Moral hazard at sea: how alliances actually increase low-level maritime provocations between allies

The management of maritime claims is becoming an important issue in the study of interstate conflict. Since World War II, most contested maritime claims have been associated with low-level conflict (mainly shows of force, or what we call maritime provocations) and have not resulted in fatalities. However, what is puzzling is that many competing claims are also associated with states that are alliance partners. To explain this puzzle, we trace the management of maritime claims to states’ participation in different types of security institutions. We argue that joint membership in highly institutionalized security organizations, namely defensive alliances, provides aggrieved challenger states with the opportunity to undermine the position of defending states by using low-level maritime provocations. The alliance has an incentive to provide an institutional security umbrella to maintain its organization’s strength and continuity. High levels of commitment to defensive alliances provide a challenger state with the opportunity to behave provocatively without risking an escalation of the conflict or severely damaging its reputation within the alliance. We test our theory using data on all maritime claims and their associated militarization attempts in the Western Hemisphere and Europe from 1900 to 2001 from the Issue Correlates of War (ICOW) project.