Only Friends Can Betray You: International Rivalry and Domestic Politics

This article argues that dramatic political change in State A poses a threat to the interests that other states B share with it. The more salient those interests are to State B, the greater the threat posed by domestic political change within State A. Thus major changes in one state place the leaders of formerly friendly states into a domain of losses, motivating risk-seeking behavior in hopes of reversing these losses. Conversely, the new leaders of the state undergoing domestic political change initiate similarly risk-seeking behavior to defend their new endowments. The conflicts that result sow the seeds of long-lasting enmity (rivalry) between former partners. I test this argument in a dataset of rivalry onset during the period 1950–2005 and find evidence that in the wake of dramatic political change in State A, rivalries are most likely to form between A and its close partners.