International institutions, trade and conflict: African regional trade agreements from 1950--1992

Trade institutions can act as security institutions as well given that joint member states do engage in militarized conflict with each other. Conventional wisdom suggests that increased trade flows and/or shared membership in these trade institutions diminish such conflict. But we must member that membership often consists of former and present enemies as well as longtime rivals that do experience militarized conflict. Thus, scholarly inquiry must look beyond trade flows and shared membership in order to specify the conditions under which trade institutions diminish, exacerbate or have no impact on such conflict.; The objectives of this dissertation are twofold: (a) I test the conditions under which variations in RTA institutional structure shape militarized conflict among member countries. (b) I illustrate how RTAs, which are trade institutions, can also be security institutions. To accomplish these objectives, I focus on African dyads, RTA structure and militarized conflict from 1950–1992. The institutional aspects of RTA structure I examined in relation to militarized conflict were the following: (1) level of organizational structure, (2) level of economic integration and (3) level of security integration. Given a binary dependent variable (i.e. presence of militarized conflict), with time series-cross section data, Beck, Katz and Tucker's corrections were employed. Findings suggest that RTAs add military alliances in conjunction with other security integration provisions to decrease the likelihood of militarized conflict while the presence of dispute settlement mechanisms and special security mechanisms may increase the likelihood of such conflict. Findings will contribute to a general theory of institutions and war.