LEADERS AND CONFLICT

  • This research project extends a major theme of my book on the causes of war termination: the role of leaders in international and comparative politics. In International Relations and -- to a lesser extent -- Comparative Politics we are witnessing a shift in both the theoretical and empirical unit of analysis to leaders. In a sense, IR has come full circle since the pathbreaking work by Snyder, Bruck and Sapin of the early 1960s with its clear focus on decision-making by individuals and leaders. In the 1980s, largely due to Waltz, the focus of the field shifted to the system; in the 1990s much of the field took the state or the dyad as the primary unit of analysis. With the impact of the rational choice revolution and its emphasis on methodological individualism, IR scholars such as Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Alastair Smith, Randy Siverson and James Morrow (The Logic of Political Survival, MIT Press 2003), but also Comparative Politics scholars such as Adam Przeworski and Jose Cheibub (in Democracy, Accountability, and Representation; Przeworski, Stokes & Manin, eds., CUP, 1999), have begun to put leaders and their incentives to stay in office front and center in their analyses.
    • The project seeks to promote this ongoing shift by collecting data on all leaders between 1875 and 2004, for a new data base: Archigos. This new data will help make it possible to match theoretical and empirical units of analysis. Archigos contains data on the date as well as manner of entry and exit, as well as the leader's age, previous times in office and post-exit fate. Archigos is a collaborative effort with Kristian Skrede Gleditsch (UCSD & Essex), Giacomo Chiozza (UC Berkeley) and Jinhee Choung (UCSD). We are currently gathering additional data on term limits and timing of the next mandatory election.
    • In a co-authored effort with Giacomo Chiozza, the project seeks to offer new theory and evidence on how leaders' tenure and post-tenure fate affects their conflict behavior. In several preparatory papers (see below) we have opened space for new theoretical research on the role of leaders by showing that
      • War is not necessarily costly for leaders. As a result theoretical room is created for leader-based explanations other than the unitary rational actor explanations for war of Fearon (1995).
      • Leaders fight when they are secure in office. While theories of the diversionary use of force require a reciprocal relationship between the loss of office and international conflict, no such reciprocal relations had been explicitly modeled. Once modeled, we do indeed find evidence for a reciprocal relationship, but opposite from the one posited by theories of the diversionary use of force: Leaders initiate (and become targets) when they are secure in office, and as the risk of conflict initiation increases, leaders become more likely to lose office.
      • The fate of leaders after they lose office is significantly worse after they lose a war then if they had not fought a war. In other words, defeat in war makes punishment above the mere loss of office, e.g., exile, jail or death, significantly more likely. In other words, and rejecting a crucial assumption in the literature on the diversionary use of force, punishment is not truncated.
    • In addition, several other papers explore the role of leaders in comparative politics. A paper with Muhammet Bas, Ph. D. candidate at the University of Rochester, (''Growing in Power") examines the reciprocal relationship between economic growth and the tenure of leaders. A paper with Kristian Skrede Gleditsch (UCSD) examines the institutional consequences of the manner of entry into power of leaders.