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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Polit. Sci.
Sec. Peace and Democracy
Volume 6 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpos.2024.1459665
This article is part of the Research Topic The Politics of International Conflict Process: Initiation, Escalation, and Resolution View all 4 articles

Leadership Transition, Ally Restraints, and Target State Resistance

Provisionally accepted
Haixia Qi Haixia Qi *Qi Wang Qi Wang Ruoxing Li Ruoxing Li
  • Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Understanding how target states respond to international provocations is crucial to the study of crisis management and conflict onset. The primary focus of existing research is on the individual effects of ally influence and domestic politics without considering their interaction. This study addresses this gap by exploring the combined impact of leadership transitions, manners of leader entry, and ally’s importance on target states' decisions to resist challenges. Utilizing the Truly Dyadic Dyad-Year (TDD) version of the Militarized Interstate Confrontation (MIC) dataset from 1920-2014, the Archigos leadership dataset, and logit models for statistical testing, our findings reveal that target state leadership transitions and irregular leadership change significantly increase the likelihood of target state’s resistance, particularly when leaders seek to consolidate power. Moreover, although the support of a powerful ally may embolden the target state to resist, the restraining effect of allies during the target state’s leadership transitions becomes more pronounced. Our research highlights the intricate balance between domestic political considerations and external influences, emphasizing that an understanding of the domestic political context is essential for comprehending how states respond to international provocations, and the effectiveness of ally restraint.

    Keywords: leadership transition, Ally Restraints, Target resistance, international conflict, leader's decision

    Received: 04 Jul 2024; Accepted: 13 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Qi, Wang and Li. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Haixia Qi, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

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