Perilous Polities? RegimeTransition and Conflict 1950-2000.

While evidence continues to mount that democracies resort to military force reluctantly, the transition to democracy may in fact be a dangerous and conflictual one. With the eyes of the world now focused squarely on democratization, a reassessment of the relationship between regime change and inter-state conflict seems fitting. To date, the evidence remains mixed. No clear consensus has emerged on whether regime transition either increases or decreases conflict propensities. Some results indicate a positive relationship between incomplete transitions to democracy and inter-state conflict (Mansfield and Snyder 2002a,b), whereas others suggest that democratization generally decreases war likelihood (Gleditsch and Ward 1998, 2000). Gleditsch and Ward’s research (1998, 2000) points to the importance of the nature of the transition process, showing that high variation in regime scores increases conflict proneness. The research here builds on existing models of democratization and conflict by including a more fully specified vector of conflict variables and by using an updated set of cases. Further, interaction effects are explored to assess whether factors such as power or contiguity differentially impact the conflict propensity of transitioning states. Employing a generalized estimating equation with logit and poisson specifications, the results show that change towards democracy decreases the probability of involvement in militarized inter-state disputes. However, uneven or “rocky” transitions are found to increase conflict likelihood. In addition, I show that the effect of power and contiguity on conflict is substantially altered if states are in a regime transition. These findings suggest further consideration in future research on conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]