The effects of leader characteristics on interstate conflicts: a dyadic analysis

Modern researchers of militarized interstate disputes pay significant attention to the effects of structural characteristics, such as raw military and economic power, political system and geographical position. At the same time, the role of key decision-makers in outbreak of militarized interstate disputes receives scant scholar attention. This paper relates two pivotal characteristics of leaders, type of entry into the office and tenure, with the likelihood of militarized interstate disputes. Our theory focuses on two key problems: incomplete information and credible commitment. The authors theorize that leaders with asymmetric tenures and regular type of entries are less likely to engage in war with each other while leaders with symmetric tenures and irregular type of entries are more likely to start a military conflict with each other. Statistical findings from dyadic logit regression analysis and robustness checks largely confirm theoretical expectations.

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