Economic decline doesn’t cause diversionary conflict – no conclusive evidence

Choucri and North’s (Citation 1975) lateral pressure theory explains how growing states become driven domestically to expand in order to maintain economic growth. Such growth requires altering foreign policy in ways that increase the risk of conflict with other nations, such as through the push to acquire colonies and markets. Choucri and North use a series of simultaneous equations and case studies, finding that many endogenous relationships exist between population growth, GDP growth, colonies acquisition, military expenditures, and interstate conflicts. It might then be possible that the changes in foreign policy moods studied by some scholars correspond to periods of growth explained by lateral pressure theory.

Other studies predict that conflict is more likely during difficult economic times, but most consider conflicts at various levels of escalation and not just war. Diversionary conflict theorists predict that conflicts are more likely to occur during periods of economic stagnation and decline, or in response to other economic problems affecting society. The premise is that leaders gamble to stay in power by attempting to deflect attention away from economic troubles and toward a foreign enemy (Smith Citation1996). Still, the types of conflicts that may work the best as diversions are those that attract the attention of the populace but do not risk severe military defeat, which would increase the political problems for state leaders. Hence, conflicts short of war are probably more rational to incite for diversionary purposes. Nevertheless, clear exceptions exist in the literature, such as the Levy and Vakili (Citation1992) claim that the Falklands/Malvinas War was diversionary in nature. Moreover, there are many variants of the theory, and some studies do not directly measure economic growth. Unemployment or price instability may be better measures, compared to GDP growth rates, of the economic problems that result in diversionary tactics. Additionally, much of this literature centers on the United States and may not be generalizable to other states (Ostrom and Job Citation1986; James and Oneal Citation1991; Morgan and Bickers Citation1992; DeRouen Citation1995; Hess and Orphanides Citation1995; Fordham Citation1998; Meernik Citation1994; Meernik and Waterman Citation1996; Mitchell and Moore Citation2002; Foster Citation2006). A handful of studies have examined cases of potential diversionary conflict besides the US case, such as Sobek (Citation2007) on Renaissance Italy, Levy and Vakili (Citation1992) on the Falklands/Malvinas War, and Sprecher and DeRouen (Citation2002) on potential Israeli diversions.

Previous monadic studies offer theoretical innovation or empirical tests speaking to a broad sample of states, as opposed to just individual cases such as the US. Russett (Citation1987) finds that negative growth rates lead to militarized conflicts and provides evidence (Russett Citation1990) that democracies, especially major powers, are more conflict prone during economic downturns – and diversionary behavior is the root of these empirical findings. However, these samples are limited primarily to developed states and could therein contain sample bias. Smith (Citation1996) deductively shows how leaders faced with potential removal from office may gamble for political resurrection by using diversionary conflict. Other monadic-level studies provide evidence for heightened conflict during stagnant growth (Bloomberg and Hess Citation2002; Heldt Citation1999). However, Enterline and Gleditsch (2000) find no evidence that economic deprivation results in leaders attempting to externalize conflict. In a dyadic study, Leeds and Davis (1997) find no evidence that would directly support theories predicting diversionary behavior. They suspect this is because states that could become targets of diversion may not respond to such provocations, hence avoiding the militarization of conflicts. Foster (Citation2006) similarly, finds that foreign opponents may shy away from conflict with the US when the latter’s presidents are politically vulnerable. Miller (1995) finds no evidence that low growth leads to diversions by democratic states, and later Miller (1999) supports the conclusions formed by Leeds and Davis (Citation1997). However, Bennett and Nordstrom (Citation2000) find that states in enduring rivalries are more prone to engage in military conflicts during periods of low economic growth. Still, verifying diversionary behavior in samples of aggregated states may not be possible. Economic growth may also be a poor indicator for situations where diversion possibly occurs. Other measures of misery or deprivation, such as inflation or unemployment, may be more directly associated with diversionary political tactics.