A Longitudinal Model of Trade and Conflict:Deconstructing the Causal Mechanisms of Trade Peace Theory and a Case Study of U.S.-Japan Conflict before the Pacific War
Research in the area of trade-conflict generally supports trade peace theory,but existing studies have not thoroughly examined the causal mechanisms underlying the relationship between these two variables.This article critically reviews the two main mechanisms of trade peace theory—opportunity cost mechanism and costly signal mechanism—and builds a longitudinal model of trade and conflict to deconstruct these causal mechanisms.Both mechanisms neglect time,assuming that trade relations change abruptly and two parties have no time to adjust.When gradual changes in trade relations are accounted for in the model,and when the model considers the behavior of the parties over time,the effectiveness of the opportunity cost mechansim and costly signal mechanism are significantly weakened.This model predicts that states will adopt opportunistic patterns of behavior,adopting conflict policies while maintaining trade relations.The article applies process-tracing to conduct a case analysis of U.S.-Japan conflict before the Pacific War to provide a preliminarily test of the model's validity.
Longitudinal Model of Trade-ConflictTrade Peace TheoryCausal MechanismsU.S.-Japan Conflict
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