and
Alastair
Smith
Politics Department
Contact: alastair.smith@nyu.edu
We test how domestic
political institutions moderate the effect of leadership turnover on relations
between states. Deriving hypotheses from recent theoretical work, Bueno de Mesquita et al (2003)
and McGillivray and Smith (2000), we examine how
leader change affects trading relations between nations using dyadic trade
data. Consistent with hypotheses, we find that large winning coalition systems,
such as democracies, are relatively immune from the vagaries of leadership
change. In such systems, trade remains relatively constant whether leader
change occurs or not. In contrast, when winning coalition size is small, as in
autocratic states, leadership change profoundly alters relations, causing a
decline in trade. Finally we examine instances of poor relations, measured by a
significant decline in trade compared to historical levels. As predicted,
instances of poor relations are less common between pairs of democracies than
other dyadic pairing. Further, leadership turnover in autocratic systems
restores trading relations between states. The effect of leadership change in
democracies is much less pronounced.
An earlier version of this
paper was prepared for the 2002 Peace Science Society meeting in
The data
The basic trade data comes
from Oneal, Russett and Berbaum’s (2002).
The leadership data comes
from Bueno de Mesquita et. al. (2003), as does the institutional
data and many of the controls. http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/politics/data.shtml.The data are in STATA8 format.
The variables names follow Oneal et. al.
and Bueno de Mesquita et. al. with the addition of the labels A and B to represent the
nations where appropriate. Tradeleaderchangedata.zip
Variables
Below are a few definitions
for variable. There is a code book for the BdM2S2 data which defines all the variable in that data (see above website). The
variables below are from Oneal et
al.’s original trade data. We include the batch file
used to compile the data. This provides definitions for all constructed
variables.
The variable trade is the
level of trade between A and B in nominal US dollars.
The variable TRADE is the
level of trade between A and B in constant US dollars.
The price deflator is labeledctpi.
ccodeA is COW
country code for nation A.
Year= calendar year.
Contigkb = Nation A and B are contiguous.
Logdstab= log of distance between A and B.
Popa= Population of nation A.
cgdpa = per capita
GDP.
The zip file here contains
the code we used to compile the data and estimate the models. The main file is
called trade_leader_change.do. All the programs are
in STATA8 format. The first part of the program constructs the data. The latter
half carries out analyses. (the file leader_tests.do contains tests from an earlier version of
this paper).
The file al_programs.do
is called by the main program. This file contains procedure for recreating fixed
effects and for the MLE procedures. Batch.zip
This zip file contains a
variety of output files. The results in the paper are in the file main_results.smcl. There are also some additional output
files. Output.zip
Bureau of Economic Analysis’s (
Oneal,
John R., Bruce Russett and Michael Berbaum.(2002) "Causes of
Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations,
1886-1992"International Studies Quarterly 47:1 (March 2003).
Bueno de Mesquita, B., A. Smith.,
R. M. Siverson and J.
D. Morrow. 2003. The Logic of Political Survival. MIT Press.