Domestic influences for interstate cooperation: Do domestic conditions affect the occurrence of cooperative events in democratic regimes

This research will address two main issues that have become evident in studies of interstate cooperation. The first issue has to do with the relationship between cooperation and conflict. Can they be represented on a single, uni-dimensional continuum, or are they better represented by two theoretically and empirically separable dimensions? Granger causality tests will be able to clarify the nature of cooperative events.; The second issue is related to factors that might facilitate or discourage cooperation with other countries as a foreign policy tool. Factors used to explain cooperation and conflict include domestic variables, which have not been fully accounted for in previous empirical analyses. It will be hypothesized that economic variables, such as inflation rates, GDP, and manufacturing production indices affect the likelihood of cooperative event occurrences. The effect of political dynamics, such as electoral cycles, support rates and national capability status, can also affect the possibility of cooperative foreign policies. The domestic factors in panel data will be tested with Feasible Generalized Least Square (FGLS) in order to take care of heteroscedasticity and autocorrelations in residuals. The individual case analysis will use linear time series analysis.