LIT2: Levy, J. S. (1998) ‘The Causes Of War And The Conditions Of Peace’, Annual Review Of Political Science, vol. 1, pp.139-65. Flashcards
What is Peace (Levy, 1998)
Absence of war
What are the question concerning what causes war?
- It can refer to what makes war possible, to the permissive or logically necessary conditions for war.
a. Scholars trace war to human nature, biological instincts, frustration, fear and greed, the existence of weapons and similar factors- How to explain variations in war and peace
a. Why does war occur at some times rather than other times, between some states rather than other states, under some political leaders rather than others, in some historical and cultural contexts rather than others, and so on? - How do we explain the origins of a particular war?
Most international relations scholars (and particularly those in North America) focus primarily on the second question, explaining variations in war and peace.
- How to explain variations in war and peace
What are the levels of analysis of war according to Levy?
Waltz has developed a levels-of-analysis framework, in which the causes of war can be divided into three parts of analysis:
1. The individual
2. The nation-state
3. The international system
Some scholars have modified Waltz’s framework by collapsing the individual and nation-state levels to create a simplified dichotomy:
1. Nation level
2. International system level
Others have disaggregated the nation-state level into distinct governmental and societal-level factors:
1. The individual
2. The nation-state
a. Governmental factors
b. Societal factors
Three. The international system
How is the Level-of-Analysis concept of Levy used?
levels-of-analysis concept is sometimes used differently, to refer to the dependent variable, or to the type of entity whose behavior is to be explained:
- The systemic level of analysis refers to explanations of patterns and outcomes in the international system. - The dyadic level refers to explanations of the strategic interactions between two states. - The national level refers to explanations of state foreign policy behavior. - The organizational level refers to explanations of the behavior of organizations. - The individual level refers to explanations of the preferences, beliefs, or choices of individuals. We cannot assume that correlations or causal connections at one level of analysis are necessarily valid at another level
What are the common assumption of realist systemic-level theories on war? Levy
Realist theories often generate conflicting predictions, they share a core of common assumptions
- The key actors in world politics are sovereign states that act rationally to advance their security, power, and wealth in a conflictual international system that lacks a legitimate governmental authority to regulate conflicts or enforce agreements.
- Wars can occur not only because some states prefer war to peace, but also because of unintended consequences of actions by those who prefer peace to war and are more interested in preserving their position than in enhancing it.
- Realists do not assume that international relations are always conflictual, and they have recently focused on the question of the conditions for cooperation under anarchy.
The core proposition of realist theory is that the distribution of power, throughout the system or within a dyad, is the primary factor shaping international outcomes.
But the key division in the realist literature on war is between balance of power theory and hegemonic theory
What is Balance of Power theory and Power transition theory? Levy
Balance of Power theory posits the avoidance of hegemony as the primary goal of states and the maintenance of an equilibrium of power in the system as the primary instrumental goal.
The theory predicts that states, and particularly great powers, will balance against those states that constitute the primary threats to their interests and particularly against any state that threatens to secure a hegemonic position.
Power transition theory, a form of hegemonic theory, emphasizes the existence of order within a hierarchical system.
The probability of a major war is greatest at the point when the declining leader is being overtaken by the rising challenger. The resulting hegemonic war usually generates a new hegemonic power, and the irregular hegemonic cycle begins anew.
What are the beliefs of liberals on system level theories on war and how do realist counter these arguments? Levy
Some liberals argue that capitalist economic systems and the free exchange of goods in an international market economy are the best guarantors of peace.
The most compelling argument is that trade generates economic advantages for both parties, and the anticipation that war will disrupt trade and result in a loss or reduction of the welfare gains from trade or a deterioration in the terms of trade deters political leaders from war against key trading partners.
However, realists advance a number of objections to the liberal economic theory of war
- They say that the effect of trade on war is small relative to that of military and diplomatic considerations.
- Realists also downplay or reject the hypothesized deterrent and pacifying effects of the anticipated loss of welfare gains from trade.
Although liberals and realists disagree on the effects of trade on war, they appear to agree that trade and other forms of economic interchange between societies will cease or be drastically reduced once states are at war with each other.
However, contrary to both liberal and realist expectations there are numerous historical cases of trade between enemies during wartime, and a preliminary quantitative study suggests that war frequently does little to depress the volume of trade between adversaries.
What is the problem with system level theories on war?
All these theories are framed almost entirely at the systemic level and ignore the potentially important role of domestic variables.
- They also need to conceptualize relative gains at the systemic as well as the dyadic level; states often hesitate to terminate trade with the enemy for fear that they will lose that trade to a third party, who may be a greater economic or military rival.
What is the Societal-Level theory on war?
Liberal and Marxist theorists suggest that mass public opinion is inherently peaceful.
- If a state initiates a war it is usually because political leaders or the capitalist class choose war over the desires and interests of the public, or perhaps because of “false consciousness” on the part of the people.
However, there are numerous historical cases in which the public appears all too eager for war.
In some cases this popular enthusiasm for war may push political leaders into adopting more aggressive and risky policies than they would have preferred.
What is the Rally Round the flag effect? Levy
Societal Level Theory on war
There is substantial evidence that the outbreak of war, particularly victorious war, generally leads to a “rally ‘round the flag” effect that enhances popular support for political leaders.
- Leaders often anticipate this “rally” effect and are sometimes tempted to undertake risky foreign ventures or hardline foreign policies in an attempt to bolster their internal political support.
What is the Scapegoat Hypothesis or Diversionary theory of war?
Societal Level of analysis causation of war.
This is the age-old “scapegoat hypothesis” or “diversionary theory of war”
- It is theoretically grounded in social identity theory and the in-group/out-group hypothesis, which suggests that conflict with an outgroup increases the cohesion of a well-defined in-group.
- Group leaders are aware of the cohesive effects of external conflict and sometimes deliberately create or maintain external conflict to serve their internal purposes.
Whether the diversionary use of force is more common (or more effective) in democratic or authoritarian regimes depends on:
- The potential benefits of scapegoating.
- The probability of a diplomatic or military victory.
- The domestic costs and risks.
The availability of alternative means of dealing with domestic opposition.
Marxist-Leninist models of imperialism, like models of scapegoating, implicitly assume that external expansion and the use of force serve the interests of the ruling class or elite but not those of society as a whole.
- The basic argument is that the benefits of expansion go to the ruling elite, who have concentrated interests, while the costs of expansion are diffused throughout society in the form of taxation.
If the costs of aggressive foreign policies are too high, it is not clear how elites maintain their power
What is Snyders 1991 alternative to the scape goat theory? Levy
Snyder (1991) developed an alternative model in which key internal groups have parochial interests that favor different but limited forms of imperial expansion or military buildups.
They secure and share power through logrolled coalitions and pursue the foreign policy interests advocated by each, so that the resulting policy is more aggressive or expansionist than that desired by any single group and cannot be supported by existing societal resources.
What doe individual-level theories on the causation of war assume? Levy
Individual-level theories assume that:
1. External and internal structures and social forces are not translated directly into foreign policy choices.
2. Key decision-makers vary in their definitions of state interests, assessments of threats to those interests, and/or beliefs as to the optimum strategies to achieve those interests.
3. Differences in the content of actors’ belief systems, in the psychological processes through which they acquire information and make judgments and decisions, and in their personalities and emotional states are important intervening variables in explaining observed variation in state behaviors with respect to issues of war and peace.
A central theme in many of the models is that, because of cognitive limitations, decision making is characterized by “bounded rationality” rather than the ideal-type rationality posited by formal decision theory.
What is the Prospect Theory?
Prospect theory assumes that people evaluate outcomes in terms of deviations from a reference point or aspiration level rather than in terms of net-asset levels.
They generally:
- Overweight goods in their possession relative to comparable goods they do not own (the endowment effect).
- Overweight losses from that reference point relative to equivalent gains ( aversion). loss
- Make riskaverse choices among gains but risk-acceptant choices among losses.
These assumptions lead to a number of hypotheses about behavior with respect to international relations:
- There is a “reference point bias” in behavior, a greater tendency to move toward the reference point than one would predict on the basis of standard expected-value calculations.
- State leaders take more risks to maintain their international positions, reputations, and domestic political support than they do to enhance those positions.
- After suffering losses (in territory, reputation, domestic political support, etc), political leaders do not adapt to those losses and renormalize their reference points but instead take excessive risks (relative to expected value calculations) to recover those losses.
- Because adaptation to losses tends to be slow, sunk costs frequently influence decision-makers’ calculations and state behavior.
- The endowment effect leads actors to overvalue the concessions they give relative to those they get in return, leading to a “concession aversion” or a bias against agreements (relative to an expected-value calculus).
- It is easier to deter an adversary from taking an action than to compel him to terminate an action or to undo what he has already done, and it is easier to deter an adversary from making gains than to deter her from recovering losses.
It is easier for states to cooperate in the distribution of gains than in the distribution of losses.
What are the General Trends in the study of war according to Levy 1998
There are general trends in the study of the causes of war that cut across different theoretical perspectives.
- One is a partial move away from a long-standing great power focus toward a greater emphasis on small state conflicts.
- There has also been a pronounced shift away from the systemic level (in terms of both independent and dependent variables), in part because of growing dissatisfaction with the failure of structural systemic models to explain enough of the variance in war and peace.
This shift has led to rising interest in both dyadic-level behavior and societal-level explanatory variables.
In the past decade most international relations theorists have moved beyond their earlier preoccupation with explanations at a single level of analysis and debates about which level provides the most powerful explanations.
- They now give much more attention to interaction effects among variables at different levels in the processes leading to war.
The conceptualization of international relations and war as a sequence of choices, which has long been common in the qualitative literature, is also reflected in much of the quantitative empirical literature.
The increasing complexity of theories of war and peace is reflected in the recognition of the importance of unintended consequences, endogeneity effects, and selection effects, as well as in the construction of rational choice and systems models that facilitate the analysis of such effects.
