African Journal of Political Science

African Journal of Political Science ISSN 3461-2165 Vol. 2 (6), pp. 001-007, June, 2008. © International Scholars Journals

Full Length Research Paper

Is there a monadic authoritarian peace: Authoritarian regimes, democratic transition types and the first use of violent force

John Ishiyama¹, Ryan Conway² and Katherine Haggans³

¹University of North Texas, Department of Political Science, 1155 Union Circle #305340,Denton, TX 76203-5017.

²Truman State University, U.S.A.

³Columbia University, U.S.A.

Accepted 2, September 2007

Abstract

This paper examines conflict proneness of authoritarian states and tests whether the monadic democratic peace argument can be extended to explain the conflict behavior of authoritarian states. Previous works have examined the propensity of authoritarian states to engage in conflict in dyadic relations with other states, rather than directly examining the conflict propensity of these states using monadic analysis (or who uses violent force first). Further, little empirical work has examined how different types of transitions from authoritarian rule affect the conflict propensity of states. Using Caprioli’s and Trumbore’s (2004) First use of Violent Force (FuVF) dataset for 1980 - 2002, we find little support for the monadic argument that authoritarian regimes that have more institutional checks on executive authority are less likely to first use military force than are regimes that have fewer such checks; however, we find that the type of transition is a more important a variable than the type of authoritarian regime in explaining the conflict proneness of the state.

Key words: Monadic democratic peace, first use of force, democratic peace, democratization.