We submit our recent systemic democratic peace research to the control variable doctrine of James Lee Ray, as codified in his 2003 treatise. In particular, we seek to determine whether international institutions intervene in the relationship between the democratic community's strength and the use and effectiveness of third party conflict management, whether hegemony is a competing explanation of third party settlement, and whether our extant model is robust when several control variables are specified. Two important conclusions are reached: (1) the democratic community's strength and institutional vitality promote third party mediation and its success, regardless of hegemonic might and other controls; and 2) Ray's teaching is properly understood as an exhortation for scholars to more carefully consider the theoretical role of each control variable and its proper treatment in statistical models, not as an edict banning the use of control variables.
- democratic peace,
- control variables,
- systemic analysis,
- third parties,
- conflict management,
- hegemony
Conflict Management and Peace Science, 22:4 (2005), pp. 311-326 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/07388940500339191
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/sara_mitchell/12/
A previous version of this paper was presented at the 2004 North American Meeting of the Peace Science Society (International) in Houston, Texas. It is largely based on previous work with Mark Crescenzi (Mitchell, Kadera, and Crescenzi, 2005; Crescenzi and Kadera 2004) and Megan Shannon (Kadera, Crescenzi, and Shannon 2003) and by Mitchell (2002). We thank Christopher Achen, Kevin Clarke, MarkCrescenzi, John Oneal, James Lee Ray, Bruce Russett, Harvey Starr,and the anonymous reviewers forcomments and advice. All errors remain our own.