| Power is perhaps the most important concept in political science, and this is no different in the field of international relations. In particular, one ‘power question’ has dominated theoretical and empirical work: is it balances of power or preponderances of power between states that are more pacific? Seemingly distinct theoretical arguments have grown up around each of the two positions and the bulk of the recent empirical literature has found that it is preponderances of power that are more pacific. This dissertation re-examines the balance-preponderance question at the level of the interstate dyad, and argues that in order to arrive the correct answer we must take state interests into account—something that most empirical work on the subject fails to do. This is surprising because most of the classical literature on power and conflict, particularly work within the Classical Realist tradition, argues that the effect of power on conflict is conditioned by state interests.; Operating at the level of the interstate dyad gains us tremendous empirical leverage with which to re-examine the classical literature on the ‘balance-preponderance’ question. Not only am I able to show that the foundations of the two main schools of thought are remarkably similar, but I am able to demonstrate an important shortcoming in the classical arguments. They do not allow for independent and conditional effects for power and interests on conflict. These shortcomings prompt me to develop a dyadic theory of conflict that does allow for these two key variables to have independent and conditional effects on severe military conflict. The dyadic theory of conflict has four main hypotheses. First, dyadic balances of power are more peaceful than dyadic preponderances of power. Second, dyads with similar interests will experience less conflict than dyads with dissimilar interests. Third, there is a significant conditional relationship between power and interests when determining dyadic conflict. Finally, interests have a greater effect on dyadic conflict than power.; After carefully conceptualizing and operationalizing ‘power’ as relative power and ‘interests’ as dyadic interest similarity, these four hypotheses are tested using descriptive and multivariate statistical techniques on four sets of dependent variables which encompass the definition of severe military conflict: conflict occurrence, conflict severity, conflict timing, and inter-conflict (de)escalation. I find strong support for hypothesis one, and very strong support for hypotheses two, three, and four; even in the face of numerous competing hypotheses. |
