The Return on Social Bonds: Social Hierarchy and International Conflict

This paper takes game-theoretic and latent variable approaches to modeling international social hierarchies and their effect on conflict among states. I argue that, within these hierarchies, states adopts one of two roles—a dominant or a subordinate. Each resulting (dyadic) dominant–subordinate relationship is a social (informal) contract, in which the subordinate concedes some autonomy in exchange for dominant’s protection. This social hierarchy affects the relationships between each subordinate and dominant, as well as the relationships among subordinates. A state’s degree of subordination reduces its probability of conflict initiation. The decision to initiate conflict is also affected by the target’s relative level of subordination vis-à-vis the challenger. These predictions are supported by empirical analyses of states within the US hierarchy (1950–2000). ∗Assistant Professor, Iowa State University, [email protected]. I would like to thank Sara Mitchell, Cameron Thies, Fred Boehmke, Doug Dion, Olga Chyzh, Curt Signorino, Andrew Long, Kelly Kadera, Brian Lai, Amanda Murdie, Cooper Drury, Stephen Quackenbush, Vanya Krieckhaus, Dina Zinnes, and Stephen Nemeth for their helpful comments 1 This is a manuscript of an article from Journal of Peace Research 53 (2016): 665, DOI: 10.1177/0022343316642509. Posted with permission.