Ideology and international conflict
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- In recent years, the world has increasingly witnessed international conflict along ideological fault lines. Western policymakers warn that authoritarian countries like Russia and China are seeking to exploit divisions within democratic societies to promote autocratic tendencies, while for decades, authoritarian countries have accused the West of doing the same--of manufacturing domestic uprisings as a way to force liberalism upon them. Of course, these dynamics herald back to the Cold War, where international conflict was defined by ideological competition between capitalist and communist regimes, and before the Cold War, to the Concert of Europe, where conflict often involved clashes between republican and absolutist regimes. And yet, while history is filled with examples of conflicts along these kinds of ideological lines, there is no consensus in existing research on whether these cleavages have any effect on relations between states. Depending on where one looks, one can find arguments suggesting that ideology does or does not matter, or that there may be effects unique to liberalism. This dissertation advances our understanding of the relationship between ideology and international conflict by exploring how it affects a specific aspect of modern interstate conflict: disputes over the leadership and institutions of other countries. I argue that ideological cleavages increase the risk of these regime disputes in two ways. First, ideologically dissimilar states may attempt to change each other's regimes either due to normative preferences or the fear that these preferences exist. Second, they may resort to subversion to prevent political contagion from the success of alternative regimes. By contrast, ideologically-similar states face incentives to prop each other up against domestic threats and to refrain from using subversion to pursue their other foreign policy goals. I employ a variety of research techniques to provide evidence of these arguments, including cross-national statistical analyses, multi-country archival research, and automated text analysis of foreign propaganda. Using large-N quantitative data, I show that pairs of ideologically similar states are less likely to have policy and regime disputes, more likely to provide aid to each other in periods of domestic unrest, and have overall more cooperative relations than pairs of ideologically dissimilar countries. Focused case studies provide additional evidence of the theoretical mechanisms. Taken together, the results illustrate the shortcomings of "black boxing" the types of disputes states have, and they suggest that ideological ties between states are a major driver of patterns of international cooperation and competition
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2020; ©2020 |
| Publication date | 2020; 2020 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Hundley, Lindsay Jordan |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Fearon, James D |
| Thesis advisor | Fearon, James D |
| Thesis advisor | Schultz, Kenneth A |
| Thesis advisor | Tomz, Michael |
| Degree committee member | Schultz, Kenneth A |
| Degree committee member | Tomz, Michael |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Political Science |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Lindsay Hundley |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Political Science |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2020 |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2020 by Lindsay Jordan Hundley
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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