Michele L. Leiby and Christopher K. Butler
The Determinants of Diplomatic Dyads
WORKING PAPER
2006
Abstract
Despite their obvious importance to foreign policy, there has been little research on diplomatic relations between states. In particular, there has been insufficient systematic examination of the factors that help us to understand why two countries would choose to establish diplomatic ties. We present data on interstate diplomacy for the year. The dataset is designed to capture the exchange and the rank of diplomatic missions between states. We present here the findings of a two-equation model that we argue captures how many ambassadors a country will send and to whom the country will send these ambassadors. The 2000 data includes 36,290 directed dyads, only 21% of which have some kind of diplomatic ties. Based on this data, our initial results show that total and dyadic trade levels are a significant predictor of a state’s decision to send ambassadors while military capabilities is not a consistent predictor, indicating that economic factors are perhaps more important for explaining this diplomatic behavior. We also find that civil war-but not civil conflict-in a state decreases the likelihood that other states will send ambassadors to that state. In addition, we find that both joint democracy and joint autocracy are significant, suggesting that regime similarity leads to reciprocal sending behavior.
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