Brinkmanship
Do External Threats Unite or Divide? Security Crises, Rivalries, and Polarization in American Foreign Policy
Rachel Myrick
International Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
A common explanation for the increasing polarization in contemporary American foreign policy is the absence of external threat. I identify two mechanisms through which threats could reduce polarization: by revealing information about an adversary that elicits a bipartisan response from policymakers (information mechanism) and by heightening the salience of national relative to partisan identity (identity mechanism). To evaluate the information mechanism, study 1 uses computational text analysis of congressional speeches to explore whether security threats reduce partisanship in attitudes toward foreign adversaries. To evaluate the identity mechanism, study 2 uses public opinion polls to assess whether threats reduce affective polarization among the public. Study 3 tests both mechanisms in a survey experiment that heightens a security threat from China. I find that the external threat hypothesis has limited ability to explain either polarization in US foreign policy or affective polarization among the American public. Instead, responses to external threats reflect the domestic political environment in which they are introduced. The findings cast doubt on predictions that new foreign threats will inherently create partisan unity.
Questioning More: RT, Outward-Facing Propaganda, and the Post-West World Order
Erin Baggott Carter & Brett Carter
Security Studies, March 2021, Pages 49-78
Abstract:
Can propaganda produced by foreign adversaries shape public opinion in a target country? We develop a theoretical framework to understand outward-facing propaganda, which many autocrats employ to shape public opinion abroad. We argue that beliefs about foreign affairs are more susceptible to outward-facing propaganda than beliefs about domestic conditions. Empirically, we focus on RT (formerly Russia Today), a media platform the Russian government founded in 2005. After characterizing its content, we ask whether exposure to RT influences the beliefs of American consumers. Exposure to RT, we find, induces respondents to support America withdrawing from its role as a cooperative global leader by 10-20 percentage points. This effect is robust across measures, obtains across party lines, and persists even when we disclose that RT is financed by the Russian government. RT has no effect on Americans' views of domestic politics or the Russian government.
Spying from Space: Reconnaissance Satellites and Interstate Disputes
Bryan Early & Erik Gartzke
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
Despite considerable interest and debate, it has proven surprisingly difficult to demonstrate a systematic link between technological change and patterns of war and peace. At least part of the challenge may reside in finding the right place to "look" for such relationships. Technological change alters what nations can do to one another (capabilities), but in ways that are typically reflected by deals (diplomatic bargains) rather than actions. We theorize that reconnaissance satellites have revolutionized the use of information gleaned from spying in ways that discourage states from engaging in serious conflicts with one another. We analyze the impact of reconnaissance satellites on high-casualty militarized interstate disputes (MIDS) between dyads from 1950 to 2010. We find that when either the potential aggressor or target in a dyad possess reconnaissance satellites, they are significantly less likely to become involved in serious MIDs. This effect is especially powerful when both states possess reconnaissance satellites.
Robustness of Empirical Evidence for the Democratic Peace: A Nonparametric Sensitivity Analysis
Kosuke Imai & James Lo
International Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
The democratic peace - the idea that democracies rarely fight one another - has been called "the closest thing we have to an empirical law in the study of international relations." Yet, some contend that this relationship is spurious and suggest alternative explanations. Unfortunately, in the absence of randomized experiments, we can never rule out the possible existence of such confounding biases. Rather than commonly used regression-based approaches, we apply a nonparametric sensitivity analysis. We show that overturning the negative association between democracy and conflict would require a confounder that is forty-seven times more prevalent in democratic dyads than in other dyads. To put this number in context, the relationship between democracy and peace is at least five times as robust as that between smoking and lung cancer. To explain away the democratic peace, therefore, scholars would have to find far more powerful confounders than those already identified in the literature.
Conflict, Cooperation, and Delegated Diplomacy
Matt Malis
International Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
Does diplomacy affect the prospects of international conflict and cooperation? Systematic empirical assessment has been hindered by the inferential challenges of separating diplomacy from the distribution of power and interests that underlies its conduct. This paper addresses the question of diplomacy's efficacy by examining the intragovernmental politics of US foreign policy, and the varying influence of diplomatic personnel in the policy process. I claim that diplomats hold the strongest preferences for cooperative relations with their host countries, relative to other participants in the foreign policy process. They also exert substantial influence over the formation and implementation of US policies toward their host countries but their influence is intermittently weakened by the short-term shock of an ambassadorial turnover. As a result, when ambassadors are removed from post, diplomacy is more likely to be eschewed for more conflictual means of settling international disagreements, and opportunities for economic exchange are less likely to be realized. I test this theory using newly collected data on US diplomatic representation, for the global sample of countries from 1960 through 2014. To address concerns of diplomatic staffing being endogenous to political interests, I leverage a natural experiment arising from the State Department's three-year ambassadorial rotation system. The turnover of a US ambassador causes a decrease in US exports to the country experiencing the turnover, and heightens the risk of onset of a militarized dispute between that country and the US. These findings point to bureaucratic delegation as an important but overlooked determinant of macro-level international outcomes.
I Care About Your Plight, But Only If I Like Your Leader: The Effect of National Leaders' Perceived Personality on Empathy and Pro-Social Behavior Towards Their Citizenry
Meital Balmas & Eran Halperin
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
People's default levels of empathy toward members of a distant group tend to be low. The current research shows that favorable perceptions regarding the personality of a group's leader can stimulate empathy and pro-social behavior toward his or her countrymen. In four experimental studies (N = 884), we found that exposure to a news article that positively (vs. negatively) characterizes a foreign national leader (vs. non-national leader) led to (a) increased levels of empathy toward distressed citizens of that leader's nation, (b) willingness to help those citizens, (c) motivation to invest time in inspecting additional information elucidating the circumstances that led to this adversity, and (d) an actual monetary donation for the benefit of those people. This effect turned out to be prominent when the national leader's domestic popularity was perceived as high. The results show that national leaders are in a position to contribute to more empathetic inter-society relations and enhance pro-social behavior.
Terror after the Caliphate: The Effect of ISIS Loss of Control over Population Centers on Patterns of Global Terrorism
James Piazza & Michael Soules
Security Studies, March 2021, Pages 107-135
Abstract:
Experts opine that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) responded to its loss of control over major population centers in Iraq and Syria that constituted its self-described "caliphate" by internationalizing its patterns of terrorist violence, committing higher-profile attacks abroad, and exploiting sectarian conflicts in other countries. In this study, we test this conventional wisdom. We theorize that the loss of population centers prompted ISIS to conduct more attacks abroad, to shift its attack venues abroad, and to cause higher casualties abroad. Using original time series data on ISIS control over major cities, we find empirical support for our theoretical assumptions.
Combat stress in a small-scale society suggests divergent evolutionary roots for posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms
Matthew Zefferman & Sarah Mathew
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 13 April 2021
Abstract:
Military personnel in industrialized societies often develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) during combat. It is unclear whether combat-related PTSD is a universal evolutionary response to danger or a culture-specific syndrome of industrialized societies. We interviewed 218 Turkana pastoralist warriors in Kenya, who engage in lethal cattle raids, about their combat experiences and PTSD symptoms. Turkana in our sample had a high prevalence of PTSD symptoms, but Turkana with high symptom severity had lower prevalence of depression-like symptoms than American service members with high symptom severity. Symptoms that facilitate responding to danger were better predicted by combat exposure, whereas depressive symptoms were better predicted by exposure to combat-related moral violations. The findings suggest that some PTSD symptoms stem from an evolved response to danger, while depressive PTSD symptoms may be caused by culturally specific moral norm violations.
Concessions for Concession's Sake: Injustice, Indignation, and the Construction of Intractable Conflict in Israel-Palestine
Philippe Assouline & Robert Trager
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
In intractable conflicts, what factors lead populations to accept negotiated outcomes? To examine these issues, we conduct a survey experiment on a representative sample of the Jewish Israeli population and a companion experiment on a representative sample of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. We find that holding the negotiated settlement outcome constant, approval of the settlement is strongly influenced by whether it is framed as a negotiating defeat for one side - if and only if respondents are primed to be indignant - and that these effects are strongly mediated by perceptions of the fairness of the settlement outcome. Moral indignation produces a desire for concessions for concession's sake. Such conflicts over political framing violate assumptions of the rationalist literature on conflict processes and suggest important new directions for conflict theorizing.
Reassessing the public goods theory of alliances
Joshua Alley
Research & Politics, March 2021
Abstract:
The public goods theory of alliances exerts substantial influence on scholarship and policy, especially through its claim that small alliance participants free-ride on larger partners. Prior statistical tests of free-riding suffer from model specification and generalizability problems, however, so there is little reliable and general evidence about this prediction. In this study, I address those limitations with a new test of the free-riding hypothesis. Using data on 204 alliances from 1919 to 2007, I examine how often states with a small share of total GDP in an alliance decrease military spending while states with a large share of allied GDP increase military spending. I find little evidence to support this expression of the free-riding hypothesis. This implies that free-riding based on economic weight is unusual in alliance politics, which may be due to limits on alliance security as a public good or bargaining between alliance members.