The purpose of this dissertation is to understand and anticipate the impact of an attenuated or weakened Liberal International Order on propensity, incidence, and intensity of conflict. To accomplish this, I first conduct a comprehensive literature review of international relations theories, selected economic theories, and other political science writings to establish what incentivizes order, what weakens order, and what perpetuates order.
Table of Contents
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Chapter One
What Incentivizes the Order: The Origins of Order and the Benefits of the LIO
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Chapter Two
What weakens the LIO: Nationalism and the Distorted Perception of Costs, Benefits and Risks
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Chapter Three
Why the LIO Works and Why Attenuating the LIO Will Lead to Higher Conflict PIIs: Formal Modeling
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Chapter Four
Why Attenuating the LIO Will Leads to More Defections (or Higher Conflict PIIs): An Agent-Based Model
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Chapter Five
Summary of Findings, Implications, and Recommendations for the Real World
This document was submitted as a dissertation in June 2022 in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the doctoral degree in public policy analysis at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. The faculty committee that supervised and approved the dissertation consisted of Dr. Angel O’Mahony (Chair), Dr. Matthew Lewis, Dr. Aaron Frank, and the outside reader, Dr. Brad Roberts.
This publication is part of the RAND Corporation Dissertation series. Pardee RAND dissertations are produced by graduate fellows of the Pardee RAND Graduate School, the world’s leading producer of Ph.D.’s in policy analysis. The dissertations are supervised, reviewed, and approved by a Pardee RAND faculty committee overseeing each dissertation.
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