War on the Pitch? Exploring the Relationship between Nationalism and Interstate Conflict

Abstract

Some scholars argue that nationalism can create “national enemies,” contribute to incorrrect strategic assumptions, provoke domestic interest groups that favor war, permit the suppression of opposition groups, and initiate nationalist wars. However, other scholars contend that nationalist sentiments might not have enough force to influence the likelihood of war and the disparities in power between countries –and interdependencies among them –might attenuate the effects of nationalism on state behavior. I attempt to resolve this disagreement by using data on the World Cup qualification processes and the militarized Interstate Dispute dataset to estimate a regression discontinuity model of the relationship between participation in the World Cup, which I assume to increase nationalistic attitudes, and the probability of engaging in interstate conflict. I find that World Cup participation has a positive relationship with interstate conflict, but my estimates vary substantially according to the way that my regressions are specified.