Conquering Myths: Testing Realist, Liberal, and Constructivist Arguments about State Vulnerability to Conquest.

In this paper, I begin the process of determining and explaining state death rates. Specifically, I present new data on conquest, union, disintegration, and collapse in Europe and the Middle East from 1800-1994 and test the ability of realist, liberal, and constructivist theories to explain historical trends in conquest rates. In doing so, I dispel two myths. First, contrary to the conventional wisdom, historical state death rates have been quite high. Second, contrary to liberal and constructivist claims, relative capabilities, polarity, great power decline, the offense-defense-deterrence balance, and prevailing economic technologies are better predictors of conquest than democratic, juridical, statist, or collective norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]