Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Regional trade agreements (RTAs) are trade institutions that can also be security institutions. Trade institutions specify rules for trade among members. RTAs are a type of trade institution that specifies rules for trade liberalization among a limited number of states. Trade promotes peace and reduces conflict is a popular liberal tenet among scholars and policy makers. Consequently, conventional wisdom suggests that increased trade flows because of RTA membership as well as shared membership in a RTA should indirectly diminish militarized conflict among member states. Mansfield and Pevehouse (2000) examined how RTA membership shapes interstate conflict while Powers (2001) examined how RTA security integration influences this type of conflict. Little work in the trade and conflict literature or institutions and conflict literature considers trade, RTAs and a different scale of conflict, intra-state war, which includes civil war and ethnic conflict. Schneider et al (2003) addresses this gap by examining the relationship between regional economic integration through RTAs and civil war but does not consider RTA structure in the analysis. This paper builds on this work by evaluating the consequences of variation in RTA security integration for intrastate conflict within member states. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is an example of an RTA in which members have integrated in the security arena extensively. It is a customs union that possesses military alliances, dispute settlement mechanisms and a military force that serves peacekeeping and defense purposes. ECOWAS used its military force to intervene in a peacekeeping capacity in the Liberian and Sierra Leone civil wars in the 1990s and the recent Ivory Coast crisis. The objectives of this paper are twofold: (a) I illustrate how regional trade agreements (RTAs) can also be security institutions. These trade institutions often sign military alliance agreements like mutual defense pacts, non-aggression pacts, and ententes agreements within the RTA structure (b) I present descriptive statistics about RTA security integration and intrastate war and perform a simple test of the influence of RTA security structure on the likelihood of militarized intrastate conflict within member states. As an initial step, I examine African RTAs and intrastate conflict from 1950-1992.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: We use social network analysis to evaluate the non-economic components of regional trade networks, and empirically examine a variety of outcomes -- including economic growth and innovation -- for countries in regional trade agreements.