Ethnic preferences, domestic audiences and military coalition formation

Abstract

Ethnically motivated domestic pressure can incentivize leaders to support co-ethnics via military cooperation during international crises. When a leader requires the support of an ethnic group to retain office, she may face pressure to support foreign co-ethnics involved in an international crisis. Supporting co-ethnics can bolster a leader domestically, but constraints on the executive limit a leader's ability to respond to ethnically motivated pressure. Using data on 257 international crises from 1949–2001 and two case studies, we find robust evidence for the conditional relationship between co-ethnicity, the domestic political salience of ethnicity, executive constraints, and the likelihood of military coalition formation.