Dictatorships and International Conflict

The Conflict Behavior of Dictatorships

• Inter-state conflict is costly due to economic damage, infrastructure damage, and reduced quality of life.
• Understanding the causes of conflict is important: Why states engage in conflict, why conflict escalates, and why some states are more prone to violence.
• This chapter examines the influence of dictatorship on states' conflict patterns.
  • Literature on conflict behavior of dictatorships.
  • How dictatorships vary in signaling resolve during disputes.
  • Motivations behind foreign policy choices of dictatorships.
  • How military intelligence quality affects foreign policy errors.

The Conflict Behavior of Dictatorships

• Recent literature has disaggregated the category of dictatorship, revealing behavioral differences.

Dictatorial Peace

• Democratic peace theory posits that democracies are unlikely to fight each other.
• Peceny, Beer, and Sanchez-Terry studied whether there is a "dictatorial peace."
  • No war between personalist or military dictatorships since 1945.
  • Single-party regimes are the only homogenous dyad to have gone to war.
  • Single-party dictatorships are less violent toward each other than mixed dyads.
  • Pure forms of dictatorship are more peaceful toward one another than mixed dyads.
• Personalist dictatorships are more likely to engage in military disputes with democracies.
  • Personalist dictatorships have the worst war-fighting capabilities because the dictator weakens military institutions to stay in power.
  • Democracies have the highest war-fighting capabilities due to professionalized armies and civilian control.
  • Democracies target weak personalist regimes.
  • Alternative explanations for democracies' effectiveness in war: higher GDP per capita, larger winning coalitions, or higher domestic audience costs.
  • Counterargument: Some personalist dictatorships have substantial war-fighting capabilities (e.g., Hitler's Germany).

Conflict Propensity

• Reiter and Stam examined the direction of disputes between democracies and personalist dictatorships.
  • Personalist dictatorships are more likely to challenge democracies.
  • Military and single-party dictatorships are also more likely to provoke democracies.
  • Personalist dictatorships fight wars poorly (none won from 1946 to 1992).
• Democracies are less aggressive due to institutional constraints and the need to avoid unpopular policies.
• Dictators are aware that they are unlikely to face punishment for costly actions and can act without restraint.
  • Dictators use military force short of war to push democracies into making concessions and hope to outlast cost-averse democratic opponents.
• Peceny and Butler examined the propensity of dictatorships to initiate or be targets of disputes.
  • Single-party regimes are less likely to initiate disputes or be targeted.
  • Personalist dictatorships are more likely to initiate disputes and be targeted.
  • Single-party dictatorships have large winning coalitions, while personalist dictatorships have small winning coalitions.
  • Leaders with large winning coalitions are less risky due to a higher risk of removal from office.
  • Leaders in conflict fight harder to avoid the costs of defeat, making them targeted less frequently.
  • The size of the winning coalition may not vary systematically across regime type.
• Lai and Slater de-emphasize personalization in dictatorships and focus on institutions for social control.
  • Single-party dictatorships are more capable of fostering institutions for social control than military dictatorships.
  • The party organization deters elite defections and mobilizes the masses, providing the leader with security.
  • Military dictatorships lack such tools and are more likely to initiate disputes to unify society.
  • Military dictatorships are more likely to instigate conflict, regardless of personalization.
  • Focus on the institutional basis for an authoritarian government's control over potential opponents.
  • Lack of institutions in dictatorships exacerbates insecurity.
  • Personalist dictatorships lack provisions for succession, making leaders more anxious about their hold on power.
  • Party institutions are more effective than military institutions at providing leaders with job security.

Domestic Institutions and Signaling

• A key question in international relations is why states escalate conflict with one another.
• The democratic peace theory observes that democracies rarely go to war with one another.
• In the rationalist framework, inter-state conflicts result from a lack of perfect information between states.
  • Disputes escalate because states have uncertainty regarding the intentions of potential adversaries.
  • James Fearon: "International crises occur precisely because state leaders cannot anticipate the outcome, owing to the fact that adversaries have private information about their willingness to fight over foreign policy interests and the incentive to misrepresent it."
  • Conflicts are avoided when states can convey the seriousness of their threats.
• Domestic institutions are key to a state's ability to convey such signals.
  • Inter-state disputes between democracies are rare because democracies have institutions that make it easier for them to signal that they mean what they say.

Audience Costs

• The question is how democratic institutions decrease the uncertainty surrounding an aggressor state's resolve during crises.
• Fearon's audience cost theory: domestic audiences play an important role in determining whether a state is making a credible threat.
  • Leaders are punished by domestic audiences for reneging on public threats.
• Audience costs are the domestic costs that leaders pay for backing down on their commitments during international crises.
  • Leaders are better able to signal their commitment during crises when they face high domestic audience costs for backing down on their threats.

Fearon's Theory

• Fearon models an international crisis as a political "war of attrition."
  • Crises are public events carried out in front of domestic political audiences.
  • Assumptions:
    • States can attack, back down, or escalate the crisis further at any moment.
    • Leaders suffer audience costs that increase as the crisis escalates if the state backs down.
  • International crises are a response to the dilemma posed by two characteristics of international politics:
    • Whether a state leader's willingness to use force is private information.
    • State leaders have incentives to misrepresent this information to get a better deal.
  • Domestic audiences are crucial in generating the costs that enable states to learn.
    • Domestic audiences typically understand the significance of threats and the deployment of troops to "engage the national honor."
    • States with the greatest audience costs are better able to signal their commitment and resolve to carry out threats because they have the greatest price to pay if they do not follow through with their commitments.
• Fearon claims that democracies are better able to generate audience costs than autocracies are.
  • In democracies, elections are a means for citizens to hold leaders accountable for their past actions.
  • Democratic leaders endanger their electoral futures by making bold public statements during international disputes.
  • In dictatorships, there are no ways for citizens to punish leaders for poor choices, as elections are not free and fair.
  • Authoritarian leaders can make bold and provocative statements without paying domestic costs for backing down at the last minute.
• Democratic leaders can generate higher audience costs than authoritarian leaders.
  • Democracies can moderate the security dilemma between them because they can more clearly signal their ambitions.
  • Crises are averted when there is complete information about resolve.
  • The state that would eventually be defeated backs down.
• Studies have corroborated Fearon's claim.
  • When democracies initiate disputes, their targets often back down and conflict is avoided.
  • When dictatorships initiate disputes, their targets often reciprocate the aggressive action and conflict escalates.

Dictatorships and Audience Costs

• Scholars have recently begun to explore how dictatorships behave.
  • Dictatorships vary in institutional arrangements, decision-making procedures, methods of dealing with succession, and ways of reacting to opposition.
  • The international conflict behavior of dictatorships varies markedly from one regime category to the next.
  • Aggregating dictatorships into one category conceals important variations in the ability of these regimes to generate audience costs.
• The audience costs theory depends on the assumption that citizens can punish leaders for poor policy decisions.
  • In dictatorships, there is no routine and easy way for citizens to punish leaders for poor choices.
  • The "domestic audience" in dictatorships is comprised of the elite tier.
  • The ability of dictatorships to generate audience costs depends on how well elites can credibly threaten to overthrow the dictator for poor foreign policy choices.
• Some dictatorships are more capable of signaling their commitment during inter-state disputes than others.
  • Audience cost levels are a function of the elite corps' ability to oust the dictator.
  • Elites are more capable of unseating dictators in military regimes, followed by single-party regimes, and lastly personalist regimes.
  • Military dictatorships should be the most capable of generating audience costs and personalist dictatorships the least.
• Threats issued by military dictatorships tend to be seen as the most credible and threats issued by personalist dictatorships tend to be seen as the least credible.
  • Crises are more likely to escalate when personalist dictatorships initiate them, followed by single party dictatorships, and lastly military dictatorships.
• Weeks argues that scholars underestimate the extent to which dictators can be held accountable by domestic actors and, in turn, generate audience costs.
  • Three key factors that influence a dictatorship's ability to generate audience costs: "whether domestic groups can and will coordinate to punish the leader; whether the audience views backing down negatively; and whether outsiders can observe the possibility of domestic sanctions for backing down."
  • Democracies have no signaling advantages over dictatorships when elites can solve the coordination dilemma entailed in trying to punish the leader, and when this possibility of coordination is viewable to other states.
• Most dictatorships are able to generate audience costs on a level similar to democracies.
  • Democracies have a signaling advantage only when compared to personalist forms of dictatorship.
  • The ability of dictatorships to signal that they mean what they say, varies systematically across regime types.

Foreign Policy in Dictatorships

• Understanding the behavior of dictatorships in the international arena requires identifying who dictators aim to please with their policies.
  • Elites serve as dictators' primary constituents.
  • Dictators must take into account the preferences of elites or risk being deposed.
• The domestic political structure in dictatorships largely influences the relationship between dictators and elites and, as a consequence, their foreign policy behavior.

Poliheuristic Theory

• Poliheuristic theory bridges rational choice and cognitive psychology.
  • Leaders filter through layers of complex information when making decisions using shortcuts, or heuristics.
  • Leaders must resort to such strategies because they are often provided with overwhelming amounts of information prior to making difficult decisions.
• A particularly effective shortcut is the "non-compensatory" decision rule.
  • Leaders rule out those options that are likely to yield negative outcomes on a single dimension of concern.
  • Leaders are more likely to opt for the decision that avoids producing a negative outcome.
• In the poliheuristic literature, the political dimension is always non-compensatory in the foreign policy sphere.
  • "Leaders measure their success in political units, such as public approval ratings, and they are only able to turn their attention to other dimensions-e.g., economic or diplomatic concerns—after their political concerns have been satisfied."
• Assumptions for applying poliheuristic theory to dictatorships:
  • The political dimension in foreign policy making is defined in terms of a leader's interest in staying in power.
  • All leaders are accountable to a group of individuals, who can collectively control the leader's fate.
  • The types of individuals and mechanisms that make up the political dimension varies systematically across regimes.
  • In single-party dictatorships, the dynamic between the leader and the party dominates the political dimension.
  • In military dictatorships, the relationship between the leader and the military takes precedence.
  • In personalist dictatorships, the leader's key concern is relative status among peers.
  • Leaders in dictatorships will make foreign policy choices to deter those individuals who can oust them from doing so, minimizing the likelihood of a negative outcome.
• Kinne offers three case studies to illustrate how these differences impact foreign policy decisions across dictatorships.

Personalist Dictatorship: Iraq's Decision to Stay in Kuwait

• Saddam Hussein chose to stay in Kuwait despite the imminence of a US invasion in 1991.
• In 1990, Hussein suspected that Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates were colluding with the United States by overproducing oil, which would hurt Arab interests.
• Hussein placed troops along the Kuwaiti border in July 1990.
• The US did not clearly convey the extent to which it would act to defend Kuwait.
  • The US ambassador at the time, April Glaspie, told Hussien, "We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait."
  • "Saddam's (mis)perception of American intentions is important in showing that he did not purposely make a foreign policy decision that put his political status in peril."
• Hussein only began to feel threatened when US President George H. W. Bush issued an ultimatum urging Iraq to retreat.
• Hussein chose to stand firm and withstand the massive military and economic aftereffects.
  • Backing down would have significantly hurt Hussein's status among his peers in the Arab world.
  • Hussein's political power depended on his status relative to his peers.
  • Hussein's decision to stay in Kuwait despite the prospect of US military action can be understood in light of his need to maintain his status as a means of political survival.

Military Dictatorship: Pakistan's Choice Not to Send Military Forces to Iraq

• After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, US President George W. Bush was seeking the support of other countries to fight worldwide terrorism.
• Pakistan chose to side with the US.
• Pakistan refused to send troops to assist US efforts in Iraq.
• Previous polls and surveys indicated that public opinion did not influence Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf.
• Musharraf could ignore the masses because they played no role in his survival in office.
• The relationship between Musharraf and the Pakistani military junta is the key to answering this question.
• The military had long played a dominant role in Pakistan and depended a great deal on the aid from the US.
  • From 2001 to mid-2003 alone, the US gave over $$350 million in aid to Pakistan's military.
• Musharraf was aiming to please the military elite.
• Many Islamist hardliners exist within the Pakistani military elite.
• Sending troops to Iraq would create unrest among important factions of the Pakistani military, which would certainly raise potential threats to Musharraf's political survival.

Single-party Dictatorship: Dramatic Changes in Foreign Policy under Gorbachev

• The foreign policy of the Soviet Union underwent dramatic changes during the 1980s.
• Examples include pursuing rapprochement with China, failing to decisively intervene in East European revolutions, and generally taking a more conciliatory stance toward the West.
• The major shift in foreign policy was due to the central ideological interests of the Communist Party.
  • Gorbachev had to ensure that his policies were condoned by the Communist Party machine.
• At the time, the Soviet Union was in the throes of a policy vacuum.
  • The realization emerged that the prevailing [Soviet] worldview was itself an obstacle to the pursuit of true Soviet national interests, and was in fact, inherently linked to a dangerous and unproductive foreign policy.
• The ideology the regime had thus far relied on began to be questioned seriously, such that fresh ideas became a key means for establishing alliances within the party elite.
• Traditionalists were slowly excluded from decision making, opening up an opportunity for new voices to shape the party's foreign policy agenda.
• Gorbachev could not have reverted to established Soviet tradition because such an action would likely have incited an unfavorable response from the party leaders.
• Dictators do not formulate their foreign policy decisions in a black hole.
• All leaders must act in ways to please their constituents.
• The nature of this constituent group varies systematically across regime types.

Military Intelligence in Dictatorships

• High quality military intelligence is critical to a state's ability to formulate sound foreign policy.
• To make good foreign policy choices, states must be able to gauge the intentions and capabilities of their adversaries, as well as what their own capabilities are.
• The discussion covers the quality of military intelligence across dictatorships.
  • How domestic institutions influence the caliber of information channels.
  • The likelihood for dictatorships to make foreign policy errors.
  • Background information on military intelligence more generally.

Military Intelligence

• Multiple types of intelligence are important for maintaining security:
  • Covert action is used to directly influence political events in a foreign state.
  • Counter intelligence is geared toward protecting one's own intelligence apparatus from foreign threats or penetration.
  • Strategic intelligence is concerned with the "policies, cultural tendencies, thinking processes, and domestic vulnerabilities" of foreign states.
  • Tactical intelligence pertains to the "capabilities, limitations, vulnerabilities or reactions of a hostile force-either air or surface"-required to carry out tactical operations.
  • Actionable intelligence entails "awareness of the target, timing, and type of attacks being planned by an enemy."

Background on Military Intelligence

• Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, the importance of high-quality military intelligence gained prominence in policy circles.
• A weak intelligence apparatus can be very costly for states.
• Accurate information about the intentions of a state's adversaries must be passed on to the state's leader, who must ultimately determine the appropriate course of action.
• Without high quality intelligence, leaders will be likely to commit foreign policy errors.
• Good communication between intelligence officers and policymakers is important.
• Collected information must pass through numerous bottlenecks.
• Power struggles among different agencies or groups may lead to impeded coordination or dangerously limit the sharing of information.
• Subordinates often distort the truth in order to please superiors.
• Individuals often favor reassuring data rather than negative information, which typically have to pass through vigorous tests to be believed.
• Intelligence personnel are often "goaded into supplying intelligence" that suits particular policies and ignoring intelligence that does not.
• Gathering accurate intelligence is an extraordinarily complex process that requires efficiency at multiple levels, from low-level intelligence operatives to the leader's top security advisers.

The Quality of Intelligence in Dictatorships

• In dictatorships, leaders receive sensitive information from the same group that can overthrow them: members of their elite advisory group.
• The likelihood that elites will do so varies systematically across dictatorships.
• The quality of military intelligence dictators receive is directly related to the extent to which leaders control who will comprise their elite advisory group.
  • Greater control over elite selection lowers the caliber of intelligence provided to dictators.
    • When dictators are given the choice, they will choose to surround themselves with low-skilled individuals who, though less likely to overthrow them, are also less competent.
    • When elites know that the dictator can easily fire them, they will only pass on to the dictator information that he wants to hear, out of fear of reprisal.
    • When dictators control the selection of their elite advisers, "they are more likely to end up surrounded by 'yes men': individuals who say whatever the dictator wants to hear in order to stay in his good favor."
• Personalist dictators have a greater say in the selection of their elite advisory group than single-party or military dictators do.
  • Because personalist dictators have greater control over membership to their elite advisory group than their counterparts in single-party and military dictatorships, they are more likely to receive low quality intelligence and commit foreign policy errors.

Valuing Loyalty over Competence in Personalist Dictatorships

• When dictators are given the choice, they will select elites to their support group who are unlikely to overthrow them; loyalty is valued over competence.
• Personalist dictators usually fire those advisers who they distrust and promote those individuals who are least likely to oust them.
• In the Central African Republic, Jean-Bédel Bokassa's choice of advisers was typically based on loyalty not merit.
• Idi Amin of Uganda often chose illiterate advisers, as he resented any individuals who were better educated.
• Loyalty trumped competence for Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, as well.
• Muammar al-Gaddafi's inner circle is also made up of cronies and family members, rather than individuals with proven expertise.
  • Gaddafi created a chain of command that was intentionally confusing, ensuring ambitious underlings are kept in check by being played off one another.

The Threat of Purges in Personalist Dictatorships

• Dictators who control the selection of elites also control their fates.
• In the Philippines under Ferdinand Marcos, few members of the cabinet would express concerns to him about his excesses.
• In Uganda, anyone who doubted Amin's facts was personally beat up.
• In the Central African Republic's Bokassa surrounded himself with individuals who worshipped him and were willing to "nurture his delusions of grandeur."
• The threat of being purged induces elites to only relay to the dictator information that the dictator wants to hear.

Poor Intelligence in Personalist Dictatorships

• In comparison to military and single-party dictatorships, personalist dictators have near total control of who will comprise their elite advisory group.
• Those who surround them give them endless flattery and positive feedback, such that personalist dictators "frequently engage in self-delusional fantasies."
• Personalist dictators are often isolated from reality, forcing them to make foreign policy decisions in a vacuum.
• Because personalist dictators receive poor quality intelligence, they are more likely to make foreign policy errors.

Amin of Uganda

• Amin got rid of advisory bodies and formal meetings to avoid feeling uncomfortable, as he had difficulty understanding complex matters.
• Amin used the Kagera invasion of Tanzania in 1978 as a means to placate some of his troops that were problematic to his control.
• Amin made multiple miscalculations and had trouble gauging the resolve and capabilities of Tanzania.

Mobutu of Zaire

• Joseph Mobutu of Zaire (today's Democratic Republic of Congo) was particularly threatened by his elite advisers, such that he set in place a number of provisions to ensure that their competence was limited.
• The military under Mobutu had "legendary indiscipline" and demonstrated a "repeated incapacity" to "defeat even small and poorly armed foes."
• Mobutu was never given accurate information regarding his own capabilities nor those of his enemies.
• Mobutu pursued multiple reckless military ventures, such as invading Angola in 1975 and supporting Hutu perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide in 1994.
• Mobutu's attack on the Tutsis led to the formation of a coalition helmed by Laurent-Desire Kabila known as the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of the Congo (Alliance des Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Congo-Zaïre) (AFDL).
• Poor intelligence can have dire consequences for personalist dictators.
• Compared to single-party dictatorships, military dictatorships, and democracies, personalist dictatorships are the most likely to exhibit uncertainty in their responses to threats and commit foreign policy errors.

Summary and Conclusion

• International relations scholars have long emphasized the tight relationship between domestic institutions and conflict behavior - a reflection of a two-level game between internal and external pressures.
  *Leaders' decisions in the international arena are intricately tied to the domestic constraints that they face at home.
• Key areas explored:
  • International conflict patterns based on regime type.
  • Signaling ability during inter-state disputes.
  • Factors underlying foreign policy decisions.
  • Quality of military intelligence and its effects on foreign policy errors.
• Insights:
  • Institutional arrangements in dictatorships have predictable foreign policy consequences.
  • Differentiating authoritarian regime structures improves understanding dictatorships' international actions.

Review Questions

• Is there a "dictatorial peace"?
• What trends have emerged regarding the conflict propensity of dictatorships?
• What are audience costs? How do dictatorships differ in their ability to generate audience costs and why?
• What does poliheuristic theory predict about the foreign policy decisions of dictators? What factors motivate leaders' foreign policy choices?
• Why is it difficult to gain accurate military intelligence in general? How and why do dictatorships differ in the quality of their military intelligence?

Key Points

• Some dictatorships are more peaceful towards one another than others.
• Dictatorships differ in their ability to generate audience costs. Personalist dictatorships are the least capable of generating audience costs, making them more likely to be participants in escalatory inter-state conflicts.
• The foreign policy decisions of dictators are often driven by the groups that leaders are trying to please.
• The quality of military intelligence varies across dictatorships. It is poorer in personalist dictatorships, making them more prone to foreign policy errors.