead one toquestion whether the reliability of democracies extends to an arena in which fulfilling anagreement may require engaging in war. By considering how characteristics of democracyinfluence alliance formation, alliance invocation, and alliance fulfillment, we develop anargument regarding the relationship between democracy and alliance violation in times of war. We then evaluate this argument empirically over the period 1816-1991, using a newly expandedversion of the Alliance Treaty Obligations and Provisions (ATOP) dataset. In this sample,democracies are neither more nor less likely to violate alliances that have been invoked by warthan non-democracies. Tests of the full argument will require additional analysis to account forsuspected selection effects.
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| | Authors: Leeds, Brett Ashley. and Gigliotti-Labay, Jennifer. |
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1
Paper prepared for the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association,
August 28-31, 2003, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Comments on this preliminary draft are
encouraged, but please do not cite or quote without authors’ permission. This research was
supported by the National Science Foundation (SES-0095983).
YOU CAN COUNT ON ME?
DEMOCRACY AND ALLIANCE RELIABILITY
1
Brett Ashley Leeds
and
Jennifer Gigliotti-Labay
Department of Political Science
Rice University
P.O. Box 1892--MS 24
Houston, TX 77251-1892
Phone: 713-348-3037
Fax: 713-348-5273
Email: ## email not listed ##
ABSTRACT
Are democracies more or less reliable alliance partners? While many scholars have argued that
leaders of democracies have strong incentives to keep their promises and thus are advantaged at
making credible commitments, theorists have also claimed that democracies are particularly
sensitive to the costs of war and should choose to avoid military conflict. This may lead one to
question whether the reliability of democracies extends to an arena in which fulfilling an
agreement may require engaging in war. By considering how characteristics of democracy
influence alliance formation, alliance invocation, and alliance fulfillment, we develop an
argument regarding the relationship between democracy and alliance violation in times of war.
We then evaluate this argument empirically over the period 1816-1991, using a newly expanded
version of the Alliance Treaty Obligations and Provisions (ATOP) dataset. In this sample,
democracies are neither more nor less likely to violate alliances that have been invoked by war
than non-democracies. Tests of the full argument will require additional analysis to account for
suspected selection effects.
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