Rising Power Disputes: How Social Ties Shape Severity and Location

• In Event: Interstate Power Dynamics

Abstract

Why are some rising powers associated with high levels of tension and conflict, whilst others are not? How does competition for influence over small states lead rising powers into confrontation and conflict with major powers? Why do some of these disputes escalate to become major wars, whilst others do not? I argue that when rising powers seek to monopolize influence over a small state that this leads to major power policymaker perceptions of revisionism and threat, increasing the probability of escalation. This paper, therefore, examines the characteristics of relationships which rising powers form with small states, arguing that they are multidimensional, varying in terms of their openness, formality, and role specialization. Openness examines the extent to which the rising power allows other major powers to pursue interests in the small state, formality considers the institutional structure of the relationship, and role specialization explores whether the rising power or small state perform a function that no other does. To examine how these characteristics are related to the severity and location of disputes, I extract all of the disputes of rising powers from the Correlates of War Militarized Interstate Dispute dataset, yielding 449 disputes in the 1816-2010 period. The disputes were then coded according to the pre-dispute characteristics of the relationships rising powers had formed with small states relevant to the dispute. Descriptive and inferential statistical analysis reveals systematic variation in the social ties of rising powers, leading to the conclusion that monopolization is associated with more hostile disputes, particularly in the home region of the rising power.

Author

• Patrick Gill-Tiney, University of Oxford