Taking dyads seriously

Abstract International relations scholarship concerns dyads, yet standard modeling approaches fail to adequately capture the data generating process behind dyadic events and processes. As a result, they suffer from biased coefficients poorly calibrated errors. We show how regression-based approach, Additive Multiplicative Effects (AME) model, can be used account for inherent dependencies in glean substantive insights interrelations between actors. First, we conduct simulation highlight model captures that accounting these processes improves our ability inference on data. Second, compare AME three prominent studies recent international scholarship. For each study, find compared AME, approach performs notably worse at capturing process. Further, conventional methods misstate effect of key variables uncertainty effects. Finally, outperforms terms out-of-sample fit. In sum, work shows consequences failing take seriously. Most importantly, by better underlying political phenomena, framework scholars’ inferential analyses