An assessment of the validity of empirical measures of state satisfaction with the systemic status quo

Abstract

There exists no consensus as to what indicates state satisfaction with the systemic status quo even though it has been a widely used concept in the empirical literature on conflict. This is surprising because satisfaction is not a new concept in International Relations and has been accorded a central role in many theories of war. In this article, we present a measure of satisfaction based on the cost of money for sovereign borrowers and compare that measure to several leading indicators of satisfaction. We find little correlation among the existing indicators and similar variation in their ability to predict conflict. Overall, our results suggest that the cost of money may serve as a useful indicator of satisfaction as it: (1) best predicts behaviors consistent with satisfied (dissatisfied) states; (2) is least likely to obscure the impact of other common independent variables; and (3) can also be included with measures of dyadic preferences in multivariate models of conflict.