A theory of conflict expansion in interstate disputes

There are four core research questions in this project. First, which third-party states have a strong motivation to enter ongoing disputes? Second, how does the anticipation of third-party intervention affect the behavior of potential attackers? Third, how do domestic political processes affect third-party states' decision to join disputes? And fourth, how do third-party joiners choose from available military strategies to influence the course of events in the ongoing dispute? The central theoretical issue that motivated all four frameworks was the extent to which states' economic interests influenced their decisions related to joining an ongoing dispute.; First, I explored the relationship between economic interdependence and the decision to join and claimed that economic interests affect states' decision to enter interstate disputes. I argued that states have a strong incentive to manage the conflicts in which their trading partners are involved so that they can minimize disruption of trade.; Second, I built a model conflict onset that draws on the information effects of trade. This is a broad application of the uncertainty-clearing effects of trade undertaken for the first time in the economic interdependence and conflict research. This is also a novel approach in the conflict expansion literature that recognizes that conflict onset and intervention are strategically related processes and demonstrates with a simple but insightful approach that the same causal mechanism has the power to explain two different conflict processes; onset and expansion.; Third, I touched on the state-society dimension of economic interdependence and theoretically and empirically analyze the role of economic interest groups in foreign policymaking. The domestic level of analysis I proposed is an important contribution to the economic interdependence studies which mostly take society as a unitary whole. My dissertation builds the link between trade as a private activity and conflict expansion as an interstate phenomenon and analyzes whether the interaction between the state and economically powerful groups will be shaped by political institutions. I argued that different institutional configurations would give different incentives to policymakers to be responsive to the demands of interest groups.; Fourth, I examined another important dimension of the decision to join; the choice of the level of military involvement in the ongoing conflict. This point raises the interesting possibility that whether a third-party state will threaten, display or use force against one side of the conflict is not accidental: joiners intentionally calibrate the extent to which they will be involved in the conflict to their interests. As such, the stakes of joining are strategically chosen: just like joiners select themselves into certain conflicts and avoid others, they also carefully select their level of commitment. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...