Kantian Peace Elements, Authoritarian Regime Resilience, and International Peace

Transcription

1 Kantian Peace Elements, Authoritarian Regime Resilience, and International Peace Chienwu Alex Hsueh (Assistant Professor, Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies, National Chengchi University, Taiwan) Abstract The Kantian peace theory argues that trade, international organizations (IO), and democracy are the three pillars to reduce conflict and achieve peace. However, although many studies demonstrate that market-opening and IO-participating can facilitate democratization in some authoritarian countries, in the other authoritarian countries the leaders can also consolidate their authoritarian rules by taking advantage of market-opening and IO-participating. Besides, I also find that, authoritarian leaders are more likely to consolidate their regimes if they avoid fighting with democratic countries. I argue that the key is whether the leaders in authoritarian regimes are able to make a good use of these two policy tools to enhance their domestic and international legitimacy and solve their commitment problem when dealing with their domestic oppositions. Since it has been confirmed that the democratic peace is a strictly dyadic phenomenon, that is, conflicts mlainly occur between a democracy and a nondemocracy, as a consequence, the democratic peace effect guarantees that the Kantian peace could never been achieved if leaders in authoritarian countries are able to make a good use of the three policy tools (market-opening, IO-participating, and not to fight with democracy) to consolidate their nondemocratic regimes. Therefore, there is a good reason to doubt that globalization will lead to peace. Empirical evidence from 1950 to 2001 confirms my argument. Key Words: Kantian Peace; Democratic Peace; Democracy; Trade; International Organizations; Militarized Interstate Dispute 1

2 Introduction The Kantian peace theory and the democratic peace theory are the two most important liberal peace theories in contemporary international relations studies. The Kantian peace theory, also called the triangulating peace, 1 is originally derived from the philosopher Emmanuel Kant s article in 1795, in which he presented three definitive articles for perpetual peace among states of republicanism, federation of states, and hospitality. In modern terms, these three factors refer to democracy, international organizations (IGOs), and economic interdependence, respectively. These three factors can not only promote peace individually but also create a virtuous circle collectively to form a zone of peace among states. The long stable peace among the European Union countries after the end of World War II is a good example to illustrate the Kantian peace. Besides the Kantian peace theory, the democratic peace theory is another prominent liberal peace theory. Democratic peace theory argues that democracies never or seldom fight with democracies, depending on how strictly scholars define democracy. Given the fact that so far there is not a single war takes place between consolidated democratic countries, democratic peace theory is almost as robust as the famous laws in the social science such as the iron law of oligarchy 2 and the Duverger s law. 3 Although there are many competing explanations that put into doubt whether it is democracy or it is other more important factors related to democracy that lead to peace, 4 democratic peace theory holds stably by the fact that consolidated democracies never fight with each other despite their differences. Although there is a huge literature and empirical studies that confirm again and again the substantive effect of the two liberal peace theories, none of them have considered that whether these two theories can work simultaneously. Intuitively, most 1 John R. Oneal and Bruce Russett, Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations (W. W. Norton & Company, 2001). 2 Alexander C. Tan, The Impacts of Party Membership Size: A Cross National Analysis, The Journal of Politics 60, no. 1 (1998): William Roberts Clark and Matt Golder, Rehabilitating Duverger s Theory Testing the Mechanical and Strategic Modifying Effects of Electoral Laws, Comparative Political Studies 39, no. 6 (August 1, 2006): For example, Gartzke argues that peace between democracies results from common interest rather than from democratic institutions; Mousseau argues that it is capitalist peace rather than democratic peace; and Hegre argues that there is a confounding variable the change of people s idea that simultaneously leads to democracy and peace. Refer to Erik Gartzke, Kant We All Just Get Along? Opportunity, Willingness, and the Origins of the Democratic Peace, American Journal of Political Science 42, no. 1 (January 1, 1998): 1 27; Michael Mousseau, The Social Market Roots of Democratic Peace, International Security 33, no. 4 (2009): 52 86; Michael Mousseau, The Democratic Peace Unraveled: It s the Economy, International Studies Quarterly 57, no. 1 (2013): ; Håvard Hegre, Democracy and Armed Conflict, Journal of Peace Research 51, no. 2 (March 1, 2014):

3 will take it for granted that these two peace theories should be able to work together or should be compatible since many empirical findings have demonstrated that market opening and IO participating can facilitate democratization in nondemocratic countries. According to this logic, nondemocratic countries that have more opened market and participate in more IGOs are more likely to be democratized, and the more democracies around the world, the less likely that militarized conflict will happen since democracies seldom use force against each other. Therefore, these two peace theories should be compatible in working toward the same direction to achieve the world peace. However, recent studies about authoritarian regime 5 resilience may have put this logic into doubt. Different from the traditional wisdom that trade and IGOs facilitate democratization, more and more empirical studies have demonstrated that if leaders in authoritarian regimes are able to make good use of trade and IGOs to solve their ruling legitimacy problems, the functions of trade and IGOs can actually help authoritarian regime survive. Thus, these two pillars of the Kantian peace actually hinder democratization when more and more authoritarian leaders learn how to take advantage of them. Given the fact that democratic peace has been verified as a strictly dyadic phenomenon and that militarized conflicts mainly occur between a democracy and a nondemocracy, then the promotion of the Kantian peace elements may actually have an unintended consequence, that is, it increases authoritarian regime resilience and therefore makes the conflicts between democracies and autocracies never end due to the longstanding confrontation between both sides. Therefore, the two most important peace theories of contemporary international relations studies may not able to be achieved simultaneously due to their inherent logical paradox. This finding strongly suggests that we have to rethink the peacebuilding policies that the Western democracies prefer to use based on the implication derived from the Kantian peace and the democratic peace theories. To verify my argument, this paper is structured as follows. In the second and the third section I first discuss how the Kantian elements promote peace and how authoritarian regimes survive based on empirical studies. Then, in the end of the third section I will present the main argument of this paper that dictatorships can actually make a good use of the Kantian elements to solve their legitimacy problems and achieve authoritarian regime resilience. The key is that by opening their market, participating in IGOs, and avoiding from being security threat to the Western democracies, dictatorships can increase their ability of repression and co-optation domestically and decrease their vulnerability of international interpenetration 5 In this paper I use non democracies, authoritarian regimes, and dictatorships interchangeably. 3

4 internationally. Given the fact that democratic peace is a strictly dyadic phenomenon, the promotion of the Kantian peace elements may actually make the world peace never be achieved. I test the argument in the fourth section with empirical data of all the nondemocratic countries from 1950 to In the last section, I discuss the theoretical implications of my finding on globalization and world peace as the conclusion. How the Kantian Elements Promote Peace In this section I discuss how the Kantian elements promote peace as well as democratization in order to illustrate why many scholars and policy makers are optimistic in building world peace with the promotion of democracy, trade, and IGOs. The Three Pillars of the Kantian Peace The first pillar of the Kantian peace is democracy, which also called the democratic peace theory in contemporary international relations studies. As mentioned before, democratic peace theory states that democracies do not or seldom use force against each other. Among the three Kantian peace elements, the pacifying effect of democracy is the most stable compared to trade and IGOs, although scholars have different opinions about the causal mechanisms that link democracy to peace. The most prominent arguments at least include 1) because democracies shared similar norms and institutional constraints; 6 2) because democracies have more trade and alliance relationships; 7 3) because the opposition parties within democratic countries send credible signals about the governments resolve; 8 4) because democracies have large selectorate and winning coalition; 9 5) because democracies have more educated people and elites whose cost of losing life is huge; 10 6) because democracies create an international environment in favor of conflict resolution, 11 etc. In spite of which 6 Zeev Maoz and Bruce Russett, Normative and Structural Causes of Democratic Peace, , The American Political Science Review 87, no. 3 (1993): Edward D. Mansfield, Helen V. Milner, and B. Peter Rosendorff, Why Democracies Cooperate More: Electoral Control and International Trade Agreements, International Organization 56, no. 3 (July 1, 2002): ; John Conybeare and Dong Hun Kim, Democracy, Institutionalization, and Corporate Alliances, Journal of Conflict Resolution 54, no. 5 (October 1, 2010): Kenneth A. Schultz, Do Democratic Institutions Constrain or Inform? Contrasting Two Institutional Perspectives on Democracy and War, International Organization 53, no. 2 (April 1, 1999): ; Kenneth A. Schultz, Democracy and Coercive Diplomacy (Cambridge U.K. ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 9 Bruce Bueno de Mesquita et al., The Logic of Political Survival (The MIT Press, 2003). 10 Michael R. Tomz and Jessica L. P. Weeks, Public Opinion and the Democratic Peace, American Political Science Review 107, no. 4 (November 2013): ; Devin K. Joshi, J. S. Maloy, and Timothy M. Peterson, Popular vs. Elite Democratic Structures and International Peace, Journal of Peace Research 52, no. 4 (July 1, 2015): Sara McLaughlin Mitchell, A Kantian System? Democracy and Third Party Conflict Resolution, American Journal of Political Science 46, no. 4 (2002):

5 causal mechanism is the most influential, the fact that consolidated democracies never fight with each other is an undeniable historical reality. However, theoretical and empirical findings about the democratic peace phenomenon suggest that there are two critical point of the democratic peace theory we have to notice here. First, democratic peace is a strictly dyadic phenomenon, that is, the pacifying effect of democracy only works when both sides are democracies, and it does not work between a democracy and a nondemocracy. 12 And, second, militarized international conflicts mainly occur between a democracy and a nondemocracy, 13 which means that international conflicts largely result from the disputes between democracies and non-democracies. The second pillar of the Kantian peace is similar to, in a contemporary term, the liberal commercial peace. Liberal commercial peace highlights the pacifying effect of economic interdependence, mainly international trade. For the liberal commercial peace scholars, trade can reduce the probability of conflict through at least three causal mechanisms. First, the constraint arguments states that as interdependence increase, the cost of military conflict also increase due to the loss of valuable assets and trade flows. Second, the informational arguments claim that interdependence enables states to signal more efficiently their true level of resolve through threatening to use costly economic sanctions, therefore reducing the likelihood of conflict resulting from miscalculating each other s resolves. Third, the transformative arguments posit that interdependence can reduce the probability of conflict by reshaping the underlying states interests and preferences, either through changing the states core international objectives or through changing the balance of domestic coalitions. Due to these three mechanisms, all things being equal, dyadically, the probability of international conflict should decrease with the increase of trade. International organizations are the third pillar of the Kantian peace. According to literature, IGOs can promote peace because they have the following functions. First, IGOs as international regimes can directly restrain and punish those who break the peace, mediate among conflicting parties, reduce conflicts resulting from uncertainty by conveying information, expand states conception of their self-interest to be more inclusive and longer term, socialize member states and shape norms, and generate narratives of mutual identification. 14 All these functions are positive to conflict 12 Bueno de Mesquita et al., The Logic of Political Survival; Stephen L. Quackenbush and Michael Rudy, Evaluating the Monadic Democratic Peace, Conflict Management and Peace Science 26, no. 3 (July 1, 2009): Mark Peceny, Caroline C. Beer, and Shannon Sanchez Terry, Dictatorial Peace?, The American Political Science Review 96, no. 1 (March 1, 2002): 15 26; Bueno de Mesquita et al., The Logic of Political Survival. 14 John R. Oneal and Bruce Russett, Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000),

6 resolution and friendship construction. Second, some special IGOs such as regional trade agreements (RTAs) and preferential trade agreements (PTAs) have more specified functions that also reduce the probability of conflict. Aside from all the functions that IGOs have, RTAs and PTAs can further strengthen the importance of trade and reputation on states decision making process, therefore increasing the threshold of using force. 15 Third, IGOs also reduce the probability of conflict by facilitating bargaining. As Boehmer et al. argued, states often disagree and power is omnipresent, but conflict among nations results more often in diplomatic bargains than in violent contests. Diplomacy fails and warfare occasionally ensues when states differ in their beliefs about power and interest. Third parties, such as IGOs, can most effectively foster peace by credibly informing competitors or by intervening in ways that carefully prevent participants from converting new strategic conditions into different, more extractive demands. 16 Because of the above functions, IGOs become one of the strongest peace-building factors. Overall, democracy, trade, and IGOs promote peace whether through individually influencing states behavior or through collectively forming a virtuous circle that reinforce each other, which is the Kantian peace. That is the reason why many scholars are optimistic about promoting world peace with the diffusion of these three Kantian elements. The fact that the United States had high incentive to establish democratic governments, promote economic liberalization, and expand IGO memberships in the third world since the ending of the Cold War is also motivated by the popular Kantian peace theories. 17 Besides, there are more good news, that is, not only democracies tend to have more trade and share more IGO memberships, trade and IGO membership also facilitate democratization. Trade, IGOs, and Democratization Empirical studies have demonstrated that, generally speaking, trade and IGOs can help promote democratization in nondemocratic countries. In literature, many argued that trade and other economic ties facilitate democratization for several reasons, and most empirical findings confirmed that trade 15 Edward D. Mansfield, Jon C. Pevehouse, and David H. Bearce, Preferential Trading Arrangements and Military Disputes, Security Studies 9, no. 1 2 (September 1, 1999): ; David H. Bearce, Grasping the Commercial Institutional Peace, International Studies Quarterly 47, no. 3 (September 1, 2003): ; Emilie M. Hafner Burton and Alexander H. Montgomery, Power or Plenty: How Do International Trade Institutions Affect Economic Sanctions?, The Journal of Conflict Resolution 52, no. 2 (April 1, 2008): Cited from page 2 in Charles Boehmer, Erik Gartzke, and Timothy Nordstrom, Do Intergovernmental Organizations Promote Peace?, World Politics 57, no. 1 (October 1, 2004): Stephen E. Ambrose, Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938, ed. Douglas G. Brinkley, 9th Revised edition (New York: Penguin, 2010). 6

7 and other economic ties have a positive effect on democratization in general. The reasons that trade and other economic ties can promote democratization include 1) they promote economic development; 2) they increase the demand of international business for democracy; 3) they reduce the incentives of authoritarian leaders to cling to power; 4) they reduce information costs, increasing contacts with other democracies and making the pro-democracy international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) more effective; 5) they push the authoritarian states to decentralize power; 6) they promote domestic institutions that support democracy; and, 7) they intensify the diffusion of democratic ideas. 18 Generally speaking, the liberal are optimistic about the democratizing effect of trade. Not only trade promotes democratization, empirical findings in general also support the liberal statement that IGOs promote democratization. This is due to the following functions of IGOs. Pevehouse argue that, (f)irst, pressures (both diplomatic and economic) generated from these organizations can, in combination with internal forces, compel autocratic regimes to liberalize. Second, IO membership can lead to the acceptance of liberalization by certain elite groups, as it can lower the risks that these groups face during the democratization process. This acceptance of liberalization-labeled acquiescence-can occur in two distinct ways: through a handtying process or through the socialization of domestic elites. 19 A further research which distinguished the difference between the prevention of autocratic reversals and the promotion of democratic consolidation also confirms that, international organizations cannot directly prevent autocratic reversals in nonconsolidated democracies, but they did, through capacity building, increase the likelihood that a transitional democracy consolidates. 20 So far we have seen that the liberal arguments hold a very optimistic view about the world peace in the future. If trade, IGOs, and democracy can reduce the probability of conflict, and if trade and IGOs can facilitate democratization, then what we should expect about the future is that the world will become more and more 18 For a more detailed review of the relationship between trade and other economic ties with democratization, refer to the literature review in Quan Li and Rafael Reuveny, Economic Globalization and Democracy: An Empirical Analysis, British Journal of Political Science 33, no. 1 (January 1, 2003): Cited from page 519 to 520 in Jon C. Pevehouse, Democracy from the Outside In? International Organizations and Democratization, International Organization 56, no. 3 (July 1, 2002): See also Jon C. Pevehouse, Democracy from Above: Regional Organizations and Democratization (Cambridge University Press, 2005). 20 Paul Poast and Johannes Urpelainen, How International Organizations Support Democratization: Preventing Authoritarian Reversals or Promoting Consolidation?, World Politics 67, no. 1 (January 2015): , doi: /s

8 peaceful with the diffusion of trade, IGOs, and democracies. Is it the case? The Puzzle: Is the World More Peaceful with the Diffusion of the Kantian Peace Elements The international diffusion of liberalism the increase of trade, IGOs, and democracies has been a prominent phenomenon since the 1970s with the spread of political democratization and economic liberalization. 21 According to the prediction of the liberal theories of international relations, this diffusion should lead to a more peaceful world due to the strong pacifying effect of democracy, trade, and international regimes. Is the world really getting more peaceful with the increase of the liberal elements? To answer this question, I plot the number of each of the liberal elements as well as the number of wars and militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) in Figure 1, Figure 2, and Figure 3, respectively. Figure 1, Figure 2, and Figure 3 collectively demonstrate that, although the number of all the liberal elements democracies, trade flows, and IGOs keep increasing since the end of WWI, the number of wars or MIDs do not decrease correspondingly, not to mention that the number of MIDs reached its second peak in year 2000 when the number of all the liberal elements reached their peak Beth A. Simmons, Frank Dobbin, and Geoffrey Garrett, Introduction: The International Diffusion of Liberalism, International Organization 60, no. 4 (2006): Throughout this paper, I define countries regime type according to the definition of the Polity IV dataset. The Polity IV dataset defines a state as democracy if its polity score is >=6, anocracy if its polity score is 5~5, and autocracy if <= 6. Data of wars and MIDs is from the Correlates of War (COW) Website: sets/cow war. 8

9 Number of Democracies Year Number of Democracies Number of MIDs Number of Wars Figure 1 Number of Democracies, MIDs, and Wars, 1950~2001 9

10 Amount of Trade Flows (in billion USD) Year Amount of Trade Flows Number of MIDs Number of Wars Figure 2 Number of Trade Flows, MIDs, and Wars, 1950~

11 Number of IGOs year Number of IGOs Number of MIDs Number of Wars Figure 3 Number of IGOs, MIDs, and Wars, 1950~

12 The above three figures reveal a puzzle that may beset the liberal school of international relations studies, that is, neither the number of wars nor the number of MIDs had decreased as the increase of democracies, trade flows, and IGOs. In other words, the increase of the Kantian peace elements, actually does not help in reducing the number of conflicts around the world. This suggests that the diffusion of the Kantian peace elements only makes the world more peaceful in certain regions such as the Western democracies. Then, the next question is, why the diffusion of the Kantian peace elements does not work in making the world more peaceful? 23 If we look at where the wars and MIDs come from, the reason that the diffusion of the liberal elements do not reduce the number of conflict emerges. Table 1 and Table 2 tabulate the number of wars and MIDs occurred in different regime type combinations. Autocratic dyad means that both sides are autocratic countries, mixed dyad means that the conflict is between a democracy and an autocracy, and democratic dyad means that both sides are democratic countries. Table 1 Wars occurred in different dyad combinations, 1950~2001 Autocratic Dyad Mixed Dyad Democratic Dyad Total 63 (25%) 180 (70%) 13 (5%) 256 Table 2 MIDs occurred in different dyad combinations, 1950~2001 Autocratic Dyad Mixed Dyad Democratic Dyad Total 305 (31%) 519 (52%) 168 (17%) 992 The information in Table 1 and Table 2 suggest that, most of the international conflicts happened between autocratic dyads and mixed dyads, especially the latter one. More than 70% of wars and 50% of MIDs take place between democracies and autocracies. Thus, how to make the world more peaceful should largely hinge on how 23 Recent rebuttals about the pacifying effect of the Kantian peace elements also show that, after correct for methodology issues such as spatial correlation or belligerent outliers, trade and IGOs largely lose their substantive effect on conflict restraining. See Kristian Skrede Gleditsch and Michael D. Ward, Diffusion and the International Context of Democratization, International Organization 60, no. 4 (2006): ; Michael D. Ward, Randolph M. Siverson, and Xun Cao, Disputes, Democracies, and Dependencies: A Reexamination of the Kantian Peace, American Journal of Political Science 51, no. 3 (July 1, 2007):

13 to reduce the conflicts between democracies and autocracies. Then, the question is, why the spread of trade and IGOs do not achieve the following functions that the literature suggested to have democratizing authoritarian regimes? In the next section, I will propose my argument to explain for this puzzling phenomenon. In short, I argue that dictatorships have learned how to make good use of marketopening and IO-participating to consolidate their rules, with the help of their geographical location. As a consequence, the Kantian peace elements actually help authoritarian regime resilience, thus the international conflicts between democracies and autocracies would never disappear. How Authoritarian Regimes Survive All political regimes, democracies or non-democracies, have the problem of ruling legitimacy. For leaders in democracies, this legitimacy problem is easier to solve since democratic elections per se are a source of ruling legitimacy. However, in non-democracies, how to establish ruling legitimacy is a big problem to the leaders, especially when they are not powerful enough to repress. According to literature, leaders in non-democracies face similar problems when trying to consolidate their holding on power: domestically, they have to overcome the legitimacy and commitment problems. Besides, they also have to solve the everyday problems in the society to show they are capable of ruling; internationally, they have to avoid international pressures of the democratization promotion foreign policies implemented by the Western democracies. In this section, I discuss how the dictatorships achieve their regime resilience by dealing with all of the domestic and international challenges, through making good use of the Kantian elements. Thus, the incompatibility of these two peace theories emerge. Solving Commitment Problems Dictatorships come up to power without a procedure of public acceptance, therefore, all dictatorships maintain power through a combination of two main strategies: repression and co-optation 24 because they face two problems of governance: one the one hand, they have to thwart rebellion, and on the other, they have to obtain cooperation. 25 As a consequence, their autocratic regime resilience hinges on their performance on doing the right things that can improve their ability of repression and co-optation Ronald Wintrobe, The Political Economy of Dictatorship (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 25 Jennifer Gandhi, Political Institutions under Dictatorship (Cambridge University Press, 2008). 26 Erica Frantz and Andrea Kendall Taylor, A Dictator s Toolkit Understanding How Co Optation 13

14 Although repression remains one of dictatorships most important tools to achieve regime resilience, it is more and more difficult for dictatorships to use large-scale repression publicly without internal or external pressures given the advance of communication technology. If repression is not possible or becomes too expensive a choice, dictatorships will choose to adopt co-optation policies. Co-optation policies include disbursement of rents, policy compromises such as human rights, and the establishment of formal power-sharing institutions such as parliament, etc., by which the opposition parties can be included into policy-making process or get some benefits in exchange for their acquiescence. When dictatorships try to make a concession and co-opt with opposition parties, they face a problem of making a credible commitment. For opposition parties, assuming the concessions that the dictatorships made are satisfying to the opposition parties given the relative power between the former and the latter, if the concession the government made is credible, then the best response for the opposition parties is to take it before they lose the power to resist against the government; however, if the concession the government made is not credible, then the best response for the opposition parties is to keep resisting against the government before they lose the ability of fighting with it. Hence, whether the government can make its commitments credible is the key of successful co-optation. Then, the question becomes that how dictatorships can make credible commitments to opposition parties when making concessions in order to exchange for regime resilience. Ironically, authoritarian governments can make their commitments credible through the use of market opening and IGOs participating, the two Kantian elements that traditionally regarded as helpful for democratization. Authoritarian governments can increase their credibility of making commitment by opening their domestic markets when they are demanded to take economic liberalization reforms by the opposition parties. For example, Mansfield and Milner demonstrate that, leaders want to sign PTAs because by doing so they can avoid to be blamed for bad economic performance, since they can argue that the economic recession is caused by international market rather than their failed economic policies. 27 Besides, by signing PTAs leaders can also demonstrate that they do not patronize certain industries. 28 Authoritarian governments can also increase their credibility of making commitment by participating in IGOs when they are demanded to improve their Affects Repression in Autocracies, Journal of Peace Research 51, no. 3 (May 1, 2014): Edward D. Mansfield and Helen V. Milner, Votes, Vetoes, and the Political Economy of International Trade Agreements (Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2012). 28 Edward D. Mansfield, The Proliferation of Preferential Trading Arrangements, The Journal of Conflict Resolution 42, no. 5 (October 1, 1998):

15 human rights, civil rights, labor and environmental standards, etc. For instance, Mansfield and Pevehouse argue that, (d)emocratizing countries are likely to enter IOs because leaders have difficulty credibly committing to sustain liberal reforms and the consolidation of democracy. Chief executives often have an incentive to solidify their position during democratic transitions by rolling back political liberalization. Entering an IO can help leaders in transitional states credibly commit to carry out democratic reforms, especially if the organization is composed primarily of democratic members. 29 Moravcsik demonstrates that, the primary proponents of reciprocally binding human rights obligations were the governments of newly established democracies or dictatorships, because by signing human right treaties the benefits of reducing future political uncertainty outweigh the sovereignty costs of membership. 30 In sum, by opening their market and join IGOs, dictatorships can solve their commitment problems when forced to make concessions and thus improve their autocratic resilience. Solving Social Problems and Increasing Performance Legitimacy Dictatorships can also get legitimacy by showing that they have the ability to govern and solve social problems, and they can do so by making good use of the Kantian peace elements. The prevalent social problems in dictatorships include poverty and corruption. To solve the poverty problem, dictatorships have to show that they are able to improve people s life, or the poverty problem can easily be manipulated by their challengers as a slogan to persuade people that the incumbents are no longer able to govern the country. To solve the corruption problem, dictatorships have to at least show that people can get things done after paying a reasonable degree of bribe. 31 Unfortunately, market opening and international-regime participating, the two Kantian elements, can actually help authoritarian leaders to 29 Edward D. Mansfield and Jon C. Pevehouse, Democratization and International Organizations, International Organization 60, no. 1 (January 1, 2006): Andrew Moravcsik, The Origins of Human Rights Regimes: Democratic Delegation in Postwar Europe, International Organization 54, no. 2 (2000): Although the selectorate theory has pointed out that good performance is bad politic in small willing coalition countries, dictatorships still have to solve the poverty and corruption problems to some degree through certain policy changes in order to resist the challenge from their political enemies. For selectorate theory, refer to Bueno de Mesquita et al., The Logic of Political Survival; Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith, The Dictator s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior Is Almost Always Good Politics (New York: PublicAffairs, 2011); for the possible policy changes the dictatorships may use, refer to William J. Dobson, The Dictator s Learning Curve: Inside the Global Battle for Democracy (New York, NY: Doubleday, 2012); Martin K. Dimitrov, ed., Why Communism Did Not Collapse: Understanding Authoritarian Regime Resilience in Asia and Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 15

16 achieve these two goals. Authoritarian leaders can solve the poverty problem simply by opening their market. For example, Baker demonstrated that in Latin America in the 1980s when most of the countries are not democracies, the reason that those countries well support trade liberalization is due to the fact that citizens recognize and appreciate the lower price, increased variety, and higher quality of goods that have come in the wake of trade liberalization; 32 Wu demonstrated that labor-abundant dictatorships can neutralize democratization threats initiated by rising inequality by opening the domestic market. 33 In sum, by market opening, dictatorships can solve the poverty problem in the society through providing cheaper goods and higher income, thus neutralize the probability that the poverty problem becomes a coup threat or a democratization threat to their authoritarian regime. Authoritarian leaders can solve the corruption problem by participating in IGOs for at least the following reasons. First, as Mansfield and Milner s argument I mentioned above, by signing PTAs and opening their market, leaders can show to the people that they have handed over their discretion power of patronizing certain industries. 34 Second, by joining IGOs, autocratic leaders can also show to the people that they are not as corrupted as previous leaders because they are under supervision by an impartial third party such as the Transparency International. Third, by joining IGOs that set up labor and environmental standards, authoritarian leaders can show to the people that they have matched international regulations. For example, Hafner- Burton finds that PTAs can help improve human right in autocracies by tying material benefits of integration to compliance with human rights. 35 Hathaway also find that, many authoritarian countries actually prefer to sign human right treaties. The reason is because of the fact that, he argues, when countries are rewarded for positions rather than effects as they are when monitoring and enforcement of treaties are minimal and external pressure to conform to treaty norms is high governments can take positions that they do not honor, and benefit from doing so. 36 Hence, participating in IGOs actually helps authoritarian leaders to strengthen their regime resilience. 32 Andy Baker, Why Is Trade Reform So Popular in Latin America?: A Consumption Based Theory of Trade Policy Preferences, World Politics 55, no. 3 (April 2003): Wen Chin Wu, When Do Dictators Decide to Liberalize Trade Regimes? Inequality and Trade Openness in Authoritarian Countries, International Studies Quarterly 59, no. 4 (December 1, 2015): Mansfield and Milner, Votes, Vetoes, and the Political Economy of International Trade Agreements. 35 Emilie M. Hafner Burton, Trading Human Rights: How Preferential Trade Agreements Influence Government Repression, International Organization 59, no. 3 (July 1, 2005): Oona A. Hathaway, Why Do Countries Commit to Human Rights Treaties?, The Journal of Conflict Resolution 51, no. 4 (August 1, 2007):

17 Resisting Foreign Pressure of Democratic Promotion Numerous empirical studies have demonstrated that the international pressure exerted by the Western democracies is the main cause of the collapse of dictatorships. For security reasons, democratizing authoritarian regimes has been an important foreign policy objective for the Western democracies since the beginning of the Cold War. The Western democracies use the carrots-and-sticks strategy to promote democratization in authoritarian regimes. They did so through the use of soft power, such democracy assistance and persuasion, as well as the implement of hard power, such as aid conditionality, economic sanctions, shaming campaigns, human rights prosecutions, and military intervention, albeit the effect of different policy tools varies across different authoritarian regimes. 37 The history of Western intervention reveals that, for dictatorships to avoid the international pressure exerted by the Western democracies, they had better not to become security threats to the former. The Western democracies have strong incentive to exert democratizing pressure on or interfere in the autocracies that are close to them due to security concerns, while this incentive largely decreases when the autocratic target states are getting farther away. A good example is that the United States had strong incentive to interfere in the domestic politics of Latin American autocratic countries, while it cared much less about the domestic politics in the autocratic countries in Africa, Middle East, or Asia. 38 Another good example is the comparison between the anti-government movement in the East Europe in the late 1980s and the Jasmine Revolution in the Middle East and North African countries in The Western democracies had strong incentive to support the democratization force in the former event, while they were not as interested in supporting the democratization force in the latter. This is largely due to the fact that during the Cold War period, the communism dictatorships are severe security threat to the Western democracies, therefore the latter has strong incentive to interfere in and help the anti-government movements to overthrow the dictatorships. However, after the end of the Cold War when the remaining dictatorships are no more urgent threats to them, the Western democracies loses their incentive to interfere in. As a consequence, in the Jasmine Revolution, although the incumbent dictatorships were successfully overthrown by their people, it ended up to 37 Abel Escriba Folch and Joseph Wright, Foreign Pressure and the Politics of Autocratic Survival (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2015). 38 Mark T. Gilderhus, An Emerging Synthesis? U.S. Latin American Relations since the Second World War, Diplomatic History 16, no. 3 (July 1, 1992): ; Peter H. Smith, Talons of the Eagle: Dynamics of U.S. Latin American Relations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Max Paul Friedman, Retiring the Puppets, Bringing Latin America Back In: Recent Scholarship on United States Latin American Relations, Diplomatic History 27, no. 5 (November 1, 2003): ; Stephen G. Rabe, A Question of Power: U.S. Relations with Latin America, Diplomatic History 34, no. 2 (April 1, 2010):

18 be that the old dictatorships are replaced by the new ones. As Levitsky and Way demonstrated, whether the Western democracies have enough linkage and leverage to support the opposition forces in autocracies is the key to successful democratization, 39 and the distances from the Western democracies to the autocracies largely affect whether the former have enough capability to support the opposition forces. The reasons are twofold. First, the closer the autocracies to the Western democracies, the more likely that the latter could have more interactions and connections with the society in the former. Besides, distance also largely determines the degree of security threat of the autocracies to the Western democracies. The closer the autocracies to the Western democracies, the more likely that the former could directly threat the latter, thus the Western democracies not only are more likely to have more influence on the autocratic countries but also have stronger incentive to interfere or penetrate them due to security concerns. Because of the two reasons, distance should be a critical factor in the study of democratization and authoritarian resilience. What the Paradox Is If the Kantian peace elements are really influential on democratizing authoritarian regimes as the literature demonstrated, then there is a puzzle emerged for scholars to answer why do more and more dictatorships choose to open their market and participating in IGOs even though they know that doing so may endanger their nondemocratic rules? This seems a very irrational choice since it hurts their political survival. 40 However, many empirical findings I discussed above have demonstrated that, actually, many authoritarian leaders could and have learned how to make good use of the Kantian elements to solve their legitimacy problem, commitment problem, and performance problem, etc. Besides, this authoritarian resilience effect is getting stronger with the increase of the distance between the authoritarian countries and the Western democracies. Thus, the paradox between the Kantian peace and the democratic peace emerges. Given the following facts that 1) democratic peace is a strictly dyadic phenomenon; 2) international conflicts occur mainly between mixed dyads; and, 3) autocratic leaders could learn how to make good use of the Kantian peace elements to strengthen their regime resilience, then the international conflicts occur between democracies and autocracies resulting from their contradicting interests would never been disappeared. In other words, ironically, the diffusion of the 39 Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War (Cambridge University Press, 2010). 40 Bueno de Mesquita et al., The Logic of Political Survival; Mesquita and Smith, The Dictator s Handbook. 18

19 Kantian elements more market-opening and IGO-participating, plus the low security threat from the autocracies to the democracies, guarantee that the Kantian peace and the democratic peace can never be achieved simultaneously due to their inherent contradicting logics. If my argument is correct, then the hypotheses derived from my argument to be tested should be as follows. Hypothesis 1: The degree of market-opening is negatively correlated with the probability of authoritarian regime collapse. Hypothesis 2: The number of IGO memberships are negatively correlated with the probability of authoritarian regime collapse. Hypothesis 3: The distance from an authoritarian state s capital to Washington D.C. is negatively correlated with the probability of authoritarian regime collapse. In the next section, I will test the three hypotheses with empirical data, including all the dictatorships around the world and their spells from 1950 to Empirical Test This section tests the three hypotheses derived from my argument. I first explain how I measure all the variables and set up the statistical models, then I analyze the outcome of the statistical models. Dependent Variable, Sample Space, and Model I argue that dictatorships can make good use of the Kantian elements to strengthen their regime resilience, so the dependent variable to test this argument should be how resilient the authoritarian regimes are rather the popularly-used regime durability measured by the change of their polity score 41 or regime type. 42 The former catches the resilience of the leaders and the ruling groups, and the latter measures whether the regime changes (that is, the change of the degree of autocracy) despite the change of its leadership. It is very common that a dictatorship was replaced by another without the change of political institution. Since my argument expects authoritarian resilience rather than regime durability, what I should test is the relationship between the Kantian elements, the security concerns, and the longevity of 41 Monty G. Marshall, Ted R. Gurr, and Keith Jaggers, POLITY IV PROJECT: Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, , Jose Antonio Cheibub, Jennifer Gandhi, and James Raymond Vreeland, Democracy and Dictatorship Revisited, Public Choice 143, no. 1 2 (April 1, 2010):

20 the leaders or ruling groups. I illustrate how I count an event as a regime change by two examples. First, China has been ruled by the Communist Party of China (CPC) since 1949 till the present. Although China has had at least five different leaders since the establishment of People s Republic of China, 43 China has not yet experienced a regime change till the present since the five leaders are all chosen by the CPC with a formal procedure (although this formal procedure varies from time to time). The second example is that, in Russia, during President Vladimir Putin s first two terms from 2000 to 2008, Russia s polity score changed from 6 to 4 (from a democracy to an anocracy) in However, it is not counted as an regime change since the leader remains the same one. In other words, as long as the leadership in autocracies is not changed by a coup or a revolution, it is coded as 0 (no regime change) in my dataset. The dependent variable, Regime Change, is a dummy variable, coded 0 if the leader or the ruling group in the authoritarian country at year t remains the same origin as the previous year t 1, coded 1 if not. Data of Regime Change is from Geddes et al., in which they record all the leadership spells in all the authoritarian countries around the world. 44 The whole sample space includes all the countries that have experienced authoritarian rules during the period since My sample space ends in the year of 2006 due to the availability of other independent and control variables. To estimate the resilience of dictatorships given my binary dependent variable with time-series cross-sectional data structure, I use the model developed by Beck et al. named binary time series, cross section analysis 45 which later revised by Signorino. 46 The method is to use logit model with a binary dependent variable (indicating whether the leaders are changed) and three survival time variables (the number of survival years, its square, and its cubic) to control for the time effect how long the dictatorship has been survived. Independent Variables Since I argue that the increase of the Kantian elements and the decrease of the Western interference are helpful for authoritarian survival, the independent variables to test this hypothesis should include the two Kantian elements trade and IGOs 43 They are Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and Xi Jinping. 44 Barbara Geddes, Joseph Wright, and Erica Frantz, Autocratic Breakdown and Regime Transitions: A New Data Set, Perspectives on Politics 12, no. 2 (June 2014): Nathaniel Beck, Jonathan N. Katz, and Richard Tucker, Taking Time Seriously: Time Series Cross Section Analysis with a Binary Dependent Variable, American Journal of Political Science 42, no. 4 (October 1, 1998): David B. Carter and Curtis S. Signorino, Back to the Future: Modeling Time Dependence in Binary Data, Political Analysis 18, no. 3 (June 20, 2010):

21 and the degree of dictatorships independence from Western interference. I measure trade and IGOs as most of previous empirical studies on the Kantian peace. Trade is measured by the country s openness in each year, Openness, calculated by its total trade flows (imports and exports) divided by its GDP. Data of trade flows is from Barbieri and Keshk, 47 and data of GDP from Feenstra et al. 48 IGO memberships is measured by the number of IGO memberships the country has in each year. Data of the number of IGO memberships is from Pevehouse et al. 49 x The degree of dictatorships independence from Western interference, or the degree of international pressure, is measured by the distance between each nondemocracy and Washington D.C., the capital of the United States. I create a variable, Distance from DC, measured by the distance between each country s capital city and Washington D.C., the capital of the United States in logged mileage. 50 Distance data is from The Correlates of War Project. Control Variables Although there are many rival explanations that account for the resilience of dictatorships, I only control for the time effect of different decades rather than controlling for all the rival explanations. This is due to two reasons. First, my theory talks about the influence of international structure on authoritarian regime resilience, and security concern is the most important factor that affects the Western democracies attitude toward dictatorships. Therefore, I control for different degree of security concern between the democratic camp and the nondemocratic camp in different decades, given the fact that in different decades the degree of security threats from the dictatorships to the western democracies varies. For example, the security threat from the communism camp to the Western democracies reached its peak in the 1960s, then in the 1970s this threat became alleviated when the Sino-USSR relationship went down. In the last stage of the Cold War, this security threat became even weaker when the power of the USSR declined rapidly. Hence, I control for different decades to catch the different degree of security threats that may have influence on the Western democracies action toward the dictatorships. 47 Katherine Barbieri and Omar M. G. Keshk, Correlates of War Project Trade Data Set Codebook, Version 3.0. Online: Robert C. Feenstra, Robert Inklaar, and Marcel P. Timmer, The Next Generation of the Penn World Table, American Economic Review 105, no. 10 (October 2015): Jon Pevehouse, Timothy Nordstrom, and Kevin Warnke, The Correlates of War 2 International Governmental Organizations Data Version 2.0, Conflict Management and Peace Science 21, no. 2 (April 1, 2004): I take log of the mileage data to make it more confirmed to a normal distribution. Taking log also catches the decreasing marginal influence of distance. 21