A Liberal Peace?: The Growth of Liberal Norms and the Decline of Interstate Violence

• DOI: 10.1177/00220027211035554
• Date: 01 April 2022
• Author: Patrick Gill-Tiney
• Published date: 01 April 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

2022, Vol. 66(3) 413 –442

A Liberal Peace?: The

Growth of Liberal

Norms and the Decline

of Interstate Violence

Patrick Gill-Tiney

1

Abstract

How have understandings of fundamental norms of international society changed

over time? How does this relate to the decline of interstate violence since 1945?

Previous explanations have focused on regime type, domestic institutions, economic

interdependence, relative power, and nuclear weapons, I argue that a crucial and

underexplored part of the puzzle is the change in understanding of sovereignty over

the same period. In this article, I propose a novel means of examining change in these

norms between 1970 and 2014 by analyzing the content of UN Security Council

resolutions. This analysis is then utilized in quantitative analysis of the level of vio-

lence dispute participants resorted to in all Militarized Interstate Disputes in the

period. I find that as liberal understandings of fundamental norms have increased,

that the average level of violence used has decreased. This points to a crucial missing

component in the existing literature: that institutions can only constrain when

political actors share the right norms.

Keywords

international security, interstate conflict, liberal peace, militarized interstate

disputes, democratic peace, international institutions

1

Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, United Kingdom

Corresponding Author:

Patrick Gill-Tiney, St John’s College, University of Oxford, St Giles’, Oxford OX1 3JP, United Kingdom.

Email: patrick.gill-tiney@politics.ox.ac.uk

Journal of Conflict Resolution

ªThe Author(s) 2021

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/00220027211035554

journals.sagepub.com/home/jcr

Article

414 Journal of Conflict Resolution 66(3)

Interstate disputes have declined in average severity over the post-1945 period, a

trend apparently accelerated by the end of the Cold War. Yet, explaining this has

proved difficult. Many explanations have noted the importance of the spread of

democracy over the same period (Doyle 1983; Maoz and Russett 1993; Russett and

Oneal 2001), with a result, that a focus on regime type and domestic institutions have

dominated the literature. Others have argued that this is in fact a capitalist peace

(Gartzke 2007; Schneider and Gleditsch 2010), or the result on interplay between the

Kantian Triad of democracy, free trade and international organizations (Appel 2018;

Kinne 2013a). More critical voices have suggested this is less the result of liberal

institutions and practices and more the result of superpower politics and alliance

blocs during the Cold War (Farber and Gowa 1995; Kydd 2005; Layne 1994; Rosato

2003), great power politics (McDonald 2015), unipolarity since 1990 (Monteiro

2014), and the advent of the nuclear age (Waltz 1990). The spread of democratic

regimes, international organizations, and free trade though are about more than just

expected utilities, amelioration of the information and commitment problems, and

enforcement mechanisms. Rather, they are also about ideas. How do liberal ideas

inherent to these institutional developments shape policymaker responses during

interstate disputes? How has the increasing acceptance of these ideas over the last

seventy-five years altered dispute patterns?

This article shows that liberal interpretations of sovereignty, which emphasize

international law, interdependence, free trade, democracy and individual rights and

freedoms, have become increasingly prevalent in UN Security Council resolutions

since 1970. Given that two non-western states, Russia/Soviet Union and China, are

permanent members, I argue that the conten t of these resolutions reflects broad

consensus between major powers—both western and non-western—as how these

norms should be interpreted. This is not the same as arguing that these states share

preferences or interests, rather, s ubstantial differences remain, larg ely along the

cleavage between the United States, Britain and France on the one hand and China

and Russia on the other (Einsiedel and Malone 2018, 156-58).

1

Yet, the collective

positions of these states have evolved over time, suggesting a shift in how sover-

eignty is understood. The dominant role that these states have in shaping the inter-

national order means that their collective understandings may be taken as

representative of the normative structure of international society at any point in

time, with the expectation that this impacts all states in the system.

2

I argue that as liberal interpretations of these fundamental norms increase, the

likelihood of a dispute participant resorting to violence decreases. Through content

analysis of all UN Security Council resolutions between 1970 and 2014 I first create

a measure of the strength of liberal interpretations of sovereignty. This is then

utilized in quantitative analysis of dispute participants in the period to explain the

variation in the level of violence employed. I find statistical and substantive support

for my theory, showing empirically that the growth in liberal norm interpretations is

negatively associated with the likelihood of a state resorting to violence in an inter-

state dispute.

2Journal of Conflict Resolution XX(X)