Belligerent Cosmopolitans: Pre-office Foreign Experience and Conflict Behavior

• In Event: Leaders, International Conflict, and Peaceful Possibilities

Abstract

How does pre-office experience living abroad affect leaders’ foreign policy behavior? The conventional wisdom suggests that cosmopolitan experience makes leaders more peaceful. This idea, rooted in the intergroup contact hypothesis and Kantian theory of "cosmopolitan peace," suggests that experiences abroad enhance individual understanding of foreign cultures and values, reduce intergroup prejudice, and potentially foster a cosmopolitan identity. As a result, leaders with pre-office experience abroad should initiate less military conflict. Contrary to this "cosmopolitan peace hypothesis," we argue that exposure to unfamiliar lands, institutions, and practices makes leaders more likely to initiate international conflicts while in office. Because national identity is defined in relation to an "other," living abroad as a foreigner forces an individual to reflect on their own national identity. Consequently, foreign experience can reinforce leader nationalism and make cosmopolitan leaders more belligerent. To test our theory, we collect original data on the foreign experiences of national leaders from 1875 to 2015. Our correlational analysis suggests that, in general, leaders with experience living abroad are more likely to initiate militarized interstate disputes than their less cosmopolitan counterparts.

Authors

• Xunchao Zhang, Stanford University

• Qi Jing, University of California, Los Angeles