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Risky cascading transitions in international relationships
Mingyuan Zhang1, Shenwen Chen1, Wenbo Du1
1School of Electronic and Information Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, China.
PNAS Nexus
|January 30, 2023
Summary
Even minor shifts in diplomatic relations can spark major international conflict cascades. Analyzing global events reveals that weaker transitions often initiate the largest cascades, impacting trade and collaboration.
Area of Science:
- International Relations
- Network Science
- Computational Social Science
Background:
- International politics frequently involves changing diplomatic relations.
- Such changes can lead to cascading "friend-to-enemy" transitions with significant global impact.
- Previous research lacked a systematic framework to study these cascading effects.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop a framework for identifying and quantifying attitude transition cascades in international relations.
- To analyze the triggers and network properties associated with these cascades.
- To understand the impact of these transitions on global interactions.
Main Methods:
- Construction of a global evolving network of country relations using 70,756,728 international events (January 1995–March 2020).
- Development of a framework to identify and quantify cascading attitude transitions.
- Analysis of network properties, including betweenness centrality, influencing transition cascades.
Main Results:
- Identified and quantified cascading transitions following specific attitude shifts.
- Discovered that weaker initial transitions frequently initiate the largest cascades.
- Found that both local environmental balance and global network properties (e.g., betweenness centrality) influence transitions.
Conclusions:
- Developed a novel framework to study international relation cascades.
- Demonstrated that weaker transitions can have disproportionately large impacts.
- Highlighted the role of global network structure in diplomatic shifts and their effects on trade and scientific collaboration.
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