OpEdNews - Page 3 of Article: A Federalist Peace Theory, 1946-1992

A federation is defined as a nation state actor that has federal structure which is territorially defined, dual governance, and/or shared sovereignties of governments. This key independent variable is defined as a constitutionally , territorially, or institutionally recognized federal regime. Such federal governance must include divisions of autonomy between local or constituent governments, as well as being a nationally recognized arrangement. Finally, since shared sovereignties exist and since there are specifically divided areas of sovereignty between the constituent and national governments, each federal regime may be too busy to take on the most controversial of foreign actions, namely “war”.

Other assumptions concerning the federal peace theory are induced from Maoz and Russett’s (1993) list of key democratic assumptions concerning peace in democratic theory.

Assumption #1: The specific rationale for a federal peace theory is that dual governance in federal states requires a high level of cooperation among differing leadership--as well as among national, regional, and constituent state opinion at the public level. Socialization in this cooperative process leads elites to practice compromise with others-"including even relations with foreign states or regimes.

Assumption #2: Federal states at the national level face at least two other sovereignties-"the sovereign people who are represented directly at the national level and the constituent states, which are also represented at the national level.

Assumption #3: One condition to be considered is the size of the federation and how those constituent states which directly border other countries might be likely to put pressure on the central or national government to either participate or refrain from war. This implies that unicentric governments and constituent states that do not border other nations, as compared to federations and their border states, might certainly have varying interests and attitudes towards international confrontation with foreign states, regions, or governments .

Assumption #4: Economic autonomy means the ability to set ones own labor, construction, and trade standards, fees, price supports, etc.--separately from other constituent states. Constituent states own federal economic autonomy, which provides them with stability in competition over time, enables these federal states to be more advanced industrially as nations as compared to their non-federal neighbors. These federations, as more advanced economies, thus face to lose much more in face-to-face war with all other highly economically developed federal regimes than do less developed nations.

FINDINGS: DATA, DATA ANALYSIS, AND DESIGN RELATED PROBLEMS

Since replicating or approximating prior “democratic peace” studies through a federal research lens is the focus of this paper, it needs to be recalled that by comparing federal and non-federal actors in terms of (1) their proneness to fight wars with each other and (2) their tendency to win wars, I used separate dummy variables just as Maoz and Russett did. Finally, (3) I compared findings within these two sets of regime types to those scores on the polity scale for democracy and autocracy, a 21-point scale (after checking to see if JOINREG and my dichotomous classification using the Polity IV data set were similar on most of the federal state observations and variables).

Between 1946 and 1992, the new data set registered 10,054 state years in the international system using to the Polity IV list of regimes. Of this total number of country years, there were 892 federal state years. That is, federations make up 8.87% of all state years in the international system in this data-set period. More importantly, there were 209 regime years when these 10,054 regime-years were at war. That is, 2.08% of all state years involved states being at war with one another during the period investigated.

Of those 209 total state years of war, federal states were involved in 23.44%. However, only in 1965 when Pakistan faced off against India and again in 1971 when these same foes fought in the Bangladesh War, did federations fight each other. This means that of the total of all state war years, only four federation-years, or 1.9% of the total state-war years involved federal states. This only slightly contradict hypothesis 1a, which claimed that federal regimes are less prone to engage in war with each other than non-federal types of regimes. Meanwhile, among all federal-war years, the total of federal-on-federal war years make up only 8.16% of the total number of total number of war-years.

Interestingly, only in 1965 is a slightly democratic-federal-versus-democratic-federal war to be found. In that year, India had a +9 Polity score and Pakistan had a measly +1 Polity score. Democratic-federal country war-years made up 41 of the total 49 federal war years, yet only 2 out of 49 or only 4.08% of those years involved democratic-federal-versus-democratic-federal years. More importantly, less than 1% of all war years involved democratic-federal-versus-democratic-federal regime wars.

Hypothesis 1b also seems to be strongly supported. Federal regimes are at least as prone to engage in war as democratic regimes are prone to engage in war. Federal states make up over 23% of all-war years although they only make up 8% of the population total state years. Meanwhile, hypothesis 2 also stands. Federal regimes are certainly as prone to engage in war with each other as democratic regimes are prone to engage in war with democratic regimes. Reviewing the list democratic-versus-democratic year wars, over twice as many democratic state-war years were found as for the total number of federal war years in the 1946-1992 period under study in this paper. Finally, hypothesis 3, which says democratic-federal regimes are less prone to engage in War with each other than all other regime types are prone to engage in war with other regime types (federal-autocratic, democratic non-federal, and autocratic non-federal) types, cannot be rejected either. Although, more detailed comparison of the data, including ANOVAs are necessary to strengthen the conceptual arguments posed in this paper.

Also, due to the 1965 case of Pakistan and India, with both states having positive Polity scores and going to war, the model certainly is open to further adaptation. The current model looks as follows:

No War^=If [(fed)*(polity)*(demostate))] is positive opposes a positive [(fed)*(polity)*(demostate)]

One such adaptation likely includes the addition of a stronger set of variables for political-economy and/or alliance than used in the footnoted section of this article. Clearly, of all of the war years, in which federations were involved, more than a simple majority of those years involved federations acting in coalition with one another: For instance, the U.S. worked with other federations in the Korean, Vietnam and Gulf Wars. In addition, if one considers that among federations only Pakistan and India have faced off in war against one another in the post-WWII period; therefore, one must consider further what role economic development plays in the creation of “ No War” conditions.

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