Measuring and Assessing Latent Variation in Alliance Design and Objectives
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The alliance literature is bifurcated between an empirically-driven approach utilizing rigorous data, and a theoretically-motivated approach offering a rich conceptualization of alliances. Within the strength of one, lays the weakness of the other. While the former invokes a non-comprehensive view of alliances that emphasizes capability aggregation, the latter does not provide a systematic or rigorous approach to uncover empirical insights. I unify these perspectives, enumerating the roles a state can adopt within the alliance network and considering the relationship between that role and how they design their local alliance network to accomplish role-based objectives. To uncover this variation, I employ a novel methodological tool, the ego-TERGM. Results indicate that states form alliances to accomplish a variety of foreign policy objectives beyond capability aggregation, including the consolidation of non-security ties and the pursuit of domestic reforms in addition to security-based motivations.
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