Taking Preferences More Seriously.

While several studies have been focused on the conflict onset or escalation between democratic dyads, not so much research has been done on conflict escalation between the mixed (democratic and non-democratic) dyads. I add to this ongoing discussion by evaluating the effect of state preferences on conflict escalation between the mixed dyads. By applying the social network analysis on the measurement of state preferences, this paper gives students of conflict study a better understanding of measuring preferences than other ordinary first-order indicators. I also analyze relative Militarized Interstate Disputes (MIDs) between 1946-1992 by a censored probit model to examine the effects of structural affinity (state preferences) on ordinal levels of escalation. My finding suggests that structural affinity scores are statistically significant on conflict escalation among democratic and non-democratic dyads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]