Democracy and the Settlement of International Borders, 1919-2000. (with Andy Owsiak) pdf version.
Abstract: There is increasing evidence that territorial conflict is associated with centralized and non-democratic regimes. We explore whether this relationship is due to the facility of democratic regimes to settle their international borders. Using Owsiak's (2012) dataset of all territorial settlements since 1919, we find little evidence that democratic regimes are more likely than other types of regimes to settle their borders. In fact, joint democracy rarely precedes the first border agreement or full settlement of the border, and there is almost no qualitative evidence suggesting a link between democracy and border settlement in the rare instances of successful agreements. Instead, we find that dyadic conditions that make settlement easier better predict which borders get settled. These include whether international law favors the claims of one side, the presence of an alliance in the dyad, and the overall salience of the border. This is the first systematic examination of the causes of border settlement over such a large temporal and spatial domain.
Abstract: There is increasing evidence that territorial conflict is associated with centralized and non-democratic regimes. We explore whether this relationship is due to the facility of democratic regimes to settle their international borders. Using Owsiak's (2012) dataset of all territorial settlements since 1919, we find little evidence that democratic regimes are more likely than other types of regimes to settle their borders. In fact, joint democracy rarely precedes the first border agreement or full settlement of the border, and there is almost no qualitative evidence suggesting a link between democracy and border settlement in the rare instances of successful agreements. Instead, we find that dyadic conditions that make settlement easier better predict which borders get settled. These include whether international law favors the claims of one side, the presence of an alliance in the dyad, and the overall salience of the border. This is the first systematic examination of the causes of border settlement over such a large temporal and spatial domain.