Schneider, Gerald (Genf) 1995

Integration und Konflikt: Die empirische Relevanz von 'Sicherheitsgemeinschaften'
(Integration and Conflict: The Empirical Relevance of Security Communities)

The notion of "security communities" enjoys an unexpected renaissance. In this examination, I investigate on a global scale whether or not integration has pacified interstate relations. I derive hypotheses on the nexus between different forms of integration and militarized conflict from a game-theoretic framework and test some of the implications of the model statistically. The analysis of more than 5000 disputing and non-disputing dyads in the period from 1948 to 1988 shows that increased levels of economic, political, and socio-cultural integration mitigate the likelihood of conflict in interstate relations. Going beyond the extant scholarship on the democratic peace phenomenon, I particularly demonstrate the extent to which membership in international economic agreements constrains governments from using force. My results are in line with the most important liberal hypotheses and confirm that relative peace in the form of "security communities" can be established if several preconditions are met.

Appendix I contains a report about how individual states can disrupt the attempts of the international community to expand the cooperative framework. The second appendix shows some difficulties which international organizations like the European Union have to define a unified foreign policy.


Report: Abschlussbericht an die Stiftung Weltgesellschaft , Bern, 1995

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