All International Politics Is Local: The
Diffusion of Conflict, Integration, and
Democratization. By Kristian Skrede
Gleditsch. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
2002. 280p. $47.50.
Paul Huth, University of Michigan
This recent book represents an ambitious
effort to convince international relations and
comparative politics scholars that political
behavior is heavily conditioned by the larger
regional context within which states are located.
As such, fundamental patterns of war and
peace, democratic development, and political
stability are shaped by regional relationships
and strategic interactions.
The layout is as follows. In Chapter 1,
Kristian Skrede Gleditsch argues that patterns
of military conflict and democratic development
cluster regionally and that primary causal
influences on these political outcomes are to be
found within regions as well. As a result, a
regional perspective is critical to improving
theoretical analysis and empirical testing. The
author then introduces spatial statistics as a
tool for empirically measuring and determining
the extent of regional patterns and relationships.
He then utilizes spatial statistics to
demonstrate empirically that there is substantial
evidence of regional clustering in terms of
international conflict, trade relations, democracy,
and regime change. In Chapter 2, the
author reviews existing scholarly literatures, on
international integration, the democratic
peace, and the causes of democracy and regime
change. In a thoughtful survey and critique of
the theoretical literatures, he recasts existing
arguments and hypotheses in regional terms.
For example, the conflict behavior of individual
states within regions should be strongly
influenced by how many neighboring democratic
states there are, or by patterns of regional
trade. In Chapter 3, he carefully discusses
the operational measures for the variables to be
tested and assesses the strengths and weaknesses
of the data sets relied upon.
In the next three chapters (4-6), the author
presents a series of statistical tests and, in the
process, compares and contrasts his findings to
important bodies of existing scholarship in
order to clarify which findings are new and how
they relate to existing debates. In Chapter 4,
the analysis centers on the impact of democracy
and democratization on war, while in
Chapter 5, the author examines the importance
of regional integration on conflict behavior.
Finally, in Chapter 6, the empirical analysis
concludes with tests on the causes of
democracy and regime change.
Across these three chapters the author
reports a number of interesting findings that
highlight the importance of the regional context.
For example, patterns of state involvement
in war and conflict are influenced much
more by the number of democratic neighbors
than by how democratic individual states are.
He also finds that democratization is only associated
with increased civil war, but even that
relationship is conditioned by the number of
democratic neighbors in the region.
Interestingly, he argues that bilateral trade relations
have much weaker effects on conflict
behavior than do regional trade relations.
Finally, in an analysis of democracy and regime
change, the author finds once again that the
extent of democracy within the region is
strongly associated with how democratic an
individual state is. He also reports that transitions
to democracy are unlikely to succeed
unless most neighboring states are democratic
as well. In the concluding chapter, he draws
out the contributions of his regional perspective
to existing scholarship, as well as some
broad policy implications.
There are several strengths to this book. On
the theoretical side, the author is to be commended
for integrating the study of comparative
and international politics. For example,
democracy is argued to be a central cause of
regional conflict and cooperation, but in turn,
democracy and regime survivability are shaped
by patterns of regional conflict and the extent
of regional democratization. The author also
presents a smart and sophisticated effort to
recast democratic peace, trade interdependence,
integration, and democratization literatures
in a regional context. He generally makes
a persuasive case that dependent variables are
best conceptualized regionally and that causal
relationships are likely to operate in powerful
ways within regions.
On the empirical side, the book is an excellent
example of the higher standards now
employed in the best quantitative studies of
international relations. The author gives particular
attention to the fit between theoretical
concepts and their operational measurement.
An innovative feature is the use of spatial statistics
to measure variables in a regional context.
Another strength of the empirical work is
the systematic attention given to the robustness
of estimated results. For example, through
a series of careful reanalyses, the author in
Chapter 5 determines that the strongest
impact of trade on war and conflict is clustered
among European states. Finally, in Chapter 6,
he presents a thorough reevaluation of prior
statistical studies on democracy and regime
change, which points toward the important
conclusion that domestic-level influences on
democratic transitions and survivability are
strongly conditioned by the larger regional
political context.
There are, however, some weaknesses in this
book, too. Conceptually, the role played by
actors outside regions, such as major powers or
international institutions in influencing conflict,
integration, or democratization, is not
addressed very well. As a result, the impact of
outside parties that provide extended deterrence,
intervene in regional wars, or conduct
peacekeeping or peace-building operations is
not accounted for. Similarly, the importance of
the economic and financial ties of states to
such global institutions as the International
Monetary Fund and the World Bank is left out
of the analysis. A second point is that while the
author’s recasting of existing theoretical literatures
in regional terms is well done, more
attention could have been devoted to explicating
the causal mechanisms linking the regional
context to state-level behavior and then devising
more specific tests of those causal links.
For example, how does having more democratic
neighbors promote democracy within individual
individual
states? How does more democratic
neighbors in the region reduce the conflictual
behavior of individual states? In the absence of
more fully developed theoretical arguments
and tests, the strong empirical findings on the
importance of the regional context are intriguing
but call out for more research.
On balance, this is an excellent piece of
work that combines theoretical synthesis and
integration with first-rate statistical analysis.
There is much to be learned by picking up All
International Politics Is Local and carefully reading
it.
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