Conflict Management and Peace Science, 24:183199, 2007

Copyright C Peace Science Society (International)

ISSN: 0738-8942 print / 1549-9219 online

DOI: 10.1080/07388940701473054

Alliance Politics during the Cold War: Aberration,

New World Order, or Continuation of History?

BRETT ASHLEY LEEDS

Department of Political Science
Rice University
Houston, Texas, USA

MICHAELA MATTES
Department of Political Science
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, Tennessee, USA

Scholars have often wondered whether the nature of alliance politics fundamentally
changed during the bipolar nuclear era characterized by the Cold War. The extension
of the Alliance Treaty Obligations and Provisions (ATOP) dataset to include the years
from 1815 to 2003 allows us the ability to evaluate systematically whether the Cold
War period was an aberration, different both from the periods that preceded it and
those that followed it, the beginning of a new alliance politics that has continued in the
postCold War era, or similar in dynamics to eras both before and since. We begin this
descriptive project here. While we find some evidence of the distinctness of the Cold
War era, what is more notable in the design of alliances is a trend over time away
from reactive alliances (which are designed to deal with specific crises) and toward
standing alliances (which are broader and more enduring). In terms of the effects of
alliances, we do find evidence that Cold War dynamics are distinct from those of prior
eras. In a replication of a well-known study by Russett and Oneal (2001), we reinforce
the finding that shared alliance commitments are related to peace during the Cold War,
but not in earlier eras. In addition, we demonstrate that the effect of shared alliances on
peace depends on the type of alliance commitment.

Keywords international relations, alliance, Cold War, international organization

The Politics of Military Alliances: Continuity and Change

Scholars of international relations have frequently noted the many ways in which the Cold
War differed in kind from the eras that preceded ita tight bipolar system based on nuclear
deterrence made every aspect of international relations a symptom or cause of superpower
conflict. At the heart of this argument is the claim that alliance patterns changed during
the Cold War. Cold War alliances should be less flexible, more asymmetric, and should
concentrate around the two superpowers in a hub and spoke system. Being nonallied or
neutral should be more difficult (e.g., Waltz, 1964; Deutsch & Singer, 1964).
Fifteen years have now passed since the end of the Cold War, making it increasingly
possible to evaluate whether the Cold War was indeed distinctan aberration from the
politics before and afterwhether it precipitated changes in the nature of alliance politics

Address correspondence to Brett Ashley Leeds, Department of Political Science, P.O. Box 1892MS 24,
Rice University, Houston, TX 77251-1892. E-mail: leeds@rice.edu

183
184 B. A. Leeds and M. Mattes

that continue today, or whether the alliance politics of the Cold War are comparable to
those that preceded and followed. In this paper, we provide a systematic description of
alliance politics from 1815 to 2003, focusing particularly on the similarities and differences
across four distinct periods of historythe century preceding WWI, the period from the
outbreak of WWI until the conclusion of WWII, the Cold War era, and the postCold War
period since 1990. We also replicate a well-known study of conflict behavior with our data,
demonstrating that allies are less likely to engage in militarized disputes with one another,
but that this finding depends on the type of alliance and is limited to the Cold War era.
The basis for our description is the Alliance Treaty Obligations and Provisions (ATOP)
dataset. The ATOP project has amassed copies of military alliances signed between 1815 and
2003 and coded approximately 100 variables about the written content of each agreement.
Besides developing a list of the universe of cases, the ATOP project has two primary
goals. First, we wish to specify precisely the obligations of alliance members. We want to
understand what states promise to do under specific conditions. Second, we wish to examine
a variety of design features of the written agreementsdo they, for example, provide for
burden sharing, for peacetime military cooperation, for formal ratification, or for permanent
bureaucracies?with the aim of explaining the causes and effects of different institutional
designs.
Here we offer the first report from the full dataset, version 3.0, which includes 648
alliances. We find support for change over time in the politics of military alliances, some
in the direction expected by those who focus on the constraints of bipolarity, and some
less so. Alliances signed during the Cold War have been more enduring on average than
those signed earlier. They are not, however, more asymmetric in their obligations, nor
are they clearly focused around the superpowers; the prevalence of alliances including
no major powers has increased. The Cold War was distinct in the paucity of neutrality
pacts, and it ushered in an era that continues today, in which alliances are more likely
to provide blanket commitments, unrelated to specific threats and connected to broader
cooperative projects in interstate relations. While alliances are becoming more formal and
more public over time, their provisions for peacetime military coordination have not shown
a dramatic change. In fact, despite a few notable exceptions, alliances in general are no
more heavily institutionalized on the military front than they have been in the past. The
main change in the design of alliances over time, therefore, seems to be a movement away
from specific agreements to manage particular threats and a growing tendency for leaders
to make more general alliance commitments and to combine military alliance commitments
with cooperation in other areas.
In the long run, however, we are interested not only in the design of alliances, but
also in their effects. Our re-analysis of a common statistical model used to predict the
onset of militarized interstate disputes using the ATOP data suggests that alliance effects
are not entirely consistent across time. Shared alliance commitments are related to a lower
propensity for militarized conflict during the Cold War era, but not before. We add nuance
to this conclusion by separating out the effects of nonaggression pacts from pacts requiring
coordination of behavior among the allies. Alliances requiring cooperation in the event of
conflict with outside states reduce the probability of conflict among allies during the Cold
War, while nonaggression pacts have no discernible effect on conflict behavior.
Below we describe the process by which we collected the data, including our definitions
of key terms. Then we proceed to offer descriptive statistics of a variety of features of
alliance politics and the alliance agreements themselves over the complete period and four
sub-periods. Finally, we present our re-analysis of the conflict model developed by Russett
and Oneal (2001) and discuss the new information gained by using the ATOP data in this
context. We conclude with some brief interpretation.
 Alliance Politics during the Cold War 185

The Data-Collection Process

We began the ATOP project with the goal of studying alliances as contracts and institutions
designed purposefully by state leaders to assist them in achieving their goals. Our goal
was to code detailed information about the content of the written agreements establishing
alliances. To do this, we needed to identify the universe of military alliances formed between
1815 and 2003. This first required us to define our key concept.
An alliance is a formal agreement among independent states to cooperate militarily in
the face of potential or realized military conflict. We distinguish alliances from informal
alignments by their formal, written character; from unilateral guarantees by the requirement
that they be formed by agreement of at least two states; from empires and colonial rela-
tionships by the requirement that members retain individual sovereignty; and from other
types of agreements (e.g., basing agreements, arms-sales agreements, border-delimitation
agreements, etc.) by the requirement that they obligate the states to coordinate their actions
in regards to military threats.
From this conceptual definition, we established an operational definition to guide data
collection. Alliances are written agreements, signed by official representatives of at least
two independent states, that include promises to aid a partner in the event of military conflict,
to remain neutral in the event of conflict, to refrain from military conflict with one another,
or to consult/cooperate in the event of international crises that create a potential for military
conflict (Leeds, Ritter, Mitchell, & Long, 2002: 238). This operational definition was
motivated both by the concept that we wished to capture, and by a desire to be compatible
with the most widely used existing dataset on alliances, provided by the Correlates of War
project (Gibler & Sarkees, 2004; Singer & Small, 1966; Small & Singer, 1969).
The only place where these two goals are potentially at odds is in relation to nonag-
gression pactsthose agreements that only provide for the signatories to refrain from the
use of force in their relations with one another. Our conceptual definition of alliances fo-
cuses on cooperation against an outside threat, which is not necessarily inherent in such
a commitment. We include nonaggression pacts in the dataset because they are explicitly
included by the Correlates of War project, and we wish to allow users the flexibility to com-
bine and compare the two datasets. On the other hand, we report most of our descriptive
results excluding pacts that include only nonaggression, since this universe of cases more
accurately reflects our own view of the alliance concept. We demonstrate in our empirical
analysis below that nonaggression pacts differ in their effects on at least some important
aspects of relations.
With this operational definition in hand, we compiled our universe of cases. In es-
tablishing the list of potential cases to be included in the ATOP data, we relied both on
document collections and on secondary sources. We consulted secondary sources to under-
stand the diplomatic history of an era and tracked all potential alliance agreements identified
by diplomatic historians. For more recent eras (e.g., postCold War) for which fewer diplo-
matic histories are available, we searched news sources (specifically Keesings Record of
World Events, Facts on File, and Lexis Nexis) to find references to relevant agreements.
We then used document collections (e.g., the Consolidated Treaty Series, the League of
Nations Treaty Series, the British Foreign and State Papers, and the United Nations Treaty
Series) to locate the referenced agreements. Sometimes we found agreements in the docu-
ment collections that were not on the candidate lists we developed from secondary sources.
In these cases, we did our best to confirm through secondary sources that the agreements
were ratified and did come into effect. In many cases, agreements that we had identified
as possible alliances were not available in standard treaty collections. In these cases, we
pursued multiple avenues to obtain the original sources. For older agreements, we tracked
references in secondary sources, which often led us to country-specific publications. For
186 B. A. Leeds and M. Mattes

newer agreements we contacted the ministries of foreign affairs and/or embassies of the
signatory countries and requested copies of the documents.
We were quite successful in locating a large number of the agreements that we thought
might qualify as alliances according to our definition. Our success was not universal, how-
ever, and some similarities can be found among the cases that may be missing from the
final dataset. For instance, almost all of the candidate agreements that we were unable
to locate for the Cold War period were alliances among African and/or Middle Eastern
states. These states are much less likely to file their agreements with the United Nations
or other document collectors, primarily due to bureaucratic capacity.1 Given that a large
proportion of our postCold War documents were provided by foreign ministry personnel,
states whose ministries were unwilling to provide us with documents are underrepresented.
Thus, it may appear that certain post-Soviet Republics signed far more alliances than others
in their postindependence period, but some of that variance is captured by our ability to
obtain the agreements. To allow users to evaluate the importance of this bias to their re-
search, we provide a list of candidate agreements that we have not located on the ATOP web
page.
In a small percentage of cases (33 of 648), we included an alliance in our dataset
without locating the primary document. If multiple secondary sources make it clear that the
agreement would meet our qualifications, or if a secondary source includes enough directly
quoted material from an agreement for us to evaluate its appropriateness for our dataset,
we include the alliance and code the variables for which we have information, with the
remainder coded as missing.2

Alliance Characteristics and Their Variance Over Time

We have chosen to examine military alliances during four historical periods, the century
before WWI, the time from the start of WWI through the end of WWII, the Cold War
era, and the postCold War era.3 As we report in Table 1, 99 alliances were signed before
1914 (an average of 1 per year), 102 between 1914 and 1944 (3.4 per year), 174 during
the Cold War period (19451989) (4 per year), and 163 since the end of the Cold War
(12.5 per year).4 Thus, the number of alliances formed has increased significantly over
time. When we look at the average number of alliances in effect in a given year, the
pattern of increasing numbers of alliances over time is even more apparent. This is not
surprising, given the substantial increase in the number of states from 1815 to today.5

1
Interview with Luca Castellani, Associate Legal Officer, United Nations Treaty Office, April 7,
2003.
2
The coding process and coding rules are described in more detail in the Alliance Treaty Obli-
gations and Provisions (ATOP) codebook, posted at http://atop.rice.edu.
3
There are certainly other equally valid points at which to divide alliance history. Some might
argue, for instance, that distinguishing the pre-1914 period from the interwar era is unwarranted since
multipolarity characterized both periods. Yet following WWI, some prominent diplomats argued
for dramatic changes in the role of alliances, with Woodrow Wilson, in particular, advocating the
League of Nations collective security system rather than a continuation of balance of power politics.
We believe that analyzing whether the nature and design of alliances changed along with prevailing
discourse is useful.
4
These calculations concern only the 538 agreements that provide for active cooperation in con-
flict with outside states. We discuss the features of the 110 agreements that specify only nonaggression
obligations below.
5
We use the EUGene computer program to determine the number of states in the international
system per year (Bennett & Stam, 2000a).
 TABLE 1 Description of alliances in Alliance Treaty Obligations and Provisions (ATOP) dataset, 18152003

Periods

Variable 18152003 18151913 19141944 19451989 19902003

New alliances formed 538 99 102 174 163

Average number of alliances in effect per 37 8 30 65 161
year
Average number of states in international 71 36 59 121 185
system per year
Percentage of new alliances bilateral 82.9% 68.7% 80.4% 82.2% 93.9%
Percentage of new alliances including at 56.3% 79.8% 75.5% 49.4% 37.4%
least one major power
Percentage of new alliances with asymmetric 16.2% 35.4% 16.7% 18.4% 1.8%
obligations
Percentage of new alliances signed when a 12.8% 15.2% 31.4% 6.3% 6.8%
member is at war
Average duration of new alliances (alliances 10.3 years 8.1 years 9.1 years 13.1 years 4 years
in effect not included in calculation) (35.8% in (1% in (0% in (21.3% in (95% in
effect) effect) effect) effect) effect)

Excluding nonagression pacts.

187
188 B. A. Leeds and M. Mattes

Most alliances (82.9%, 446) are bilateral, and the percentage of bilateral alliances has
increased steadily over time. However, while an increasing number of bilateral alliances has
been formed, multilateral alliances have tended to become bigger over time. Before WWI,
the mean number of members in multilateral alliances is 3.8. Between WWI and the end
of WWII this number increases to 6.1. During the Cold War, the average number of parties
to a multilateral alliance grows even larger to 8.9 members. After the end of the Cold War,
however, new multilateral alliances have tended to be somewhat smaller: on average, new
multilateral alliances formed since 1990 include 6.9 members. It should be noted, however,
that many of the multilateral alliances formed during the Cold War remain in effect, and
that few new multilateral alliances have been formed since 1990.
Prior to the Cold War, the majority of alliances formed around major powers.6 From
1815 to 1913, 79.8% of alliances include at least one major power as a member, and
about 41% of alliances include only major powers. While fewer alliances in the 19141944
period include only major powers (15.7%), 75.5% still include at least one major power;
alliances among minor powers remain relatively uncommon. Interestingly, however, this
pattern changes during the Cold War. Major powers are much more likely to form alliances
with minor powers (as scholars would expect under bipolarity). In fact, only about 2% of the
alliances formed during and after the Cold War are alliances solely among major powers.
What is perhaps more interesting, though, is that alliance formation among minor powers
increases. Even during the Cold War, alliance politics did not revolve solely around the two
superpowers; slightly more than 50% of the alliances formed include no major powers at
all. New alliances formed after the Cold War are dominated by minor-minor pacts; almost
two thirds of the new alliances formed include no major powers.7
Among the major powers, Russia/Soviet Union is particularly active in alliance politics:
23.4% (126) of all alliances in the full time period involve Russia/Soviet Union and 20.7%
(36) of the alliances formed during the Cold War include the Soviet Union. On the other
hand, the United States only participates in 4.8% (26) of all alliances and in 12.6% (22) of
all Cold War alliances. As has been frequently noted by historians, the United States was
a rare participant in alliance politics prior to the Cold War. Even since 1945, however, the
U.S. has tended to rely on large and long-lasting alliances, with few new alliance formations
after the 1950s. In fact, 16 of the 26 alliances formed by the United States were formed
between 1945 and 1960. By comparison, France has always been very active in alliance
politics. France is a member of 16.5% (89) of all alliances and participates in 11.5% (20)
of alliances formed during the Cold War, almost as many as the United States.
In addition to the number of alliances involving major powers, minor powers, and
combinations of major and minor powers, the ATOP dataset includes information about the
symmetry of obligations among members. Some alliances require different commitments
from different members. For example, one state might promise to defend the other in return
for the use of bases in a states territory, a promise of neutrality in all outside conflicts
in which the defender becomes involved, or a commitment that the state will consult the
defender on its foreign policy and make no competing outside commitments. Approximately
16% (87) of all alliances in the dataset are written with asymmetric obligations. Most of
these occur in the period before 1914: 35.4% (35) of the 99 alliances during that time period
commit members to different obligations. In the interwar period and during the Cold War,

6
We use the Correlates of War projects designation of major powers (Small & Singer, 1982).
7
While the proportion of minor powers in comparison to major powers has increased over time,
this alone cannot account for the change in the make-up of alliances. Minor-minor dyads were 69%
of all possible dyads between 1816 and 1913, 78% of all possible dyads between 1914 and 1944, 91%
of all dyads from 1945 to 1989, and 93% of all dyads from 1990 to 2002. These calculations were
performed using the EUGene computer program (Bennett & Stam, 2000a).
 Alliance Politics during the Cold War 189

around 17% of the alliances formed are asymmetric, and the percentage of asymmetric
alliances drops to only 1.8% (3) after 1990.
Alliances between major and minor powers have a greater tendency than alliances
among states with equal power to be asymmetric in their obligations, but asymmetry in
obligations is not exclusively found in pacts among states with great power disparities, and
most major-minor alliances are not asymmetric in their obligations. More than 27% (66)
of all major-minor alliances are asymmetric, while 12.5% (8) of the major-major alliances
are asymmetric, and 5.5% (13) of the minor-minor alliances specify different obligations
for the members.
Only a relatively small proportion of alliances were signed when at least one of the
members was at war. About 13% (69) of all alliances are wartime alliances. However, the
percentage of alliances signed by members at war with another state has declined over time.
Before 1914 15.2% (15) alliances are wartime alliances and, not surprisingly, this number
increases for the period that spans WWI and WWII: 31.4% (32) are wartime alliances. After
WWII, the number of wartime alliances decreases significantly. During the Cold War, only
a little more than 6% (11) of alliances are concluded when at least one member is at war
and since 1990, 6.8% (11) of alliances formed involve members at war.8
Alliances also seem to be lasting longer as time goes on. The average alliance duration
prior to 1914 was about 8 years.9 Alliances signed between 1914 and 1944 lasted a little
more than 9 years on average. The average duration of alliances signed since 1945 is clearly
longer; those formed during the Cold War that have already terminated lasted more than 13
years on average. This number is deceiving, however, since more than 21% of the alliances
formed between 1945 and 1989 are still in effect; all of these have lasted longer than 15
years, and many of them much longer. Only 5% of the alliances formed since 1990 have
ended; thus calculating the average duration of recent alliances is meaningless. The average
duration for alliances in the dataset as a whole is 10.3 years, but this number, too, may be
deceiving since more than a third of the alliances included in the dataset are ongoing.

Alliance Obligations
One of our main goals in collecting the ATOP data was to understand more precisely the
promises that allies make to one another. Our coding scheme tracks five different types of
core obligations: defense, offense, neutrality, nonaggression, and consultation. Two of these,
defense and offense, require active assistance in times of war. The remaining obligations
require actions short of active military assistance.
We define a defense obligation as a promise of active military support in the event of
attack on the sovereignty or territorial integrity of one or more alliance members. An offense
obligation, on the other hand, is a promise of active military support in any circumstances

8
We use the Correlates of War interstate war data to determine which states were involved in
war at the time of alliance formation (Sarkees, 2000). Since the Correlates of War interstate war data
ends with the 1991 Gulf War, we include militarized interstate disputes with a hostility level of five
as wars for the period after 1991 (Ghosn, Palmer, & Bremer, 2004; Jones, Bremer, & Singer, 1996).
Wars are not distributed evenly throughout the 18152003 period. By far, the greatest proportion of
state-years at war occurs in the 19141944 period, followed by the pre-1914 period, the Cold War,
and the postCold War period.
9
Duration is measured from date of signature of the first states to join the alliance to date of
termination for the last states to leave the alliance. We code signature dates rather than ratification
dates as the beginning of alliances because we believe that leaders begin to behave as if the alliance is
in effect immediately after signature. If an agreement fails ratification, it never appears in the dataset.
Alliances that continue in effect as of December 31, 2003 are not included in the calculation. See
Leeds and Savun (2007) or the ATOP codebook for explanation of the coding of alliance termination
dates.
190 B. A. Leeds and M. Mattes

TABLE 2 Comparison of alliances containing only commitments to nonaggression with

alliances committing members to policy coordination vs. outside states, 18152003

Variable Nonaggression only All other alliances

Percentage bilateral 90.0% 82.9%

Percentage including at least 29.1% 56.3%
one major power
Average duration (alliances in 10.3 years (59% in effect) 10.3 years (36% in effect)
effect not included in
calculation) (percentage in
effect as of Dec. 31, 2003)
Average duration as of Dec. 31, 15.0 years 12.1 years
2003 including agreements in
effect

Sour ce: ATOP.

not precipitated by attack on the sovereignty or territorial integrity of an alliance member.

Whenever the active assistance promised goes beyond defending the current territorial
integrity and sovereignty of alliance members, we code an offense commitment, whether
or not the goals of the alliance are to change the status quo or to protect it.10
Neutrality commitments are promises not to assist an allys adversary should conflict
emerge between a member of the alliance and an outside state. Neutrality commitments not
only obligate a state to refrain from joining a conflict on the side of an adversary, but also
from facilitating the adversarys goals in any way. Thus, neutrality statements involve some
active coordination in the event of military conflict. Nonaggression commitments, on the
other hand, commit the allies to refrain from the use of force in their own relations, but not
necessarily to coordinate actions against outside powers.
To qualify as an alliance with consultation obligations, an agreement must require
the members to consult with one another in the event of a potential military crisis with
the aim of coordinating their actions. We require that the agreement specify consultation
specific to potential military threat; a vague reference to consultation on issues affecting
common interests is not sufficient. We also require that there be an indication that the aim of
the consultation will be to pursue a joint response; information sharing about independent
responses is also not adequate to qualify an agreement as an alliance by our definition.
Thus, while consultation pacts do not commit the states to joint action, they do commit
the states to attempt to develop a coordinated response and indicate some level of intended
cooperation against military threat.
Our coding scheme allows for these core obligations to exist in any combination, and
we find that only about 44% (286) of all alliances signed between 1815 and 2003 contain
only one of these obligations. The remaining 56% (362) contain two or more types of
obligations. About 40% (257) specify two types of obligations, 15% (96) contain three
types of obligations, and 1.4% (9) include four types of obligations. No single agreement
includes all five obligations.
We have expressed the view that agreements that commit the states to nonaggression
only may be different in kind from alliances that commit the members to active cooperation
in the event of conflict with outside parties. We present evidence supporting this view in

10
Leeds (2003) and Leeds and colleagues (2002) provide examples of defense pacts, offense
pacts, and defense/offense pacts.
 Alliance Politics during the Cold War 191

TABLE 3 Obligations Included in Newly Formed Alliances, 18152003

Percentage of new Period

alliances formed
during period 18152003 18151913 19141944 19451989 19902003

Defense, but not offense 36.6% 34.3% 29.4% 63.8% 13.5%

Offense, but not defense 2.6% 12.1% 0 1.1% 0
Both defense and offense 12.3% 27.3% 17.6% 12.1% 0
Neither defense nor offense 48.5% 26.3% 52.9% 23% 86.5%
Neutrality 20.82% 22.2% 39.2% 4% 26.4%
Consultation 65.8% 50.5% 49% 62.6% 89%
Only consultation 15.2% 14.1% 13.7% 9.2% 23.3%
Conditional promises 57.6% 77.8% 80.4% 37.9% 52.2%

Excluding nonagression pacts.
Source: ATOP.

Table 2. Agreements that include only nonaggression promises and no commitments to

coordinate policy in the event of conflict with outside powers are more likely to be bilateral
and more likely to be formed among minor powers only. A majority of the nonaggression
pacts that have been formed remain in effect; they are particularly durable. None of the
nonaggression pacts in our dataset include asymmetric promises or conditional obligations.
Thus, the majority of our descriptive analysis excludes nonaggression pacts.
We present data on the obligations included in the remaining alliance agreements in
Table 3. Slightly more than half (277) of the 538 alliances include commitments to active
assistance (defense and/or offense). The remainder include commitments to neutrality and/or
consultation. Alliances designed with only commitments to offensive action are rare and
becoming rarer over time; virtually all (12 of 14) were formed prior to 1914. It is less
uncommon, however, to find agreements that include promises both for defensive and
offensive action. About 12% (66) of the alliances in the full period are defense-offense
pacts, but the prevalence of these pacts has decreased over time, from about 27% prior
to WWI, to almost 18% between 1913 and 1944, to only 12% in the period of the Cold
War. There have been no pacts signed with offensive commitments of any kind since the
end of the Cold War. The Cold War, however, was the period with the greatest percentage
of pacts requiring active assistance, with 77% including provisions for either defensive or
offensive support. This was followed closely by the pre-WWI period, during which almost
74% of alliances included defense and/or offense obligations. In the 19141944 period,
active assistance pacts made up 47% of alliances signed, and since 1990, only 13.5% of
new alliances have had any requirements at all for active assistance in the event of military
conflict. Of course, many of the active assistance pacts of the Cold War era remain in effect
today.
Neutrality pacts, on the other hand, were quite uncommon during the Cold War. Only
seven agreements (4%) included any discussion of neutrality, whether alone or in com-
bination with other obligations. This seems to fit the characterization of a tight bipolar
system in which neutrality is not an option. On the other hand, commitments to neutrality
were very popular in the 19141944 period, perhaps because the greatest hope of many
states was to stay out of conflict; almost 40% of the agreements signed between WWI
and WWII included neutrality commitments. There has been a resurgence of neutrality
commitments since the end of the Cold War, with 26.4% of new alliances including such
promises.
192 B. A. Leeds and M. Mattes

Commitments to consult together with the aim of coordinating actions in the event
of conflict are very commonly included in alliance agreements, often in combination with
other commitments. Two thirds of the alliances in the full time period include consultation
commitments. The propensity to include explicit promises of consultation has increased
over time, with nearly 90% of the postCold War alliances including such language. Com-
mitments for consultation alone, without promises of defensive or offensive support or
for neutrality, are relatively rare. Only 15% of the alliances in the dataset include only
promises of consultation. The postCold War era is an exception, however, with 23.3% of
new agreements promising consultation alone.
More than half of the alliances in the dataset, 57.6% (310), specify conditions under
which obligations are invoked. In other words, fewer than half of the agreements in the
dataset provide for unconditional supportdefense against any threat, consultation in any
crisis, etc. Most alliances specify carefully the circumstances to which they do and do not ap-
ply. The most common limiting conditions specify that the alliance applies only to conflicts
with specific adversaries (20%, 108 alliances) or to conflicts in specific locations (22.5%,
121 alliances). Many neutrality promises are conditional upon the ally being attacked (77
of 112, 69%), and some are void in the event of aggressive action by a signatory.
Generally, alliances formed in earlier eras are more likely to contain conditional state-
ments. 77.8% (77) of the alliances formed before WWI specify conditions for the invocation
of alliance obligations, and between 1914 and 1944, 80.4% (82) contain limits on obliga-
tions. During the Cold War period, the number of alliances with precise conditions for the
invocation of obligations drops to 37.9% (66). After 1990 the percentage increases again
to 52.2% (85).

Alliance Institutionalization
The second major goal driving the ATOP data collection was a desire to understand how
and why state leaders design alliances with varying institutional structures. As a result, we
have collected information both about the requirements for military coordination and about
the degree of formalization of the commitment. We present evidence in Table 4.
While our definition requires that agreements be official written instruments, there are
more and less formal written instruments that qualify. We are particularly interested in the
decision of leaders to form treaties that must be ratified according to official domestic polit-
ical processes rather than to rely on diplomatic notes or executive agreements. Throughout

TABLE 4 Institutionalization of newly formed alliances, 18152003

Percentage of new Period

alliances formed
during period 18152003 18151913 19141944 19451989 19902003

Treaty (requires ratification) 80.8% 74.8% 74.5% 73.8% 95.7%

Any portion secret 11.9% 46.4% 15.7% 1.1% 0.6%
Permanent bureaucratic 9.1% 5.1% 2.9% 17.8% 6.1%
organization
High level of peacetime 15.1% 15.2% 11.8% 24.1% 7.4%
military coordination
Moderate level of peacetime 22.1% 35.4% 15.7% 17.2% 23.3%
military coordination

Excluding nonagression pacts.
Source: ATOP.
 Alliance Politics during the Cold War 193

the full time period, more than 80% of alliances are established in the form of treaties that
require ratification by the members. Throughout the period before 1990, approximately
three fourths of alliances were formed as treaties. Since 1990, virtually every new alliance
has been in the form of a treaty requiring domestic ratification.
A practice that seems to have undergone much more dramatic change over time, how-
ever, is the attempt to keep provisions of alliance agreements secret. Slightly fewer than half
of the alliances signed between 1815 and 1913 include commitments for the signatories to
keep secret at least some portion of the agreement. After WWI, political leaders grew wary
of secrecy in diplomatic relations, and a norm of transparency in the conduct of diplomacy
developed. As a consequence, only about 16% (16) of alliances concluded between 1914
and 1944 contain clauses requiring that the full agreement or some part be kept secret. We
have identified only three agreements signed since 1945 that require that their existence or
contents remain secret.11 We are aware, however, that as more documents become declas-
sified, we may find that there were other secret agreements that are not yet known to us; it
is much harder to judge what secret agreements exist for a recent period of history than for
the more distant past.
We also keep track of whether alliance agreements require creation of a permanent bu-
reaucratic structure. This turns out to be a relatively rare requirement, but one that increased
in popularity during the Cold War; 5.1% of alliances formed before 1914 had permanent or-
ganizations attached to them, but only 2.9% of the alliances formed between 1914 and 1944
did. Nearly 18% of alliances formed during the Cold War included these organizations, and
6.1% of alliances signed since the end of the Cold War include them. On this dimension,
therefore, alliances seem to be becoming more heavily institutionalized and formal over
time, although it may be too early to tell whether this is purely a Cold War phenomenon or
will continue into the postCold War era.
On the other hand, the proportion of alliances providing for institutionalized military
cooperation during peacetime does not follow this clear pattern. While many perceive
that alliances are steadily becoming more institutionalized in the extent of their military
cooperation, this is not the case according to our analysis.
Following Leeds and Anac (2005), we create a three-category index that measures the
extent to which allies are required to engage in peacetime military cooperation by their
written alliance agreement. We code alliances that require an integrated military command
during both peacetime and wartime, alliances that require members to conduct a common
defense policy, and alliances that require joint troop placements or for one state to establish
bases on the territory of another state as highly institutionalized. In our view, agreements
that require any of these three actions show a high level of integration in military planning.12
Among the alliances that do not include any of these three provisions associated with
high levels of military institutionalization, we identify a category of agreements that include
a moderate level of peacetime coordination. These are alliances that do any of the following:
(1) require official contact among members of the armed forces of the member states for
planning and coordination during peacetime; (2) create organizations to coordinate military
activity; (3) provide for exchange of training and/or technology; (4) specify explicit military
plans, including contribution levels, for future military conflicts; or (5) specify plans for the
subordination of one military to another during conflict.
More than one third (200) of all alliances have either a high or moderate level of
military institutionalization. By our coding scheme, 22% (119) provide for moderate levels

11
The three agreements are the 1956 offense pact among Israel, France, and Britain; the 1960
defense agreement between France and the Malagasy Republic (now Madagascar); and the joint
defense agreement signed by the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council in 2000.
12
See Leeds and Anac (2005) for further description of these provisions.
194 B. A. Leeds and M. Mattes

of institutionalization, and about 15% (81) specify significant military institutionalization.

Before WWI, about 50% (50) of the new alliances provide for some kind of military
institutionalization. This percentage drops to 27.5% (28) between 1914 and 1945 but rises
again to 41.4% (72) during the Cold War. Another drop occurs after the end of the Cold
War, when only 30.7% (50) of the newly formed alliances are militarily institutionalized.
This pattern can be explained in part by trends in pacts requiring military action and/or
consultation, which are most likely to involve military institutionalization. Predictably,
neutrality pacts are the least likely type of agreement to involve military coordination, and
neutrality pacts were particularly common in the interwar period and become common
again in the postCold War era.
During the Cold War, a higher proportion of the alliances involving military coordina-
tion fall at the higher end of our institutionalization scale. All of the cases in which allies
promise to pursue a common and integrated defense policy occur after 1945, and 21 of
the 29 cases in which states commit to an integrated military command during both peace-
time and wartime occur after 1945 (14 during the Cold War, and 7 since the Cold War).
Troop placement provisions occur in relatively stable numbers (about 12%) throughout the
dataset, with a slight increase during the Cold War. At the highest levels, where integration
of defense policies and/or military forces are involved, therefore, provisions for military
coordination have increased over time. When we look at a wider range of activities that
contribute to peacetime military planning, however, there is little evidence of change over
time, and thus it is not clear that military coordination as a whole is on the upswing.

Other Design Features

Finally, we are also interested in the extent to which alliances serve additional purposes
besides coordination of military activities versus an outside threat. Table 5 demonstrates
distinct trends over time. In the earlier years of our study, alliances were more specifically
aimed at particular military threats, while in the later years, it becomes more common for
alliance obligations to be included in broader treaties concerned with many aspects of rela-
tions. While before 1914 it was common for alliances to discuss particular contributions that
member states would make to military efforts and how they would divide gains that might
arise from these endeavors (such provisions are included in 16.3% of the agreements), these
provisions become exceedingly rare as time goes on. Meanwhile, discussion of cooperation
in other issue areas increases dramatically to the point that it is now the norm to include
alliance commitments in overarching treaties involving other commitments as well.

TABLE 5 Other design features of newly formed alliances, 18152003

Percentage of new Period

alliances formed during
period including 18152003 18151913 19141944 19451989 19902003

Discussion of 4.2% 16.3% 3.9% 1.2% 0%

contributions/division of
gains
Discussion of cooperation in 58.6% 17.4% 24.5% 68.7% 95%
other issue areas
Mention of specific source of 28.4% 65.7% 33.3% 29.1% 1.3%
threat
Provisions for internal 16.7% 10.2% 28.4% 11.7% 18.2%
conflict resolution
 Alliance Politics during the Cold War 195

Nearly two thirds of all alliances formed before 1914 mention a specific source of
threat faced by members of the alliance. Whether or not their commitments were limited
to addressing this threat, the discussion of a specific threat within the agreement suggests
that the parties were motivated by the possible emergence of specific crises. This trend has
steadily decreased over time; even in the Cold War era only 29% of agreements mentioned
a specific source of threat, and to do so is quite uncommon in the post Cold War era. On the
other hand, the use of alliances as conflict-management mechanisms among the signatories
may be increasing (see, for instance, Wallander & Keohane, 1999). Before 1914, 10.2% of
alliances included discussion of mechanisms for managing conflict among the allies (for
instance, mediation, arbitration, or some other arrangement). This increased to 28.4% from
1914 through 1944, declined to 11.7% during the Cold War, and has increased again to
18.2% since 1990.

A Replication: Are Allies Prone to Peace?

A primary reason we are interested in studying alliances and their design is because we
believe alliances affect other types of behavior, and particularly propensities for war and
peace. One question that has been addressed repeatedly is whether states that share alliances
are less likely to engage in militarized conflict with one another, either because alliances are
observable indicators of underlying common interests or because alliances create incentives
to avoid militarized disputes. While the bulk of evidence does suggest that allied states are
less likely to fight each other (e.g. Bremer, 1992; Maoz & Russett, 1993; Russett, Oneal,
& Davis, 1998), there are also studies that question the pacifying effect of alliances and
suggest that this effect may vary over time. For example, Oneal, Russett, and Berbaum
(2003) find no significant relationship between alliances and fatal militarized disputes and
Bennett and Stam conclude that there is not strong support for alliances having a strong
and clear effect on conflict propensities (2000b: 675). Finally, Russett and Oneal (2001)
report that, after WWII, alliances have a significant conflict-reducing effect, but alliances
have no statistically significant effect on the occurrence of conflict in the pre-WWII era.
Russett and Oneal (2001) examine the influence of many political, economic, and ge-
ographic factors on the likelihood of militarized conflict for a sample including politically
relevant dyad-years from 1885 to 1991. Using the replication dataset provided by the au-
thors, we are able to reproduce the findings reported in Table A5.1 of their book (Russett
and Oneal, 2001: 316), and we present these in Table 6, column 1.13 With an operational-
ization based upon the Correlates of War formal alliance dataset (Gibler & Sarkees, 2004),
Russett and Oneal (2001) report that allies are less likely to become involved in milita-
rized disputes with one another. In column 2 of Table 6, we substitute a dummy variable
representing whether the two states in the dyad shared any military alliance in the given
year according to the ATOP dataset. While the correlation between the COW and ATOP
indicators for the Russett and Oneal (2001) sample is only 0.7, the results are similar.14

13
Please see the original study for descriptions of operationalization and analysis techniques. All
the statistical models presented in Table 6 rely on identical specifications and analysis techniques.
The only changes are in the temporal domain and in the operationalization of the variable for shared
alliances. While Russett and Oneal indicate in their table that the temporal domain is 1886 to 1992,
the replication dataset includes observations from 1885 to 1991, and analysis of that dataset produces
results identical to their table.
14
This low correlation seems to be peculiar to this sample. The correlation between a dummy
variable representing any shared alliance according to COW and according to ATOP in a nondirected
dyad dataset for 18162000 drawn using the EUGene computer program (Bennett & Stam, 2000a)
is 0.8. We believe that some of the difference can be accounted for based on variance in coding rules
across the two datasets, and some can be accounted for by differences in strategies for identifying and
collecting alliance agreements.
 TABLE 6 Replication of Russett and Oneal (2001, chapter 5).
Using ATOP data to measure shared alliances logistic regression of explanatory variables on involvement in a militarized dispute

196
Russett and 18851991 18851991 18851944 18851944 18851944 19451991 19451991 19451991
Oneal (2001) ATOP ATOP COW ATOP ATOP COW ATOP ATOP
Variable Table A5.1 alliances nonaggression alliances alliances nonaggression alliances alliances nonaggression

Shared alliance 0.539 0.113 0.755

(COW) (0.159) (0.187) (0.193)
Shared alliance 0.248 0.071 0.350
(ATOP) (0.118) (0.188) (0.134)
Nonaggression pact 0.178 0.004 0.265
only (ATOP) (0.208) (0.491) (0.211)
Alliance other than 0.268 0.083 0.378
nonaggression (0.132) (0.187) (0.158)
(ATOP)
Lower democracy 0.061 0.059 0.058 0.057 0.056 0.056 0.047 0.045 0.045
(0.009) (0.009) (0.009) (0.011) (0.011) (0.011) (0.012) (0.012) (0.012)
Lower trade 52.924 50.543 50.377 30.131 30.157 29.960 43.459 39.338 39.360
dependence (13.405) (13.138) (13.092) (13.466) (13.445) (13.534) (22.628) (21.327) (21.338)
International 0.013 0.015 0.015 0.003 0.003 0.003 0.022 0.025 0.025
organizations (0.004) (0.004) (0.004) (0.007) (0.007) (0.007) (0.006) (0.005) (0.005)
Power ratio 0.318 0.319 0.318 0.370 0.370 0.370 0.346 0.351 0.350
(0.043) (0.043) (0.043) (0.068) (0.069) (0.069) (0.060) (0.061) (0.061)
Noncontiguity 0.989 0.948 0.952 0.895 0.892 0.892 1.166 1.118 1.124
(0.168) (0.169) (0.170) (0.175) (0.177) (0.177) (0.249) (0.250) (0.254)
Log distance 0.376 0.368 0.367 0.273 0.273 0.271 0.438 0.425 0.424
(0.065) (0.067) (0.067) (0.065) (0.066) (0.068) (0.084) (0.089) (0.090)
Minor powers only 0.647 0.725 0.723 0.968 0.969 0.971 0.840 1.005 1.001
(0.178) (0.181) (0.180) (0.262) (0.263) (0.264) (0.273) (0.282) (0.281)
Constant 0.128 0.224 0.234 1.561 1.567 1.578 0.657 0.469 0.456
(0.536) (0.555) (0.558) (0.555) (0.565) (0.582) (0.695) (0.741) (0.743)
Wald chi2 228.11 228.6 228.74 110.38 117.78 118.43 187.18 177.72 178.61
N 39,988 39,988 39,988 11,758 11,758 11,758 28,229 28,229 28,229

p < .01 p < .05 p < .10.
 Alliance Politics during the Cold War 197

Shared alliances are negatively and statistically significantly related to dyadic dispute in-
volvement.
The ATOP dataset, however, allows us to distinguish among types of alliances, and we
have argued here that agreements that promise only nonaggression and have no commit-
ments for active coordination of policies in the event of crises involving outside states are
different in kind, and perhaps in effect, from other alliances.15 In column 3 of Table 6 we
provide additional evidence in support of this view. While alliances that include promises
for active policy coordination (i.e., defense, offense, neutrality, and consultation pacts) are
negatively related to dispute involvement, sharing a nonaggression pact does not bear a
statistically significant relationship to peace.
At first, this may seem odd. If states that sign nonaggression pacts are not less prone to
conflict, why would anyone sign a nonaggression pact? It would seem that nonaggression
pacts do not have their desired effects. This is one possibility. On the other hand, it may
also be that leaders only sign nonaggression pacts when they are particularly concerned
about the outbreak of conflict, and thus that dyads with nonaggression pacts have a baseline
propensity for conflict (not entirely accounted for by the control variables) that is higher
than other dyads in our sample but is mitigated by these agreements. Distinguishing these
possibilities is a matter for future research.
We next divide the sample into preCold War and Cold War periods. Regardless of the
dataset used to determine which states are allied, we find that shared alliance commitments
bear no relationship to dispute involvement in the 18851944 period. In the 19451991
period, however, states that share alliances with one another are less likely to engage in
militarized conflict. Again, however, nonaggression pacts are an exception.
This poses another puzzle for future work. It will be interesting to pursue further
research aimed at distinguishing whether a change in the alliances themselves (perhaps
the movement toward more encompassing agreements) explains the change in effect, or
whether other underlying conditions more appropriately account for what appears to be the
changing impact of alliances on peace among members over time.

Conclusions
The empirical evidence produced by the ATOP data-collection effort supports some con-
tentions regarding the differences in alliance politics under bipolarity and multipolarity, but
not others. Alliances are more enduring (and perhaps in turn less flexible) during the Cold
War, neutrality pacts are rare, and overt military conflict among allies is less common. On
the other hand, the focus on superpower conflict is less apparent than expected, with a slight
majority of alliances being formed among minor powers and fewer alliances with explicitly
asymmetric obligations than in earlier periods.
While we find some evidence of the distinctness of Cold War alliance politics, we
find more striking a pattern that has continued since the end of the Cold Wara change
in the relative frequency of what we might call reactive alliancesthose formed to deal
with a specific crisis or threatand standing alliances those designed for general
deterrence of any eventual threat that might arise (see Ritter, 2004). Beginning in the Cold
War and continuing today, alliances are less likely to be conditional, less likely to mention
specific threats, more likely to be explicitly linked to other areas of cooperation, more likely

15
While the Correlates of War formal alliance dataset indicates three types of alliancesdefense
pacts, neutrality/nonaggression pacts, and ententeseach agreement is assigned to only one category
based on its highest level of commitment. Thus, using the COW dataset one cannot separate agree-
ments that have only promises of nonaggression from those that have promises of neutrality or that
also include promises of consultation.
198 B. A. Leeds and M. Mattes

to be connected to a bureaucratic organization, and more likely to endure. Wallander and

Keohane (1999) suggest that these broader institutions are likely to evolve over time as risks
and threats change, serving a variety of needs for participants; for instance, they should be
useful for conflict management between the allies as well as protection against external
threats. If this expectation is correct, it might explain why the pacific effect of alliances
seems to be stronger in more recent periods, and would also suggest that this pattern may
continue.
Thus, our final assessment is that there are distinct trends over time in alliance politics,
and that while each of the four eras is unique in some aspects (for instance in the relative
prevalence of commitments for active assistance vs. neutrality and consultation), the trend
toward larger, more enduring, and encompassing cooperative arrangements among states
seems clear. We plan to continue to explore these and other issues in the future.

Acknowledgments
Previous versions of this paper were presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political
Science Association, Chicago, Illinois, April 710, 2005 and at the Jan Tinbergen Peace
Science Conference, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, June 2729, 2005. We thank Brian Lai
for comments on a previous draft and John Oneal and Bruce Russett for sharing their data.
All statistics reported herein are based on version 3.0 of the Alliance Treaty Obligations
and Provisions (ATOP) data, which is available at http://atop.rice.edu. This research was
supported by the National Science Foundation (SES-0095983). Portions of this research
were completed while Leeds was serving as a Campbell National Fellow and Susan Louise
Dyer Peace Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. We thank all those
who have assisted in this large data collection effort, but particularly Andrew Long, Sara
Mitchell, Jeff Ritter, and Burcu Savun.

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