The termination and continuation of enduring rivalries

This dissertation examines the questions of why and how enduring rivalries---disputes between states that involve repeated military conflict over a long period of time---through an analysis of rivalry clusters in the Middle East and Latin America. I argue that rivalries will only terminate when one or both states involved in a rivalry experiences temporally proximate failures in domestic and foreign policies.; A foreign policy failure is best understood as loss in war or failure of a diplomatic initiative, whereas the indicators of domestic policy failure are widespread strikes and/or demonstrations in at least one major city and/or a significant decline or loss of a sector of the state's economy. The combined failure in foreign and domestic policy prompts a reevaluation of the minimum coalition necessary to retain power, leading to changes in domestic and foreign policy. Foreign policy failure alone is not sufficient to produce dramatic foreign policy change as a state's leadership retains the ability to draw upon its domestic coalition for support of its foreign policy. Only when that domestic coalition is also challenged will the leadership reevaluate its ruling coalition and overall policy approach. If a similar process is ongoing in the rival state, the chances for rivalry termination increase. If the rival state is not undergoing a similar process, termination will only occur if the state undergoing foreign policy change moves its position sufficiently to meet the rival states minimal conditions for agreement.; To test this argument, the dissertation compares Israel's relationship with Syria and Egypt from 1967-1980 and Peru's relationship with Ecuador and Chile with special attention to the period 1919-1930. In each case, no significant change in foreign policy occurred in the absence of temporally proximate failures in foreign and domestic policies. In the Egypt/Israel and Peru/Chile cases, both states underwent failures in both domestic and foreign policy and shifted their foreign policies far enough to make agreement possible.