Domestic Political Accountability and the Escalation and Settlement of International Disputes

A political accountability model is developed to explain how the accountability of incumbent democratic leaders to domestic political opposition influences the diplomatic and military policies of governments. The model is situated within the democratic peace literature and compared with existing theoretical work. Empirically, the hypotheses are tested on a new data set of 348 territorial disputes for the period from 1919 to 1995. Each dispute is divided into three separate stages so that hypotheses about the initiation and outcome of both negotiations and military confrontations, and opposing patterns of war and dispute settlement, can be tested. Results provide strong support for a number of hypotheses concerning the importance of electoral cycles and the strength of opposition parties in explaining patterns of both conflictual and cooperative behavior by democratic states.