Author(s): Emilie M. Hafner-Burton and Alexander H. Montgomery
A growing number of international
relations scholars argue that intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) promote
peace. Existing approaches emphasize IGO membership as an important causal
attribute of individual states, much like economic development and regime type.
The authors use social network analysis to show that IGO memberships also
create a disparate distribution of social power, significantly shaping
conflicts between states. Membership partitions states into structurally
equivalent clusters and establishes hierarchies of prestige in the
international system. These relative positions promote common beliefs and alter
the distribution of social power, making certain policy strategies more
practical or rational. The authors introduce new IGO relational data and
explore the empirical merits of their approach during the period from 1885 to
1992. They demonstrate that conflict is increased by the presence of many other
states in structurally equivalent clusters, while large prestige disparities
and in-group favoritism decrease it.
Keywords: social network;
militarized international dispute (MID); interstate conflict; democratic peace;
international governmental organization (IGO)
International governmental
organizations (IGOs) promote peace and cooperation among member states; so say
a growing number of international relations scholars. Over the past thirty
years, researchers have devoted substantial resources to analyzing the liberal
proposition that IGOs offer states important pacific benefits, reducing military
conflict between members by creating an interdependent world context of mutual
self-interest and understanding. Like trade and democracy, membership in IGOs
has come to be conceptualized as an important state attribute: as a
characteristic that governments possess by joining IGOs, which, in turn,
affects their foreign policy behaviors.
This article brings a new
analytic perspective to the debate. We agree with the liberal premise that IGOs
influence states' conflict propensities. However, our aim is to show that IGOs
are more than attributes of individual states that place institutional
constraints on members' military ambitions. IGOs also create empirically
identifiable social networks that help to define the conditions under which
acts of aggression or cooperation can be rational strategies of action in
international relations. It is our core contention that interstate military
aggression is not simply a result of bargaining failure but is suppressed or
encouraged by the relative positions states occupy in the larger network of
IGOs, which promote common beliefs and alter the distribution of social power.
Our analytic approach is
different from the liberal argument in several respects. Like many structural
realists, we locate sources of conflict in emergent relations between states
that materialize within an international environment of power politics rather
than from state attributes alone. We also recognize that IGOs are vehicles for
power politics that often create conflict-producing rather than peace-making
incentives. Like the relative material positions that encourage balancing or
bandwagoning behavior, these social structural positions held by states are
emergent properties of the international system that influence foreign policy
behaviors. They operate on a level of analysis separate from the state
attributes, dyadic properties, or systemic qualities typically used to explain
conflict. However, our approach also breaks with the structural realist
perspective;1 we argue that IGOs have causal importance independent of state
interests, emphasize that power is endowed not only by material positions but
also by social structural positions, and posit that the common beliefs created
by these positions significantly affect conflict.
We divide our argument into four
parts. First, we review the existing theoretical and empirical literature
predicting the effects of IGO membership on international conflict, identifying
two core omissions. Few studies hypothesize the effect of social net works
created by IGO membership patterns on conflict between states; none offer the empirical
tools to systematically analyze these network effects. Second, we introduce a
new analytical approach to the problem and discuss how different types of
social positions within the network structure are likely to influence state
conflict in the international system. In the third section, we introduce new
IGO relational data and explore the empirical merits of our approach during the
period from 1885 to 1992, demonstrating that conflict is increased by the
presence of many other states in structurally equivalent clusters, while large
prestige disparities and in-group favoritism decrease it. We conclude by
drawing implications for future research on social networks, IGOs, and conflict
in the international system. 1. While we break with the materialism of Waltz (1979),
Waltz's emphasis on material power is not an intrinsic feature of his theory;
our addition of social power positions is therefore a compatible addition to a
realist approach (Goddard and Nexon 2005).
