Is there a monadic authoritarian peace: Authoritarian regimes, democratic transition types and the first use of violent force

Abstract

This paper examines conflict proneness of authoritarian states and tests whether the monadic democratic peace
argument can be extended to explain the conflict behavior of authoritarian states. Previous works have examined the
propensity of authoritarian states to engage in conflict in dyadic relations with other states, rather than directly
examining the conflict propensity of these states using monadic analysis (or who uses violent force first). Further,
little empirical work has examined how different types of transitions from authoritarian rule affect the conflict
propensity of states. Using Caprioli’s and Trumbore’s (2004) First use of Violent Force (FuVF) dataset for 1980 - 2002,
we find little support for the monadic argument that authoritarian regimes that have more institutional checks on
executive authority are less likely to first use military force than are regimes that have fewer such checks; however,
we find that the type of transition is a more important a variable than the type of authoritarian regime in explaining the
conflict proneness of the state.