Hierarchy and War in the International System: Empirics of Order and Conflict

• In Event: Order and Violence in the International System

Abstract

Researchers and policymakers have increasingly argued that international order influences a host of political processes in the international system. Yet we still do not understand where international orders come from and how they influence conflict, and the coarseness of existing measures of international order makes these questions difficult to answer with much certainty. In the presented piece, we derive a new and more nuanced measure of international order, derived from states' characteristics and dyadic interactions and compiled using network analysis and machine learning techniques. Our analytic approach yields two significant findings. First, we explore the relationship between shared international order and conflict between states. Second, we aggregate states to the international order level and examine how the differences between the characteristics of international orders lead to different patterns of conflict.

Authors

• Bear F. Braumoeller, Ohio State University

• Jared Falkenberg Edgerton, Ohio State University