Multiplex Communities and the Emergence of International Conflict
This research addresses the gap in understanding how community structures in social systems relate to behavioral outcomes, specifically for international relations scholars, though it is incremental in building on existing network analysis methods.
The study investigated the relationship between multiplex community structures in international networks and the onset of interstate conflict, finding that communities based on diplomatic affinity negatively correlate with conflict, while those based on observed cooperation show no effect or a positive relationship depending on the model.
Advances in community detection reveal new insights into multiplex and multilayer networks. Less work, however, investigates the relationship between these communities and outcomes in social systems. We leverage these advances to shed light on the relationship between the cooperative mesostructure of the international system and the onset of interstate conflict. We detect communities based upon weaker signals of affinity expressed in United Nations votes and speeches, as well as stronger signals observed across multiple layers of bilateral cooperation. Communities of diplomatic affinity display an expected negative relationship with conflict onset. Ties in communities based upon observed cooperation, however, display no effect under a standard model specification and a positive relationship with conflict under an alternative specification. These results align with some extant hypotheses but also point to a paucity in our understanding of the relationship between community structure and behavioral outcomes in networks.