Location, Location, Location: An MCMC Approach to Modeling Spatial Context with Categorical Variables

Prior work has shown the strong presence of regional and spatial context in linkages between regime characteristics and involvement in civil and international con°ict, but no adequate statistical model has explicitly captured these forces. Models that adequately re°ect the interdependence of actors and actions in world politics are faced with di±cult problems of estimation since the classical likelihood becomes intractable in the presence of the dependencies among observations. Most current solutions to this problem are based on approaches that were developed decades ago during a period of expensive computing. However, these approaches are no longer neither necessary nor appropriate. Using data from 1988, we use an autologistic formulation, estimated by Monte Carlo Markov Chain approximation, to extend our work exploring the link between authority structures and peace, one of the most salient present research topics in international relations. Our estimated model allows us to predict about half of the violent domestic and international con°icts that emerged in the subsequent decade. 1 TRACKING THE ANALYSIS OF CONFLICT 2 1 Tracking the analysis of con°ict The study of geography as a component of world politics has a checkered history. The term geopolitics was introduced by a Swedish scholar and politician, Rudolf Kjellen (1916) who applied Darwinian notions to the putative organic nature of states imbued with an innate propensity for growth. Kjellen's theories gained considerable in°uence and were instrumental in popularizing the term lebensraum which Friedrich Ratzel (1879) introduced into the political dialogue in Europe in 1899 (Glassner 1993). Kjellen's ideas were especially salient with a retired German general and university professor, the director of the Munich Institute of Geopolitics and editor of Zeitschrift fÄ ur Geopolitik, Karl Haushofer. One of Haushofer's most impressionable students was Rudolf Hess. Hess, Hitler, and Haushofer had many long discussions, and the rest, as they say, is history; Hitler's expansionist foreign policy was rationalized, if not based, on the geopolitics as introduced by Ratzel, Kjellen, and especially Haushofer. About this same time Sir Halford John Mackinder proposed a similar notion: the heartland concept. Mackinder's Heartland Theory, suggests that there was a pivotal area \in the closed heart-land of Euro-Asia" which was most likely to become the seat of world power, because of its inaccessibility. Nicholas Spykman, a political scientist who founded the Institute of International Studies at Yale, was an in°uential realist who emphasized the control of Eurasian coastal regions (Rimland). Despite its prominent place in the development of the ̄eld of world politics, the legacy of World War II and the end of the colonial area left geopolitics rather out of favor in policy circles. Though the geographical basis of military strategy has received some interest in the ̄eld of strategic studies, geopolitics in the classical sense has been con ̄ned to political geographers. However, the idea that geography plays and important role in international politics need not be limited by the its political misuses. In fact, the analysis of the role of geography has gradually re-emerged, and is working its way back into the scienti ̄c study of world politics and foreign policy. In this article we explore the properties of deadly con°icts from a spatial perspective to gain insight on how they have evolved grosso modo after the birth of modern Europe in 1876, using techniques developed to study similar phenomenon in other mackinder's classic paper (1904) and his later summary (1919) have remained a more popular and politically correct summary of the notion that a territorial imperative is \stabilizing": Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; Who rules the heartland commands the World Island; Who rules the World Island commands the World. The National Anthem of England, Land of Hope and Glory (better known by its tune, Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1.), for example, extols the virtue of expansion in the following way: \Wider and still wider, shall thy bounds be set". For a broad discussion see ¶ O Tuathail (1996); Glassner (1993); and Taylor and Flint (1999). If you think these notions are ignored in contemporary Eurasian politics visit the web site of Alexander Dugin at http://www.arctogaia.com. 2 THE STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF CONFLICT 3 arenas. Despite widespread recognition of the importance of geography, only recently have scholars begun to explore systematically international con°ict using a perspective that encourages understanding the context of con°ict from a spatial perspective. Most of this work has not bene ̄tted from the breakthroughs that have occurred in the past three decades in the statistical analysis of spatial patterns. As yet, no published studies incorporate the most recent modeling and statistical frameworks for modeling spatial processes. 2 The statistical analysis of con°ict Although the causes of war and peace have long generated interest among social scientists, historians, and philosophers, the statistical analysis of war and peace is a relatively novel endeavor. In this section we review the development of the statistical analysis of con°ict and its relations to the spatial analysis of con°ict