This thesis examines whether intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) can socialize member states by testing the effect of shared IGO memberships on dyadic arms transfers. IGO socialization is one of many proposed causal mechanisms by which IGO memberships might reduce interstate conflict. This thesis argues that the institutional socialization hypothesis (ISH), which asserts that shared IGO memberships will lead to interest convergence between member states, uses an invalid conceptualization and measurement of socialization. Instead, socialization is re-conceptualized as increased trust between member states, and re-operationalized using dyadic arms transfers as a proxy for trust. The study uses linear regression with cross-sectional panel data from the years 1960 to 1965 to test if the number of shared IGO memberships a dyad has five years prior leads to an increase in the number of arms transfers in a given dyad-year. The results are suggestive of a positive relationship between the number of shared IGO memberships and dyadic arms transfers, but are not conclusive at a 0.05 level of significance.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:etd-2338 |
| Date | 01 January 2015 |
| Creators | Dimino, Joseph |
| Publisher | STARS |
| Source Sets | University of Central Florida |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Electronic Theses and Dissertations |
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