The influence of history on political and economic liberalization.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the causality of the relationship between liberal variables and interstate conflict. The starting point for the paper is the importance of history in the prediction of conflicts between states, and the fact that most interstate conflicts take place as repeated events between a limited set of states. Relations between these states are usually characterized by mutual distrust and cognitive expectations of further conflict. These cognitive expectation do, however, not only increase the likelihood of further conflict between states, but do also influence the processes of political and economic liberalization within and between the involved states. States that already find themselves in a situation of conflict and mutual distrust are therefore less likely to develop liberal institutions for political and economic interaction. By relying on the Thompson (2001) strategic rivalry data for measuring cognitive biases and mutual distrust, I investigate how these factors influence states’ abilities to developed liberal institutions and liberal practices. In doing so I rely on multiple regressions with lagged dependent variables to get an impression of the causality of the relationship. Rather than taking liberal variables and the development of liberal variables for granted, I discuss how these variables are formed by historical interaction and social practice. For states that already find themselves in a hostile relationship, interaction based on liberal principles may be difficult to achieve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]