Peace Rules! The impact of a rule-based international order on peace

Abstract

Multilateral governance is currently under severe pressure, which some see as reason for alarm and others as ground for rejoicing. To investigate conflicting claims on the causal impact of the multilateral architecture on peace, we have assembled a novel global dataset of international treaties covering the years 1850-2014. We draw on exogenous variation from the heterogeneous impact of global shifts in the frequency of international treaties and in regional networks. We find that exogenous surges in multilateralism foster peace in asymmetric dyads, protecting small countries from wars with greater powers. Using large language models we are able to investigate the mechanisms at work and key peace-promoting ingredients of international treaties.