New Measurements of Potential Threat and Observed Threat

• In Event: Measurement of Conflict Processes

Abstract

Threat in the geopolitical environment is one of the most important variables for understanding international politics. Until the introduction by Markowitz and Fariss (2018), international relations scholars lacked an operational measure of threat that could capture how shifts in the distribution of power and changing interests between states altered the potential threat environment for each specific state. We present an updated framework for measuring threat, which builds on the threat variable introduced by Markowitz and Fariss (2018). In addition to providing updated data to estimate the distribution of power (GDP, surplus domestic product, military spending, and population), we also add several theoretically informed innovations to the measurement approach. First, we differentiate between measures of the global distribution of military power using economic resources compared to actual investments in arming (potential threat versus military threat). Second, we distinguish conceptually between several measures of preference incompatibility (incompatible preferences based on domestic or international institutional or economic structures versus incompatible preferences based on observed conflict). We discuss multiple validation exercises, and use the updated measures to examine the relationship between threat and arming.

Authors

• Jonathan Markowitz, University of Southern California

• Miriam Barnum, Purdue University

• Christopher J. Fariss, University of Michigan