Why Do Countries Conflict with Each Other - Essay Example

?Introduction Why do countries conflict with each other? Diversity of people’s status and other demographics can lead disagreements to arise between individuals or different parties. Effective resolution of conflict is necessary in order to ensure that people live together in harmony. Failure to resolve conflict amicably may have adverse consequences on the parties involved. Extreme cases may result in war; moreover, other cases may give way to homicide. In order to solve conflicts, it is crucial to understand the factors that could be the source of the conflict. Power and trust play a vital role in decreasing as well as increasing the conflict. This leads to the purpose of this research paper, which is to understand the reason why do countries conflict with each other. This will occur by relating the importance of trust (defined as the number of treaties a countries sign with each other) in increasing or decreasing the conflict (violence attacks) between any two parties. To find an explanation to the reason why do countries conflict with each other? Four theories provide a clear answer to the question. The first theory indicates that the reason of conflict is that human motivation is by their self-interest and will harm each other to gain more resources. The second theory defines economical status and power as the main factors for conflict to exist. In addition, the third theory, illustrate that conflict is a fight over morals where they harm each other to reach a higher position. The last theory specifies the answer that countries should not trust each other and act to preserve their own interest, not others interest. Indeed, the last theory provides the convenient answer to question the more mistrust the fear and security there are, leading to more conflict. To answer the question why do countries conflict? There is a creation of a connection between the number of treaties and the number of armed conflict between two countries or a country and its government. Then focus on 32 countries from a different region in the world that has armed conflict between the years 1975 to 2011. Furthermore, the focus is on the number of peace treaties that country has to sign at this time when there is a conflict. In addition, to know the relationship between the number of peace treaties and the number of armed conflict, there is use of large-n method. Linear regressions between the two variables are the point of attention and expect that the less trust (more peace treaties) between any two party the more conflict. Because if two parties do not trust each other then they will fear each other and increase their security leading armed conflict to exist. The analysis results show that after measuring the variables, there is no relationship between the number of peace treaties and the number of armed conflict in all level of significance. Thus, the decision is to check if there exist factors that lead the hypothesis to fail by using the multi regression method, where the independent variables are the number of peace treaties, and the number of parties a country involve in conflict. Indeed, the result shows that there is a strong positive relationship between the number of parties and the number of armed conflict. In other words, the more parties that takes place the more conflict. The Process of the Research Paper To understand how is trust related to conflict there is a creation of a model to explain the connection between the Independent variable (trust) and dependent variable (conflict) in Micaville’s hypothesis, which is the less the trust the more conflicts. If there is less trust between any two parties, then both parties fear each other. For example, if party A do not trust party B then party A fails to predict party B actions and this make party A fear party B. Indeed, with the appearance of fear, party A increases its security and advances its military power in order to protect its resources from party B. This example is similar to the model where both party A and party B do not trust each other, all the fear and the increasing insecurity lead to conflict. However, when testing the hypothesis, this calls for avoiding the two factors; fear and security. In fact, the focus of the paper is on the relationship between the number of peace treaties and the number of armed conflicts between party A and party B. The hypothesis of the paper claims that the less trust between any two parties the more armed conflict exists between them. Indeed, the operational definition for trust is the number of peace treaties and for conflict is the number of armed conflict between any two parties. In other words, the more peace treaties between any two parties the more conflict exists between them. Thus, if the number of peace treaties increase between any two parties, then it indicates that there is less trust between these parties and the chance for conflict to exist rises. Furthermore, to find the number of peace treaties that exist between any two parties and the number of armed conflict they go through there is use of the Uppsala Conflict data program, and mainly the UCDP conflict encyclopedia that exists in the Department of peace and conflict research website. By using the UCDP conflict encyclopedia, there is the choosing of 32 random countries from different regions in the world, which mean 32 cases. Then a count of the number of armed conflict and peace treaties each country has and with how many parties a country is involving in conflict. The number of conflict and treaties of each country is between the years 1975-2011. In addition, to test the hypothesis there is use of the SPSS program to find if there is a relationship between the number of peace treaties and the number of armed conflicts. This uses two types of large-n method, the linear regression and the multi regression methods. First, there is a set up of a linear regression between the number of peace treaties, which is the independent variable and the number of conflicts, which is the dependent variable. Then a multi regression come in, where the independent variables are the number of peace treaties, and the number of parties and the dependent variable are the number of armed conflicts, to check if there are factors that change hypothesis. In addition, there is use of graphs to illustrate if the relationship between the variable is positive or negative or un- significant. After the measurement process is over, the expected results are that by using a linear regression it can show that the hypothesis is valid, the relationship is positive between the independent variable and the dependent variable, (conflict), and there is no other factors affecting the hypothesis. In other words if there is high trust (fewer treaties) then there is less conflict. Measurement Process Descriptive (Table 2) Table 2 is showing the descriptive values of all the variables (Treaty, Conflict and Parties). The first column is indicating that N is valid for all variables, and there are no missing data for the independent variable. The maximum number of peaceful treaties of a country is 24 peaceful treaties and the mean of treaties are 2.72. Following the dependent variable, that is conflicts. The maximum number of armed conflicts to a country is 142-armed conflicts and the mean of conflicts are 25.78. For the parties the maximum number of parties a country has a conflict with is 13 parties and the mean of the parties are 3.25. To know the validity of the hypothesis, a linear regression (single regression) finds if there is a significant relationship between the number of peaceful treaties and the number of armed conflicts. So the hypothesis is the less trust (the more treaties) the more conflict. Within the context of regression the pair of the hypothesis is: Hb = B1= o Ha=B1 > 0 Regression: Based on the results from table 4 and table 5 it indicates that the model has no significance because p-value of F-test (or p-value of the slope) is extremely high (more than; 0.01, 0.05, or 0.10). Within the context of the hypothesis of this paper by using linear regression, it shows that there is no relationship between treaties (proxy for trust, the more treaty there is the less trust exists between parties) and conflicts. In other words, treaties cannot explain conflicts based on the sample used in this paper. Technically, there is failure to reject the null hypothesis stating that there is no relation between treaties and conflicts in all level of significance. Indeed, R-square, is extremely low indicating that a little variation in conflicts occur in the variation, in treaties. To understand the reason the hypothesis fails. There is use of multi regression method to find if there exist factors that are affecting the dependent variable, which is the number of armed conflict. Multi regression This is trying the multiple regression models with parties and treaties as explanatory (independent variables) and conflicts as a dependent variable (explained variable). This shows that this model is useful in that it is significant (the p-value of the F-test is less than 0.0001. However, the coefficient of treaties is not significant (p value of 0.3623, which is higher than any standard significance level). The coefficient of the parties involved in conflicts, on the other hand, is significant and positive. This indicates that the more parties a country involves, the more conflicts exist. Furthermore, the r-square of the model is 0.7998, which indicates that almost 80% of the variation in conflicts is in the model. However, an outlier exists in the data, which is India, and the assumption is that it influences the results. Correlation: In addition, from the correlation table, it also shows that number of parties has a positive relationship with the number of armed conflicts but that number of treaties does not have any relationship with the number of conflicts. The Graphs The graphs show the relationship between the independent variables, the number of treaties, and the number of parties and the dependent variable, number of armed conflict. The first graph shows the relationship between the number of treaties and armed conflict. Indeed, one notices that the slope represent by a straight line, which means that Y=0. In other words, the relationship between the independent and the dependent variable is un-significant. However, in the second graph, it shows the relationship between the number of parties (other) and number of armed conflict is positive. The slope represents by a positive curve line, which means that when the number of parties increase the number of armed conflict increases. Read More