Small States and Hegemonic Competition in Southeast Asia: Pursuing Autonomy, Security and Development Amid Great Power Politics by Chih-Mao Tang

Author:Chih-Mao Tang [Tang, Chih-Mao]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Treaties, Intergovernmental Organizations, Diplomacy, General, Social Science, Peace, Political Science, World, Asian, Regional Studies, Security (National & International)
ISBN: 9781317204855
Google: EGgPEAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 39652549
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-03-20T00:00:00+00:00

Empirical analysis

Research design

This section sets out to test the above hypothesis in the context of Southeast Asia. The dependent variable is the onset of interstate conflict, using the MID dataset (Palmer et al. 2015) as mentioned previously. This is a dichotomous variable, coded as 1 for the first year of a new MID in a given Southeast Asian dyad and zero otherwise. In other words, the subsequent years of the same MID are dropped from the analysis. In addition, using only a new MID onset (i.e., dropping all the ongoing records of the same MID) also addresses the problem of the dependence of the subsequent dispute years in the statistical analysis because statistical models assume cases are independent (Boehmer et al. 2004; Gartzke and Li 2003).

Pursuit of liberal capitalist economic development is the independent variable of primary interest here. Economic liberalization, often measured by a state’s trade policies, is a common proxy for identifying whether a state has a propensity for free-market export-oriented economic development. Several indicators have been used to discern a state’s trade policies, such as average statutory tariff rate, the ratio of tariff revenues to imports, and the ratio of total trade to GDP (cf. McDonald 2004; Milner and Kubota 2005).6 However, the lack of data on tariffs and customs revenues as a percentage of imports of Southeast Asian states for the period 1950–2000 makes it difficult to obtain meaningful results. In addition, tariffs cannot capture the extent to which a state uses non-tariff barriers to protect non-competitive domestic sectors, and customs revenues cannot reflect prohibitive tariffs (McDonald 2004: 557–558). Also, the ratio of total trade to GDP is a relatively poor indicator for capturing changes of political propensity in certain economic policies because the value of this outcome indicator may be highly sensitive to other factor endowments, such as resource supplies, international prices, natural barriers to trade, technology, and tastes (Leamer 1988). In this regard, I follow Milner and Kubota (2005) in using the trade regime indicator developed by Sachs and Warner (1995) and recently updated by Wacziarg and Horn Welch (2008) to identify a state’s economic development policies. This indicator is coded as a closed trade regime if any one of the following criteria is true: non-tariff barriers cover 40 percent or more of trade; average tariff rates are 40 percent or more; black-market exchange rates depreciated by 20 percent or more relative to the official exchange rate during the 1970s or 1980s; a socialist economy is in place; or a state monopoly on exports exists. This indicator is useful and fitting here because it provides more comprehensive information as it considers various aspects of protectionism over time (1950–1999) and across space. Thus, JntELP is a dichotomous variable coded as 1 when both states in a dyad year t are jointly open trade regimes and zero otherwise. However, data are not available for Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam in Sachs and Warner’s original data set. So as not to lack information on the four states

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.