Date of Award
Spring 2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Political Science
First Advisor
Pratt, Tyler
Abstract
When do great powers cooperate with regional powers and when do they fight? This dissertation considers how the distribution of power at the systemic level and at the regional level conditions relations between great powers and regional powers and incentivizes conflict, hedging, or cooperation. I propose a general theory of great power-regional power relations. The theory contends that great powers are responsive to competition with other great powers, while regional powers have more limited interests and respond primarily to competition with regional rivals. When states engage in peer competition, they are incentivized to cooperate with other states and look for partners to balance against rivals. But when a state gains a preponderance of power -- a great power achieves unipolarity in the international system or a regional power approaches regional hegemony -- their incentives change. Because great powers and regional powers act based on incentives set by different distributions of power, their interests may or may not align, and this sets the stage for cooperation or conflict. The theory is extended to generate expectations for state strategy in conflict and post-conflict settings and tested with a mixed-methods approach. A quantitative cross-case analysis of an original dataset of state strategy in conflicts in the Middle East from 1945 through 2010 and a series of three qualitative case studies on the North Yemen Civil War, the Lebanese Civil War, and the Second Intifada find support for the theory's expectations.
Recommended Citation
Stuster-Kim, John Dana, "Great Powers, Regional Powers, and the Balance of Power in Conflict" (2024). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 1460.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/1460
