A Research Note: Reexamining Transnational Ethnic Alliances and Foreign Policy Behavior

In this paper I explore the relationship between ethnic alliances and foreign policy behavior through a replication, correction, and modification of previous work on the subject. After replicating David Davis and Will Moore's analyses of the relationship between ethnic alliances and foreign policy behavior, I correct and then modify the original model. With the corrected model, I demonstrate that correcting for errors in data coding improves the original results and eliminates the conflicting results reported by the original authors. Davis and Moore argue that ethnic alliances have only a marginal impact on the foreign policy behavior (international interactions) of states. After modification of their model using an improved measure of the foreign policy behavior in a dyad (and improved measures of some of the control variables), I show that ethnic alliances are important predictors of foreign policy behavior. Additionally, I find support for the democratic peace proposition. Democratic dyads have better relationships than nondemocratic dyads regardless of the presence or absence of transnational ethnic alliances. These findings lead me to conclude that the conflict literature deals with the ethnic components of territorial disputes needs to be explored in more detail and that foreign policy behavior should be an integral part of research on militarized conflict.