Papers by Patrick McDonald
The Invisible Hand of Peace, 2009
The United States has a long history of responding to strategic challenges and opportunities by p... more The United States has a long history of responding to strategic challenges and opportunities by promoting the spread of its own political and economic institutions abroad. Rooted firmly in a political culture defined by its attachment to individual freedom, this penchant often manifests itself in foreign policies supporting democratic transitions and economic liberalization around the world. Democracy and trade are trumpeted for two key reasons: states that possess liberal political and economic institutions do not go to war with each other, and they also tend to share common national interests. As democracy and commerce proliferate around the world, the United States should face fewer enemies while cultivating more political allies. Many American political leaders over the past two centuries have reaffirmed these principles. Outlining the benefits of annexing Texas in his inaugural address, President Polk (1845) noted, "Foreign Powers do not seem to appreciate the true character of our Government . . . To enlarge its limits is to extend the dominions of peace over additional territories and increasing millions . . . While the Chief Magistrate and the popular branch of Congress are elected for short terms by the suffrages of those millions who must in their own persons bear all the burdens and miseries of war, our Government can not be otherwise than pacific." At the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, Woodrow Wilson launched a bold and revolutionary plan to end balance-of-power politics that seemed to lead to war by creating a democratic global political order. Secretary of State Cordell Hull championed free trade in the 1930s as a device to remove the economic causes of conflict that he saw emerging as states shifted toward protectionism in Europe. The Truman administration implemented the Marshall Plan to foster economic recovery and strengthen democracy while preventing the spread of
International Studies Quarterly, 2011
This paper argues that the construction of sustainable peace settlements among great powers rests... more This paper argues that the construction of sustainable peace settlements among great powers rests on a self-enforcing international bargain that impedes rapid shifts in the global distribution of military power and a series of stable fiscal bargains within great powers that both generate sufficient revenues to preserve a military deterrent and prevent programs of rapid armaments expansion. It examines how free resourcespublic property, natural resource wealth, international transfers, and sovereign lending-insulate governments from having to renegotiate the basic fiscal contract with society and can, as a consequence, create the domestic political capacity to sustain arms races and shift regional and global military balances to their advantage. These claims are examined by comparing the origins of World War I and the Cold War. The reexamination of World War I challenges the prevailing historical consensus by arguing that the primary cause of war lies within Russia rather than Germany. A discussion of early stages of the Cold War shows how the Truman and Eisenhower administrations both considered launching preventive war to solve the same fiscal dilemma faced by German leaders in July 1914. Rapid and large shifts in the global distribution of power, either real or potential, have long been a key obstacle to the preservation of great power peace. 2 Prominent contributions to the bargaining literature show that these destabilizing shifts lead to war via the commitment problem (Fearon 1995; Powell 2006; Reiter 2009). Declining states go to war because rising powers cannot commit to restraining their future demands for greater concessions in international settlements after their bargaining leverage has increased. These arguments imply that the sustainability of peace-or the absence of preventive war-among great powers depends on the construction of international settlements that impede such shifts from occurring in the first place. This paper examines how domestic institutions shape power transitions and, as a consequence, influence the sustainability of international commitments and
Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2004
This study argues that a subtle shift in the primary independent variable of the commercial peace... more This study argues that a subtle shift in the primary independent variable of the commercial peace literature—from trade to free trade—provides an opportunity to respond to the some of the strongest criticisms of this research program. Free trade, and not just trade, promotes peace by removing an important foundation of domestic privilege—protective barriers to international commerce—that enhances the domestic power of societal groups likely to support war, reduces the capacity of free-trading interests to limit aggression in foreign policy, and simultaneously generates political support for the state often used to build its war machine. A series of statistical tests demonstrates that higher levels of free trade, rather than trade alone, reduce military conflict between states. Moreover, contrary to conventional wisdom, these arguments suggest how the puzzling case of World War I may confirm, rather than contradict, the central claims of commercial liberalism.
International theory, Feb 14, 2024
This paper presents a set of theoretical models that links a two-phase sequence of cooperative po... more This paper presents a set of theoretical models that links a two-phase sequence of cooperative political integration and conflict to explore the reciprocal relationship between war and state formation. It compares equilibria rates of state formation and conflict using a Monte Carlo that generates comparative statics by altering the systemic distribution of ideology, population, tax rates, and war costs across polities. This approach supports three core findings. First, war-induced political integration is at least 2.5 times as likely to occur as integration to realize economic gains. Second, we identify mechanisms linking endogenous organizations to the likelihood of conflict in the system. For example, a greater domestic willingness to support public goods production facilitates the creation of buffer states that reduce the likelihood of a unique class of trilateral wars. These results suggest that the development of the modern administrative state has helped to foster peace. Third, we explore how modelling assumptions setting the number of actors in a strategic context can shape conclusions about war and state formation. We find that dyadic modelling restrictions tend to underestimate the likelihood of cooperative political integration and overestimate the likelihood of war relative to a triadic modelling context.
Great Powers, Hierarchy, and Endogenous Regimes: Rethinking the Domestic Causes of Peace
International Organization, 2015
This paper blends recent research on hierarchy and democratization to examine the theoretical and... more This paper blends recent research on hierarchy and democratization to examine the theoretical and empirical costs of treating regime type exogenously in the literature most identified with studying its impact on international politics. It argues that the apparent peace among democratic states that emerges in the aftermath of World War I is not caused by domestic institutional attributes normally associated with democracy. Instead, this peace is an artifact of historically specific great power settlements. These settlements shape subsequent aggregate patterns of military conflict by altering the organizational configuration of the system in three critical ways—by creating new states, by altering hierarchical orders, and by influencing regime type in states. These claims are defended with a series of tests that show first how the statistical relationship between democracy and peace has exhibited substantial variation across great power orders; second, that this statistical relationship breaks down with theoretically motivated research design changes; and third, that great powers foster peace and similar regime types within their hierarchical orders. In short, the relationship between democracy and peace is spurious. The international political order is still built and managed by great powers.
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Papers by Patrick McDonald