Born to lose and doomed to survive: State death and survival in the international system

This dissertation addresses a fundamental question in international relations: under what conditions do states die, or exit the international system? Specifically, this dissertation examines the causes of violent state death, which typically occurs in the form of conquest or long-term military occupation. I define state death as the formal loss of control over foreign policy making to another state.; The probability of state death is governed by the incentive structures of would-be conquerors. States engaged in enduring rivalries face a strategic imperative to take over states that lie between themselves and their opponents. Thus, buffer states are particularly likely to die. This insight is surprising because great powers are generally thought to promote the survival of buffer states that separate them from each other.; Just as strategy can drive states' decisions to conquer other states, so can international norms constrain these decisions. After 1945, a norm protecting states' territorial sovereignty prevents violent state death. In the face of this prohibitive norm, great powers turn to other means to pursue their ends. One form of “death” replaces another after 1945 as the boundaries of buffer states harden, but external interventions to replace buffer state regimes and leaders become increasingly common.; This argument disagrees with several major international relations theories. Neorealists suggest that states that behave as if they were rational will be more likely to survive. Occupation costs theorists argue that states that are more nationalistic will generate higher governance costs for conquerors; would-be conquerors therefore avoid taking over states likely to generate these costs. And constructivists suggest that states accorded greater levels of international legitimacy are more likely to survive than less legitimate states.; Both quantitative analyses based on original data and historical case studies of interventions in Poland and the Dominican Republic illustrate the peril of buffer state status and the relative safety of the post-1945 world. Moreover, the data show that the variables suggested by previous scholarship are unrelated to state survival or death. Thus, buffer states are “born to lose” and states after 1945 are—at least for now—“doomed to survive.”...