Existing research suggests that military alliances can lead to both aggressive and pacific conflict behavior from states. How can these seemingly contradictory effects be explained? Three key problems limit existing approaches. First, scholars generally analyze alliances as singular entities in the reductionist view or as a condition of the international system in the aggregate view. The result has been that intra-alliance phenomena, or the endogenous relationships among alliance members, went traditionally unaddressed. Second, the relationship between military alliances and non-security cooperation receives very little attention in the literature. Third, a level of analysis problem exists. This research addresses each of these problematic issues in alliance research and offers and alternate theoretical and methodological approach to explain the behavior of bilateral allies.
The specific research question this dissertation addresses is the following: do endogenous relationships explain bilateral alliance behavior more effectively than traditional approaches that focus on external phenomena? I examine both security-based and non-security-based intra-alliance relationships and include the relationships between each member and its politically relevant international environment (PRIE). In each empirical analysis, I include relevant exogenous factors and alternate explanations to test my arguments against those found in traditional research. The empirical results suggest that, indeed, intra-alliance relationships offer unique and beneficial insight into the behavior of bilateral allies. Further, non-security relationships, particularly bilateral trade, are shown to have a significant impact on the conflict behavior of allied states.
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